neglect. William, indeed, went through the form of tendering his best services to Lewis. But this civility was rated at its true value, and requited with a dry reprimand. The great king affected contempt for the petty prince who was the servant of a confederacy of trading towns; and to every mark of contempt the dauntless Stadtholder replied by a fresh defiance. William took his title, a title which the events of the preceding century had made one of the most illustrious in Europe, from a city which lies on the banks of the Rhone, not far from Avignon, and which, like Avignon, though enclosed on every side by the French territory, was properly a fief not of the French but of the Imperial Crown. Lewis, with that ostentatious contempt of public law which was characteristic of him, occupied Orange, dismantled the fortifications, and confiscated the reve William declared aloud at his table before many persons that he would make the Most Christian king repent the outrage, and, when questioned about these words by the Count of Avaux, positively refused either to retract them or to explain them away. The quarrel was carried so far that the French minister could not venture to present himself at the drawingroom of the princess for fear of receiving some affront.*

nues.

The feeling with which William regarded France explains the whole of his policy towards England. His public spirit was a European public spirit. The chief object of his care was not our island, not even his native Holland, but the great community of nations threatened with subjugation by one too powerful member. Those who commit the error of considering him as an English statesman must necessarily see his whole life in a false light, and will be unable to discover any principle, good or bad, Whig or Tory, to which his most important acts can be referred. But, when we consider him as a man whose especial task was to join a crowd of feeble, divided, and dispirited states in firm and energetic union against a common enemy, when we consider him as a man in whose eyes England was important chiefly because, without her, the great coalition which he projected must be incomplete, we shall be forced to admit that no long career recorded in history has been more uniform from the beginning to the close than that of this great prince.t

Sept. 28

; Dec.

* Avaux Negotiations, Aug. 10; Sept. 14; Oct. 8 17' 1682. I cannot deny myself the pleasure of quoting Massillon's unfriendly, yet discriminating and noble character of William. 13

VOL. II.

"Un

The clew of which we are now possessed will enable us to track without difficulty the course, in reality consistent, though in appearance sometimes tortuous, which he pursued towards our domestic factions. He clearly saw, what had not escaped persons far inferior to him in sagacity, that the enterprise on which his whole soul was intent would probably be successful if England were on his side, would be of uncertain issue if England were neutral, and would be hopeless if England acted as she had acted in the days of the Cabal. He saw not less clearly that between the foreign policy and the domestic policy of the English government there was a close connection; that the sovereign of this country, acting in harmony with the legislature, must always have a great sway in the affairs of Christendom, and must also have an obvious interest in opposing the undue aggrandizement of any continental potentate; that, on the other hand, the sovereign, distrusted and thwarted by the legislature, could be of little weight in European politics, and that the whole of that little weight would be thrown into the wrong scale. The prince's first wish, therefore, was, that there should be concord between the throne and the parliament. How that concord should be established, and on which side concessions should be made, were, in his view, questions of secondary importance. He would have been best pleased, no doubt, to see a complete reconciliation effected without the sacrifice of one tittle of the prerogative. For in the integrity of that prerogative he had a reversionary interest, and he was, by nature, at least as covetous of power and as impatient of restraint as any of the Stuarts. But there was no flower of the crown which he was not prepared to sacrifice, even after the crown had been placed on his own head, if he could only be convinced that such a sacrifice was indispensably necessary to his great design. In the days of the Popish Plot, therefore, though he disapproved of the violence with which the opposition attacked the royal authority, he exhorted the government to give way. The conduct of the

prince profond dans ses vues; habile à former des ligues et à réunir les esprits; plus heureux à exciter les guerres qu'à combattre; plus à craindre encore dans le secret du cabinet, qu'à la tête des armées; un ennemi que la haine du nom Français avoit rendu capable d'imaginer de grandes choses et de les exécuter; un de ces génies qui semblent être nés pour mouvoir à leur gré les peuples et les souverains; un grand homme, s'il n'avoit jamais voulu être roi."- Oraison funèbre de M. le Dauphin.

Commons, he said, as respected domestic affairs, was most unreasonable; but while the Commons were discontented the liberties of Europe could never be safe; and to that paramount consideration every other consideration ought to yield. On these principles he acted when the Exclusion Bill had thrown the nation into convulsions. There is no reason to believe that he encouraged the opposition to bring forward that bill, or to reject the offers of compromise which were repeatedly made from the throne. But when it became clear that, unless that bill were carried, there would be a serious breach between the Commons and the court, he indicated very intelligibly, though with decorous reserve, his opinion that the representatives of the people ought to be conciliated at any price. When a violent and rapid reflux of public feeling had left the Whig party for a time utterly helpless, he attempted to attain his grand object by a new road, perhaps more agreeable to his temper than that which he had previously tried. In the altered temper of the nation there was little chance that any parliament disposed to cross the wishes of the sovereign would be elected. Charles was for a time master. To gain Charles, therefore, was the prince's first wish. In the summer of 1683, almost at the moment at which the detection of the Rye House Plot made the discomfiture of the Whigs and the triumph of the king complete, events took place elsewhere which William could not behold without extreme anxiety and alarm. The Turkish armies advanced to the suburbs of Vienna. The great Austrian monarchy, on the support of which the prince had reckoned, seemed to be on the point of destruction. Bentinck was therefore sent in haste from the Hague to London, was charged to omit nothing which might be necessary to conciliate the English court, and was particuarly instructed to express in the strongest terms the horror with which his master regarded the Whig conspiracy.

