crown at all. Ormond was a weak and vain man, but he was a man of
personal integrity. He had been sent out to Flanders to succeed the
greatest commander of the age as captain-general of the allied armies
there, and he had naturally played a poor and even ridiculous part. The
Jacobites in England still, however, held him in much honor, identified
his name, no one exactly knew why, with the cause of High-Church, and
elected him the hero and the leader of the movement for the restoration
of the exiled family. Bolingbroke committed Scotland to the care of the
Earl of Mar, a Jacobite, a personal friend of James Stuart, and a votary
of High-Church. It can hardly be supposed that in making such an
appointment Bolingbroke had not in his mind the possibility of a rising
of the Highland clans against the Hanoverian succession. But it is none
the less evident that Bolingbroke was as usual thinking far more of
himself than of his party, and that his preparations were made not so
much with a view to restoring the Stuarts as with the object of securing
himself against any chance that might befall.

{40}

Had Bolingbroke been resolved in his heart to bring back the Stuarts, had
he been ready, as many other men were, to risk all in that cause, to
stand or fall by it, he might, so far as one can see, have been
successful. It is not too much to say that on the whole the majority of
the English people were in favor of the Stuarts. Certainly the majority
would have preferred a Stuart to the dreaded and disliked German prince
from Herrenhausen. For many years the birthday of the Stuart prince had
been celebrated as openly and as enthusiastically in English cities as if
it were the birthday of the reigning sovereign. James's adherents were
everywhere--in the court, in the camp, on the bench, in Parliament, in
the drawing-rooms, the coffee-houses, and the streets. Bolingbroke had
only to present him at a critical moment, and say "Here is your king,"
and James Stuart would have been king. Such a crisis came in France in
our own days. There was a moment, after the fall of the Second Empire,
when the Count de Chambord had only to present himself in Versailles in
order to be accepted as King of France, not King of the French. But the
Count de Chambord put away his chance deliberately; he would not consent
to give up the white flag of legitimacy and accept the tricolor. He
acted on principle, knowing the forfeit of his decision. Th