a prompter of false
witnesses, had been rewarded only too prodigally for the honour of
the new government. That he should hold any high office was of course
impossible. But a sinecure place of five hundred a year had been created
for him in the department of the Excise. He now had what to him was
opulence: but opulence did not satisfy him. For money indeed he had
never scrupled to be guilty of fraud aggravated by hypocrisy; yet the
love of money was not his strongest passion. Long habits had developed
in him a moral disease from, which people who make political agitation
their calling are seldom wholly free. He could not be quiet. Sedition,
from being his business, had become his pleasure. It was as impossible
for him to live without doing mischief as for an old dram drinker or
an old opium eater to live without the daily dose of poison. The very
discomforts and hazards of a lawless life had a strange attraction for
him. He could no more be turned into a peaceable and loyal subject than
the fox can be turned into a shepherd's dog, or than the kite can be
taught the habits of the barn door fowl. The Red Indian prefers his
hunting ground to cultivated fields and stately cities: the gipsy,
sheltered by a commodious roof, and provided with meat in due season,
still pines for the ragged tent on the moor and the meal of carrion, and
even so Ferguson became weary of plenty and security, of his salary, his
house, his table and his coach, and longed to be again the president
of societies where none could enter without a password, the director of
secret presses, the distributor of inflammatory pamphlets; to see the
walls placarded with descriptions of his Person and offers of reward for
his apprehension; to have six or seven names, with a different wig and
cloak for each, and to change his lodgings thrice a week at dead
of night. His hostility was not to Popery or to Protestantism, to
monarchical government or to republican government, to the House of
Stuart or to the House of Nassau, but to whatever was at the time
established.

By the Jacobites this new ally was eagerly welcomed. They were at that
moment busied with schemes in which the help of a veteran plotter was
much needed. There had been a great stir among them from the day on
which it had been announced that William had determined to take the
command in Ireland; and they were all looking forward with impatient
hope to his departure.--He was not a prince against whom men