judgment. They were also under the influence of that peculiar
illusion which seems to belong to their situation. A politician
driven into banishment by a hostile faction generally sees the
society which he has quitted through a false medium. Every object
is distorted and discoloured by his regrets, his longings, and
his resentments. Every little discontent appears to him to
portend a revolution. Every riot is a rebellion. He cannot be
convinced that his country does not pine for him as much as he
pines for his country. He imagines that all his old associates,
who still dwell at their homes and enjoy their estates, are
tormented by the same feelings which make life a burden to
himself. The longer his expatriation, the greater does this
hallucination become. The lapse of time, which cools the ardour
of the friends whom he has left behind, inflames his. Every month
his impatience to revisit his native land increases; and every
month his native land remembers and misses him less. This
delusion becomes almost a madness when many exiles who suffer in
the same cause herd together in a foreign country. Their chief
employment is to talk of what they once were, and of what they
may yet be, to goad each other into animosity against the common
enemy, to feed each other with extravagant hopes of victory and
revenge. Thus they become ripe for enterprises which would at
once be pronounced hopeless by any man whose passions had not
deprived him of the power of calculating chances.
In this mood were many of the outlaws who had assembled on the
Continent. The correspondence which they kept up with England
was, for the most part, such as tended to excite their feelings
and to mislead their judgment. Their information concerning the
temper of the public mind was chiefly derived from the worst
members of the Whig party, from men who were plotters and
libellers by profession, who were pursued by the officers of
justice, who were forced to skulk in disguise through