So there was the final upshot of my politics! Innocent men have
perished before James, and are like to keep on perishing (in spite
of all our wisdom) till the end of time. And till the end of time
young folk (who are not yet used with the duplicity of life and
men) will struggle as I did, and make heroical resolves, and take
long risks; and the course of events will push them upon the one
side and go on like a marching army. James was hanged; and here
was I dwelling in the house of Prestongrange, and grateful to him
for his fatherly attention. He was hanged; and behold! when I met
Mr. Simon in the causeway, I was fain to pull off my beaver to him
like a good little boy before his dominie. He had been hanged by
fraud and violence, and the world wagged along, and there was not a
pennyweight of difference; and the villains of that horrid plot
were decent, kind, respectable fathers of families, who went to
kirk and took the sacrament!
But I had had my view of that detestable business they call
politics--I had seen it from behind, when it is all bones and
blackness; and I was cured for life of any temptations to take part
in it again.
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