At first many of the tories had been made to entertain some faint hopes that they would be permitted to live in quiet. I have been assured that the King left Hanover in that resolution. Happy had it been for him and for us if he had continued in it; if the moderation of his temper had not been overborne by the violence of party, and his and the national interest sacrificed to the passions of a few. Others there were among the tories who had flattered themselves with much greater expectations than these, and who had depended, not on such imaginary favor and dangerous advancement as was offered them afterwards, but on real credit and substantial power under the new government. Such impressions on the minds of men had rendered the two houses of parliament, which were then sitting, as good courtiers to King George, as ever they had been to queen Anne. But all these hopes being at once and with violence extinguished, despair succeeded in their room.
Our party began soon to act like men delivered over to their passions, and unguided by any other principle; not like men fired by a just resentment and a reasonable ambition to a bold undertaking. They treated the government like men who were resolved not to live under it, and yet they took no one measure to support themselves against it. They expressed, without reserve or circumspection, an eagerness to join in any attempt against the establishment which they had received and confirmed, and which many of them had courted but a few weeks before: and yet in the midst of all this bravery, when the election of the new parliament came on, some of these very men acted with the coolness of those who are much better disposed to compound than to take arms.
The body of the tories being in this temper, it is not to be wondered at, if they heated one another and began apace to turn their eyes towards the pretender: and if those few, who had already engaged with him, applied themselves to improve the conjuncture and endeavour to lift a party for him.
I went, about a month after the queen's death, as soon as the seals were taken from me, into the country, and whilst I continued there, I felt the general disposition to jacobitism encrease daily among people of all ranks; among several who had been constantly distinguished by their aversion to that cause. But at my return to London in the month of February or March one thousand seven hundred and fifteen, a few weeks before I left England, I began for the first time in my whole life to perceive these general dispositions ripen into resolutions, and to observe some regular workings among many of our principal friends, which denoted a scheme of this kind. These workings, indeed, were very faint, for the persons concerned in carrying them on did not think it safe to speak too plainly to men who were, in truth, ill disposed to the government, because they neither found their account at present under it, nor had been managed with art enough to leave them hopes of finding it hereafter: but who at the same time had not the least affection for the pretender's person, nor any principle favorable to his interest.
