peared from my poor
lord's hurried confession, that he had been made acquainted with the real
facts of the case only two years since, when Mr. Holt visited him, and
would have implicated him in one of those many conspiracies by which the
secret leaders of King James's party in this country were ever
endeavouring to destroy the Prince of Orange's life or power; conspiracies
so like murder, so cowardly in the means used, so wicked in the end, that
our nation has sure done well in throwing off all allegiance and fidelity
to the unhappy family that could not vindicate its right except by such
treachery--by such dark intrigue and base agents. There were designs
against King William that were no more honourable than the ambushes of
cut-throats and footpads. 'Tis humiliating to think that a great prince,
possessor of a great and sacred right, and upholder of a great cause,
should have stooped to such baseness of assassination and treasons as are
proved by the unfortunate King James's own warrant and sign-manual given
to his supporters in this country. What he and they called levying war
was, in truth, no better than instigating murder. The noble Prince of
Orange burst magnanimously through those feeble meshes of conspiracy in
which his enemies tried to envelop him: it seemed as if their cowardly
daggers broke upon the breast of his undaunted resolution. After King
James's death, the queen and her people at St. Germains--priests and women
for the most part--continued their intrigues in behalf of the young prince,
James the Third, as he was called in France and by his party here (this
prince, or Chevalier de St. George, was born in the same year with
Esmond's young pupil Frank, my lord viscount's son): and the prince's
affairs, being in the hands of priests and women, were conducted as
priests and women will conduct them, artfully, cruelly, feebly, and to a
certain bad issue. The moral of the Jesuit's story I think as wholesome a
one as ever was writ: the artfullest, the wisest, the most toilsome, and
dexterous plot-builders in the world--there always comes a day when the
roused public indignation kicks their flimsy edifice down, and sends its
cowardly enemies a-flying. Mr. Swift hath finely described that passion
for intrigue, that love of secrecy, slander, and lying, which belongs to
weak people, hangers-on of weak courts. 'Tis the nature of such to hate
and envy the strong, and conspire their ruin; and the conspiracy succeeds
v