Letter was not published until 1753, a year or two after its writer's death.

Bolingbroke's first wife died in November, 1718. He married in 1720 a Marquise de Villette, with whom he lived on an estate called La Source, near Orleans, at the source of the small river Loiret. There he talked and wrote philosophy. His pardon was obtained in May, 1723. In 1725 he was allowed by Act of Parliament the possession of his family inheritance; but as the attainder was not reversed he could never again sit in Parliament. So he came home in 1725, and bought an estate at Dawley, near Uxbridge. There he philosophised in his own way and played at farming, discoursed with Pope and plied his pen against the Whigs. In his letter to Pope, Bolingbroke writes of ministers of religion as if they had no other function than to maintain theological dogmas, and draws a false conclusion from false premisses. He died on the 12th of December, 1751.

H.M.

A LETTER TO SIR WILLIAM WINDHAM

I was well enough acquainted with the general character of mankind, and in particular with that of my own countrymen, to expect to be as much out of the minds of the Tories during my exile as if we had never lived and acted together. I depended on being forgot by them, and was far from imagining it possible that I should be remembered only to be condemned loudly by one half of them, and to be tacitly censured by the greatest part of the other half. As soon as I was separated from the Pretender and his interest, I declared myself to be so; and I gave directions for writing into England what I judged sufficient to put my friends on their guard against any surprise concerning an event which it was their interest, as well as mine, that they should be very rightly informed about.

As soon as the Pretender's adherents began to clamour against me in this country, and to disperse their scandal by circular letters everywhere else, I gave directions for writing into England again. Their groundless articles of accusation were refuted, and enough was said to give my friends a general idea of what had happened to me, and at least to make them suspend the fixing any opinion till such time as I should be able to write more fully and plainly to them myself. To condemn no person unheard is a rule of natural equity, which we see rarely violated in Turkey, or in the country where I am writing: that it would not be so with me in Great Britain, I confess that I flattered myself. I dwelt securely in this confidence, and gave very little attention to any of those scurrilous methods which were taken about this time to blast my reputation. The event of things has shown that I trusted too much to my own innocence, and to the justice of my old friends.

It was obvious that the Chevalier and the Earl of Mar hoped to load me with the imputation of treachery, incapacity, or neglect: it was indifferent to them of which. If they could ascribe to one of those their not being supported from France, they imagined that they should justify their precipitate flight from Scotland, which many of their fastest friends exclaimed against; and that they should varnish over that original capital fault, the drawing the Highlanders together in arms at the time and in the manner in which it was done.

The Scotch, who fell at once from all the sanguine expectations with which they had been soothed, and who found themselves reduced to despair, were easy to be incensed; they had received no support whatever, and it was natural for them rather to believe that they failed of this support by my fault, than to imagine their general had prevailed on them to rise in the very point of time when it was impossible that they should be supported from France, or from any other part of the world. The Duke of Ormond, who had been the bubble of his own popularity, was enough out of humour with the general turn of affairs to be easily set against any particular man. The emissaries of this Court, whose commission was to amuse, had imposed upon him all along; and there were other busy people who thought to find their account in having him to themselves. I had never been in his secret whilst we were in England together: and from his first coming into France he was either prevailed upon by others, or, which I rather believe, he concurred with others, to keep me out of it. The perfect indifference I showed whether I was in it or no, might carry him from acting separately, to act against me.

The whole tribe of Irish and other papists were ready to seize the first opportunity of venting their spleen against a man, who had constantly avoided all intimacy with them; who acted in the same cause, but on a different principle, and who meant no one thing in the world less than raising them to the advantages which they expected.

That these several persons, for the reasons I have mentioned, should join in a cry against me, is not very marvellous; the contrary would be so to a man who knows them as well as I do. But that the English Tories should serve as echoes to them--nay more, that my character should continue doubtful at best amongst you, when those who first propagated the slander are become ashamed of railing without proof, and have dropped the clamour,--this I own that I never expected; and I may be allowed to say, that as it is an extreme surprise, so it shall be a lesson to me.

The Whigs impeached and attainted me. They went farther--at least, in my way of thinking, that step was more cruel than all the others- -by a partial representation of facts, and pieces of facts, put together as it best suited their purpose, and published to the whole world, they did all that in them lay to expose me for a fool, and to brand me for a knave. But then I had deserved this abundantly at their hands, according to the notions of party-justice. The Tories have not indeed impeached nor attainted me; but they have done, and are still doing something very like to that which I took worse of the Whigs than the impeachment and attainder: and this, after I have shown an inviolable attachment to the service, and almost an implicit obedience to the will of the party; when I am actually an outlaw, deprived of my honours, stripped of my fortune, and cut off from my family and my country, for their sakes.

Some of the persons who have seen me here, and with whom I have had the pleasure to talk of you, may, perhaps, have told you that, far from being oppressed by that storm of misfortunes in which I have been tossed of late, I bear up against it with firmness enough, and even with alacrity. It is true, I do so; but it is true likewise that the last burst of the cloud has gone near to overwhelm me. From our enemies we expect evil treatment of every sort, we are prepared for it, we are animated by it, and we sometimes triumph in it; but when our friends abandon us, when they wound us, and when they take, to do this, an occasion where we stand the most in need of their support, and have the best title to it, the firmest mind finds it hard to resist.

Nothing kept up my spirits when I was first reduced to the very circumstances I now describe so much as the consideration of the delusions under which I knew that the Tories lay, and the hopes I entertained of being able soon to open their eyes, and to justify my conduct. I expected that friendship, or, if that principle failed, curiosity at least, would move the party to send over some person from whose report they might have both sides of the question laid before them. Though this expectation be founded in reason, and you want to be informed at least as much as I do to be justified, yet I have hitherto flattered myself with it in vain. To repair this misfortune, therefore, as far as lies in my power, I resolve to put into writing the sum of what I should have said in that case. These papers shall lie by me till time and accidents produce some occasion of communicating them to you. The true occasion of doing it with advantage to the party will probably be lost; but they will remain a monument of my justification to posterity. At worst, if even this fails me, I am sure of one satisfaction in writing them: the satisfaction of unburdening my mind to a friend, and of stating before an equitable judge the account, as I apprehend it to stand, between the Tories and myself--"Quantum humano consilio efficere potui, circumspectis rebus meis omnibus, rationibusque subductis, summam feci cogitationum mearum omnium, quam tibi, si potero, breviter exponam."

It is necessary to my design that I call to your mind the state of affairs in Britain from the latter part of the year 1710 to the beginning of the year 1715, about which time we parted. I go no farther back because the part which I acted before that time, in the first essays I made in public affairs, was the part of a Tory, and so far of a piece with that which I acted afterwards. Besides, the things which preceded this space of time had no immediate influence on those which happened since that time, whereas the strange events which we have seen fall out in the king's reign were owing in a great measure to what was done, or neglected to be done, in the last four years of the queen's. The memory of these events being fresh, I shall dwell as little as possible upon them; it will be sufficient that I make a rough sketch of the face of the Court, and of the conduct of the several parties during that time. Your memory will soon furnish the colours which I shall omit to lay, and finish up the picture.

From the time at which I left Britain I had not the advantage of acting under the eyes of the party which I served, nor of being able from time to time to appeal to their judgment. The gross of what happened has appeared; but the particular steps which led to those events have been either concealed or misrepresented--concealed from the nature of them or misrepresented by those with whom I never agreed perfectly except in thinking that they and I were extremely unfit to continue embarked in the same bottom together. It will, therefore, be proper to descend under this head to a more particular relation.

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