It won for him no gratitude from those who owed to him fortune, liberty and life.

While the violent Whigs railed at his lenity, the agents of the fallen government, as soon as they found themselves safe, instead of acknowledging their obligations to him, reproached him in insulting language with the mercy which he had extended to them.

His Act of Grace, they said, had completely refuted his Declaration.

Was it possible to believe that, if there had been any truth in the charges which he had brought against the late government, he would have granted impunity to the guilty?
It was now acknowledged by himself, under his own hand, that the stories by which he and his friends had deluded the nation and driven away the royal family were mere calumnies devised to serve a turn.

The turn had been served; and the accusations by which he had inflamed the public mind to madness were coolly withdrawn, [618] But none of these things moved him.