VOL, I. h



218 HISTORICAL ESSAY* SECT. IV,

What can we say to this, bat to ask in surprise, if
this can be the opinion formed by our great historian
of liberty, of liberty's greatest champion, our glorious
deliverer?

It is a grief to add what is stated of Lord Dart-
mouth — surely a man of loyalty and honour, though,
as it should appear, more weak and hesitating than
we wish to consider him. He had orders from James,
who had sent his son to Portsmouth to have him con-
veyed in a yacht to France. At first he promised to
obey, and then retracted: his excuse was the
strictness of the law against it *, and the bad conse-
quences in his mind of the measure. This we should
not notice to his disadvantage ; but in Dalryniple
there is a letter from the prince to him, taken by Byng,
urging him to join him, and offering him, if he did,
to continue him in the command, with an assurance
that Herbert should not be advanced over his head.
^ This letter," says Byng, <• had some effect upon him.
From that time, he seemed inclinable to the prince's
party.". The letter was laid privately on his toilet,
by his own captain, and he never instituted any
inquiry upon it, though an affront which few men of
honour but must have resented, being a direct
temptation to desert.
