fraud, his followers maintained him in
luxury. Several of them appeared at the bar to countenance him when he
was tried at the Horsham assizes. So long did this delusion last
that, when George the Third had been some years on the English throne,
Voltaire thought it necessary gravely to confute the hypothesis that the
man in the iron mask was the Duke of Monmouth. [433]

It is, perhaps, a fact scarcely less remarkable that, to this day,
the inhabitants of some parts of the West of England, when any bill
affecting their interest is before the House of Lords, think themselves
entitled to claim the help of the Duke of Buccleuch, the descendant of
the unfortunate leader for whom their ancestors bled.

The history of Monmouth would alone suffice to refute the Imputation
of inconstancy which is so frequently thrown on the common people. The
common people are sometimes inconstant; for they are human beings. But
that they are inconstant as compared with the educated classes, with
aristocracies, or with princes, may be confidently denied. It would be
easy to name demagogues whose popularity has remained undiminished while
sovereigns and parliaments have withdrawn their confidence from a long
succession of statesmen. When Swift had survived his faculties many
years, the Irish populace still continued to light bonfires on his
birthday, in commemoration of the services which they fancied that he
had rendered to his country when his mind was in full vigour. While
seven administrations were raised to power and hurled from it in
consequence of court intrigues or of changes in the sentiments of the
higher classes of society, the profligate Wilkes retained his hold on
the selections of a rabble whom he pillaged and ridiculed. Politicians,
who, in 1807, had sought to curry favour with George the Third by
defending Caroline of Brunswick, were not ashamed, in 1820, to curry
favour with George the Fourth by persecuting her. But in 1820, as in
1807, the whole body of working men was fanatically devoted to her
cause. So it was with Monmouth. In 1680, he had been adored alike by the
gentry and by the peasantry of the West. In 1685 he came again. To the
gentry he had become an object of aversion: but by the peasantry he
was still loved with a love strong as death, with a love not to be
extinguished by misfortunes or faults, by the flight from Sedgemoor, by
the letter from Ringwood, or by the tears and abject supplications at
Whitehall. The char