Our party began soon to act like men delivered over to their passions, and unguided by any other principle; not like men fired by a just resentment and a reasonable ambition to a bold undertaking. They treated the government like men who were resolved not to live under it, and yet they took no one measure to support themselves against it. They expressed, without reserve or circumspection, an eagerness to join in any attempt against the establishment which they had received and confirmed, and which many of them had courted but a few weeks before: and yet in the midst of all this bravery, when the election of the new parliament came on, some of these very men acted with the coolness of those who are much better disposed to compound than to take arms. The body of the tories being in this temper, it is not to be wondered at, if they heated one another and began apace to turn their eyes towards the pretender: and if those few, who had already engaged with him, applied themselves to improve the conjuncture and endeavour to lift a party for him. I went, about a month after the queen's death, as soon as the seals were taken from me, into the country, and whilst I continued there, I felt the general disposition to jacobitism encrease daily among people of all ranks; among several who had been constantly distinguished by their aversion to that cause. But at my return to London in the month of February or March one thousand seven hundred and fifteen, a few weeks before I left England, I began for the first time in my whole life to perceive these general dispositions ripen into resolutions, and to observe some regular workings among many of our principal friends, which denoted a scheme of this kind. These workings, indeed, were very faint, for the persons concerned in carrying them on did not think it safe to speak too plainly to men who were, in truth, ill disposed to the government, because they neither found their account at present under it, nor had been managed with art enough to leave them hopes of finding it hereafter: but who at the same time had not the least affection for the pretender's person, nor any principle favorable to his interest.