Her sister, who had voluntarily trod the same path, who had misled her into belief of her brother's illegitimacy, had now, from no real sense of duty, but out of pique and weak compliance with cunning favourites, solicited in a clandestine manner the late king's pardon, while his malediction resounded in the ears of the queen. This feebleness and duplicity made a sisterly friendship impossible. As for Lord Marlborough, he was among the first, if we except some Scots renegades, who abandoned the cause of the revolution. He had so signally broken the ties of personal gratitude in his desertion of the king on that occasion, that, according to the severe remark of Hume, his conduct required for ever afterwards the most upright, the most disinterested, and most public-spirited behaviour to render it justifiable. What then must we think of it, if we find in the whole of this great man's political life nothing but ambition and rapacity in his motives, nothing but treachery and intrigue in his means! He betrayed and abandoned James, because he could not rise in his favour without a sacrifice that he did not care to make; he abandoned William and betrayed England, because some obstacles stood yet in the way of his ambition. I do not mean only, when I say that he betrayed England, that he was ready to lay her independence and liberty at the feet of James II. and Louis XIV.; but that in one memorable instance he communicated to the court of St. Germain's, and through that to the court of Versailles, the secret of an expedition against Brest, which failed in consequence with the loss of the commander and eight hundred men. Dalrymple, iii. 13; _Life of James_, 522; Macpherson, i. 487. In short, his whole life was such a picture of meanness and treachery that one must rate military services very high indeed to preserve any esteem for his memory. The private memoirs of James II. as well as the papers published by Macpherson show us how little treason, and especially a double treason, is thanked or trusted by those whom it pretends to serve. We see that neither Churchill nor Russell obtained any confidence from the banished king. Their motives were always suspected; and something more solid than professions of loyalty was demanded, though at the expense of their own credit. James could not forgive Russell for saying that, if the French fleet came out, he must fight. Macpherson, i. 242. If Providence in its wrath had visited this island once more with a Stuart restoration, we may be sure that these perfidious apostates would have been no gainers by the change.