During the eighteen months which followed there was some ope that the influence of Halifax would prevail, and that the "ourt of Whitehall would return to the policy of the Triple Alliance. To that hope William fondly clung. His first object was to propitiate Charles. The hospitality which Monmouth found at the Hague is chiefly to be ascribed to the prince's anxiety to gratify the real wishes of Monmouth's father. As soon as Charles died, William, still adhering unchangeably to his object, again changed his tack. He had sheltered Monmouth to please the late king. That the present

king might have no reason to complain, Monmouth was dismissed We have seen that, when the western insurrection broke out, the British regiments in the Dutch service were, by the active exertions of the prince, sent over to their own country on the first requisition. Indeed, William even offered to command in person against the rebels; and that the offer was made in perfect sincerity cannot be doubted by those who have perused his confidential letters to Bentinck.* The prince was evidently at this time inclined to hope that the great plan to which in his mind every thing else was subordinate, might obtain the approbation and support of his father-in-law. The high tone which James was then holding towards France, the readiness with which he consented to a defensive alliance with the United Provinces, the inclination which he showed to connect himself with the House of Austria, encouraged this expectation. But in a short time the prospect was darkened. The disgrace of Halifax, the breach between James and the parliament, the prorogation, the announcement distinctly made by the king to the foreign ministers that continental politics should no longer divert his attention from internal measures tending to strengthen his prerogative and to promote the interest of his Church, put an end to the delusion. It was plain that, when the European crisis came, England would, if James were her master, either remain inactive or act in conjunction with France. And the European crisis was drawing near. The House of Austria had, by a succession of victories, been secured from danger on the side of Turkey, and was no longer under the necessity of submitting patiently to the encroachments and insults of Lewis. Accordingly, in July, 1686, a treaty was signed at Augsburg by which the princes of the Empire bound themselves closely together for the purpose of mutual defence. The kings of Spain and Sweden were parties to this compact, the king of Spain as sovereign of the provinces contained in the circle of Burgundy, and the king of

* For example, "Je crois M. Feversham un très brave et honeste homme. Mais je doute s'il a assez d'expérience à diriger une si grande affaire qu'il a sur le bras. Dieu lui donne une succès prompt et heureux. Mais je ne suis pas hors d'inquiétude." July 7, 1685. Again, after he had received the news of the battle of Sedgemoor, "Dieu soit loué du bon succès que les troupes du Roy ont eu contre les rebelles. Je ne doute pas que cette affaire ne soit entièrement assoupie, et que le règne du Roy sera heureux, ce que Dieu veuille.' July 18.

Sweden as Duke of Pomerania. The confederates declared that they had no intention to attack and no wish to offend any power but that they were determined to tolerate no infraction of those rights which the Germanic body held under the sanction of public law and public faith. They pledged themselves to stand by each other in case of need, and fixed the amount of force which each member of the league was to furnish if it should be necessary to repel aggression. * The name of William did not appear in this instrument; but all men knew that it was his work, and foresaw that he would in no long time be again the captain of a coalition against France. Between him and the vassal of France there could, in such circumstances, be no cordial good will. There was no open rupture, no interchange of menaces or reproaches. But the father-in-law and the son-in-law were separated completely and forever.

At the very time at which the prince was thus estranged from the English court, the causes which had hitherto produced a coolness between him and the two great sections of the English people disappeared. A large portion, perhaps a numerical majority of the Whigs, had favored the pretensions of Monmouth; but Monmouth was now no more. The Tories, on the other hand, had entertained apprehensions that the interests of the Anglican Church might not be safe under the rule of a man bred among Dutch Presbyterians, and well known to hold latitudinarian opinions about robes, ceremonies, and bishops; but, since that beloved Church had been threatened by far more formidable dangers from a very different quarter, these apprehensions had lost almost all their power. Thus, at the same moment, both the great parties began to fix their hopes and their affections on the same leader. Old republicans could not refuse their confidence to one who had worthily filled, during many years, the highest magistracy of a republic. Old royalists conceived that they acted according to their principles in paying profound respect to a prince so near to the throne. At this conjuncture it was of the highest moment that there should be entire union between William and Mary. A misunderstanding between the presumptive heiress of the crown and her husband must have produced a schism in that vast mass which was from all quarters gathering round one common rallying point. Happily all risk of such misunderstanding was

*The treaty will be found in the Recueil des Traités, iv. No. 209.