In the summer of the year 1710 the Queen was prevailed upon to change her Parliament and her Ministry.  The intrigue of the Earl of Oxford might facilitate the means, the violent prosecution of Sacheverel, and other unpopular measures, might create the occasion and encourage her in the resolution; but the true original cause was the personal ill-usage which she received in her private life and in some trifling instances of the exercise of her power, for indulgence in which she would certainly have left the reins of government in those hands which had held them ever since her accession to the throne.

I am afraid that we came to Court in the same dispositions as all parties have done; that the principal spring of our actions was to have the government of the state in our hands; that our principal views were the conservation of this power, great employments to ourselves, and great opportunities of rewarding those who had helped to raise us, and of hurting those who stood in opposition to us.  It is, however, true that with these considerations of private and party interest there were others intermingled which had for their object the public good of the nation—­at least what we took to be such.

We looked on the political principles which had generally prevailed in our government from the Revolution in 1688 to be destructive of our true interest, to have mingled us too much in the affairs of the Continent, to tend to the impoverishing our people, and to the loosening the bands of our constitution in Church and State.  We supposed the Tory party to be the bulk of the landed interest, and to have no contrary influence blended into its composition.  We supposed the Whigs to be the remains of a party formed against the ill designs of the Court under King Charles II., nursed up into strength and applied to contrary uses by King William III., and yet still so weak as to lean for support on the Presbyterians and the other sectaries, on the Bank and the other corporations, on the Dutch and the other Allies.  From hence we judged it to follow that they had been forced, and must continue so, to render the national interest subservient to the interest of those who lent them an additional strength, without which they could never be the prevalent party.  The view, therefore, of those amongst us who thought in this manner was to improve the Queen’s favour, to break the body of the Whigs, to render their supports useless to them, and to fill the employments of the kingdom, down to the meanest, with Tories.  We imagined that such measures, joined to the advantages of our numbers and our property, would secure us against all attempts during her reign, and that we should soon become too considerable not to make our terms in all events which might happen afterwards:  concerning which, to speak truly, I believe few or none of us had any very settled resolution.