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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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