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thing he knew to be true, that the king of France wrote to king James to let him know he had certain intelligence that the design was upon England, and that he would immediately besiege Maestricht, which would hinder the states from parting with any of their force for such an expedition; but the secret must be kept inviolable from any of the ministers. Soon afterwards, the states ordered 6000 men to be sent to Maestricht, upon which the king of France desired to know of the king of England if he had revealed it to any body, for he himself had to none but Louvois, and if he had betrayed him, he should treat him accordingly. King James's answer was, that he never told it to any but lord Sunderland, who, he was very sure, was too much in his interest to have discovered it.' Upon which the king of France said, he saw plainly that king James was a man cut out for destruction, and there was no possibility of helping him."* The same anecdote is related with little variation on the same authority, by Mr. Carte.+

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The earl of Middleton, a man of sense and probity, and possessing the best means of information, declares, of lord Sunderland at a subsequent period, "that he had always been the first to deceive, and the first to betray."‡ Lord Sunderland himself, in his traitorous correspondence with the court of St. Germaine's, after the Revolution, virtually acknowledges the justice of the opinion entertained of him; for he declines entering into particulars, because he fears that his majesty does not confide suffi

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* Dalrymple's Appendix, part ii. p. 288.

+ Macpherson's Papers, vol. i. p. 268.

Letter to the Marquis de Croissy, March 1695. Macpherson, yol. i. p. 528,

ciently in his advice. But when he is assured that the king is satisfied with his fidelity, he promises to send good intelligence, and to contribute as much as he can to his majesty's service."* The meaning of this evidently is, that he is desirous to compensate for his past perfidy, which he attempts not to deny, by his future services. Not that his sincerity could be more depended upon at this than at any former period; on the contrary, his real sentiments were probably at all times favorable to the prince and adverse to James; but his own interest, and his own safety, were ever uppermost in his mind, and incited him to the systematic practice of all the base and degrading arts of deceit and dissimulation.

At length king James himself, upon what specific evidence does not appear, became perfectly convinced of the perfidy of lord Sunderland, and on the 28th of October, (1688) he was suddenly dismissed from his offices with such marks of the royal resentment, that, as he himself acknowledges in his vindication, he thought his head to be in danger; an apprehension he never could have entertained, had he not been conscious of his own guilt and treachery. M. Rapin intimates that he was supposed to have concealed several of Skelton's letters from the king, and that this being discovered was the immediate cause of his disgrace. He said in his excuse, "if he gave no account of these letters to the king, it was because Skelton never wrote but second-hand news."+

Upon the success of the prince, lord Sunderland retired into Holland, and being arrested in that country,

* Letter to the Marquis de Croissy, March 1695. Macpherson, vol. i. p. 474.

+ Rapin, vol. ii. folio, page 771.

was released by the express order of the prince. On the 8th of March, 1699, he wrote from Amsterdam a letter to the prince, now king, congratulating him upon his accession to the throne. "If I had not," said the ex-minister, "followed the advice of my friends, rather than my own sense, I should not have been out of England at this time, for I thought I had served the public so importantly in contributing what in me lay to the advancing of your glorious undertaking, that having been in an odious ministry ought not to have obliged me to be absent. But nothing makes me repine so much at it, as that I could not give my vote for placing your majesty on the throne." In a subsequent letter to the king, dated March 11th, this nobleman says, " however unfortunate my present circumstances are, I have this to sup port me, that my thoughts as well as actions have been, are, and I dare say ever will be, what they ought to be to your majesty. Long before your glorious undertaking, I cannot but hope, you remember how devoted I was to your service."

In what mode lord Sunderland could have contributed to the success of the prince's undertaking, or have displayed his devotion to the prince's service, excepting by his artful efforts to dupe and deceive the late monarch in regard to the reality of the design of invasion, and consequently to prevent his taking those timely and necessary precautions which common sense pointed out, in order to counteract the danger, seems impossible to conjecture, and it is what no historical investigation has hitherto been able in any degree to ascertain.

Upon the whole it is too clearly manifest, that the earl of Sunderland was a man utterly destitute of moral

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or political principle. So long as he conceived that the nefarious designs of the monarch, whom he served, were likely to prove ultimately successful, he appeared zealous and active in his endeavours to promote them; and if he occasionally inculcated milder and more moderate coun sels, he never scrupled to acquiesce in the most violent measures, or to assist in carrying them into execution. When the folly of the king became at length so egregious as to induce a suspicion, and by degrees an expectation of some calamitous catastrophe, he entered into secret in❤ trigues with his enemies, with a view merely to his own eventual security: for there exists not the slightest proof or presumption, that in case of the relinquishment or failure of the prince of Orange's design, he would have changed, in any degree, the tenure of his conduct, or have ceased to enforce the most exceptionable measures by the most exceptionable means. Thinking it probable that the invasion would succeed, but possible that it might not, he gave his secret assistance to the prince, while he cajoled the credulous monarch by the most plausible professions, and all the subtile artifices of courtly dissimulation; thus dexterously contriving to preserve his credit with them both, and providing not only for his safety, but even for his future views of interest and ambition, whatever might be the result of the great and hazardous projects at this crisis in contemplation'.

BILL OF RIGHTS.

A. D. 1689.

ON the 13th of February 1688-9, the two houses of convention went in state to the palace of Whitehall, where the prince and princess of Orange being seated under a canopy at the upper end of the Banqueting-house, and the members being admitted and properly disposed, the clerk of the crown, with a loud voice, read the declaration previously agreed upon,which subsequently receiving the royal assent, and becoming a fundamental law of the realm, has long been known and celebrated under the appellation of the BILL of RIGHTS. It is as follows:

WHEREAS the late king JAMES II. by the assistance of divers evil counsellors, judges, and ministers, employed by him, did endeavour to subvert and extirpate the protestant religion, and the laws and liberties of this kingdom, by assuming and exercising a power of dispensing with, and suspending of laws, and the execution of laws without consent of parliament; by committing and prosecuting divers worthy prelates, for humbly petitioning to be excused from concurring to the said assumed power; by issuing, and causing to be executed, a commission under the great seal for erecting a court called the court of commissioners for ecclesiastical causes; by levying money for and to the use of the crown, by pretence of prerogative for other time, and in other manner, than the same was granted by parliament; by raising and keeping a standing army

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