rwards
more fully matured, for expelling the usurper by means of the English
legislature and the English army. In the meantime he hoped that James
would command Godolphin not to quit the Treasury. A private man could
do little for the good cause. One who was the director of the national
finances, and the depository of the gravest secrets of state, might
render inestimable services.

Marlborough's pretended repentance imposed so completely on those who
managed the affairs of James in London that they sent Lloyd to France,
with the cheering intelligence that the most depraved of all rebels had
been wonderfully transformed into a loyal subject. The tidings filled
James with delight and hope. Had he been wise, they would have excited
in him only aversion and distrust. It was absurd to imagine that a man
really heartbroken by remorse and shame for one act of perfidy would
determine to lighten his conscience by committing a second act of
perfidy as odious and as disgraceful as the first. The promised
atonement was so wicked and base that it never could be made by any man
sincerely desirous to atone for past wickedness and baseness. The truth
was that, when Marlborough told the Jacobites that his sense of guilt
prevented him from swallowing his food by day and taking his rest at
night, he was laughing at them. The loss of half a guinea would have
done more to spoil his appetite and to disturb his slumbers than all the
terrors of an evil conscience. What his offers really proved was that
his former crime had sprung, not from an ill regulated zeal for the
interests of his country and his religion, but from a deep and incurable
moral disease which had infected the whole man. James, however, partly
from dulness and partly from selfishness, could never see any immorality
in any action by which he was benefited. To conspire against him, to
betray him, to break an oath of allegiance sworn to him, were crimes for
which no punishment here or hereafter could be too severe. But to murder
his enemies, to break faith with his enemies was not only innocent but
laudable. The desertion at Salisbury had been the worst of crimes;
for it had ruined him. A similar desertion in Flanders would be an
honourable exploit; for it might restore him.

The penitent was informed by his Jacobite friends that he was forgiven.
The news was most welcome; but something more was necessary to restore
his lost peace of mind. Might he hope to have, in the royal ha