Treaty rights he is to support in a mild and moderate spirit; and he is to check as far as possible evasions by British traders of the local revenue laws.
Their leaders renounced allegiance to the regent; she ended her not unkindly, but as Knox calls it "unhappy," life in the castle of Edinburgh; the English troops, after the usual Elizabethan delays and evasions, joined their Scots allies; and the French embarked from Leith.
Notwithstanding the zeal and ability which he had invariably displayed as foreign minister, it had long been felt by his colleagues that his eager and frequent interference in the affairs of foreign countries, his imperious temper, the extreme acerbity of his language abroad, of which there are ample proofs in his published correspondence, and the evasions and artifices he employed to carry his points at home, rendered him a dangerous representative of the foreign interests of the country.
Worn out with his evasions, she at last (1723) took the desperate step of writing to Stella or, according to another account, to Swift himself, demanding to know the nature of the connexion with him, and this terminated the melancholy history as with a clap of thunder.
He saw decisions being made which were mere stopgaps, the continual withdrawal a quarter of the way, the continual evasions.