Thus the ill humor which a large proportion of the new legislators had brought up from their country-seats became more and more acrid every day, till they entered on their functions. One question was much agitated during this unpleasant interval. Who was to be speaker? The Junto wished to place Sir Thomas Littleton in the chair. He was one of their ablest, most zealous, and most steadfast friends; and had been, both in the House of Commons and at the Board of Treasury, an invaluable second to Montague. There was reason indeed to expect a strong opposition. That Littleton was a Whig was a grave objection to him in the opinion of the Tories. That he was a placeman, and that he was for a standing army, were grave objections to him in the opinion of many who were not Tories. But nobody else came forward. The health of the late Speaker Foley had failed. Musgrave was talked of in coffee-houses: but the rumor that he would be proposed soon died away. Seymour's name was in a few mouths: but Seymour's day had gone by. He still possessed, indeed, those advantages which had once made him the first of the country gentlemen of England - illustrious descent, ample fortune, ready and weighty eloquence, perfect familiarity with parliamentary business. But all these things

could not do so much to raise him as his moral character did to drag him down. Haughtiness such as his, though it could never have been liked, might, if it had been united with elevated sentiments of virtue and honor, have been pardoned. But of all the forms of pride, even the pride of upstart wealth not excepted, the most offensive is the pride of ancestry when found in company with sordid and ignoble vices, greediness, mendacity, knavery, and impudence; and such was the pride of Seymour. Many, even of those who were well pleased to see the ministers galled by his keen and skillful rhetoric, remembered that he had sold himself more than once, and suspected that he was impatient to sell himself again. On the very eve of the opening of Parliament, a little tract entitled "Considerations on the Choice of a Speaker" was widely circulated, and seems to have produced a great sensation. The writer cautioned the representatives of the people, at some length, against Littleton; and then, in even stronger language, though more concisely, against Seymour; but did not suggest any third person.

The sixth of December came, and found the

Country party, as it called itself, still unprovided with a candidate. The king, who had not been many hours in London, took his seat in the House of Lords. The Commons were summoned to the bar, and were directed to choose a speaker. They returned to their chamber. Hart ington proposed Littleton; and the proposition was seconded by Spencer. No other person was put in nomination but there was a warm debate of two hours. Seymour, exasperated by finding that no party was inclined to support his pretensions, spoke with extravagant violence. He who could well remember the military despotism of Cromwell, who had been an active politician in the days of the Cabal, and who had seen his own beautiful county turned into a Golgotha by the Bloody Circuit, declared that the liberties of the nation had never been in greater danger than at that moment, and that their doom would be fixed if a courtier should be called to the chair. The opposition insisted on dividing. Hartington's motion was carried by two hundred and forty-two votes to a hundred and thirty-five, Littleton himself, according to the childish old usage which has descended to our times, voting in the minority. Three days later he was presented and approved.

The king then spoke from the throne. He declared his firm conviction that the houses were disposed to do whatever was necessary for the safety, honor, and happiness of the kingdom; and he asked them for nothing more. When they came to consider the military and naval establishments, they would remember that, unless England were secure from attack, she could not continue to hold the high place which she had won for herself among European powers: her trade would languish, her credit would fail, and even her internal tranquillity would be in danger. He also expressed a hope that some progress would be made in the discharge of the debts contracted during the war. "I think," he said, an English Parliament can never make such a mistake as not to hold sacred all parliamentary engagements."

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The speech appeared to be well received; and during a short time William flattered himself that the great fault, as he considered it, of the preceding session would be repaired, that the army would be augmented, and that he should be able, at the important conjuncture which was approaching, to speak to foreign powers in tones of author

ity, and especially to keep France steady to her engagements. The Whigs of the Junto, better acquainted with the temper of the country and of the new House of Commons, pronounced it impossible to carry a vote for a land force of more than ten thousand men. Ten thousand men would probably be obtained if his majesty would authorize his servants to ask in his name for that number, and to de clare that with a smaller number he could not answer for the public safety. William, firmly convinced that twenty thousand would be too few, refused to make or empower others to make a proposition which seemed to him absurd and disgraceful. Thus, at a moment at which it was peculiarly desirable that all who bore a part in the executive administration should act cordially together, there was serious dissension between him and his ablest councillors. For that dissension neither he nor they can be severely blamed. They were differently situated, and necessarily saw the same objects from different points of view. He, as was natural, considered the question chiefly as a European question. They, as was natural, considered it chiefly as an English question. They had found the antipathy to a standing army insurmountably strong even in the late Parliament, a Parliament disposed to place large confidence in them and in their master. In the new Parliament that antipathy amounted almost to a mania. That liberty, law, property, could never be secured while the sovereign had a large body of regular troops at his command in time of peace, and that of all regular troops foreign troops were the most to be dreaded, had, during the recent elections, been repeated in every town-hall and market-place, and scrawled upon every dead wall. The reductions of the preceding year, it was said, even if they had been honestly carried into effect, would not have been sufficient; and they had not been honestly carried into effect. . On this subject the ministers pronounced the temper of the Commons to be such that, if any person high in office were to ask for what his majesty thought necessary, there would assuredly be a violent explosion: the majority would probably be provoked into disbanding all that remained of the army, and the kingdom would be left without a single soldier. William, however, could not be brought to believe that the case was so hopeless. He listened too easily to some secret adviser - Sunderland was probably the man

who accused Montague and Somers of cowardice and insincerity. They had, it was whispered in the royal ear, a majority whenever they really wanted one. They were bent upon placing their friend Littleton in the speaker's chair, and they carried their point triumphantly. They would carry as triumphantly a vote for a respectable military establishment if the honor of their master and the safety of their country were as dear to them as the petty interest of their own faction. It was to no purpose that the king was told, what was nevertheless perfectly true, that not one half the members who had voted for Littleton could by any art or eloquence, be induced to vote for an aug mentation of the land force. While he was urging his ministers to stand up manfully against the popular prejudice, and while they were respectfully representing to him that by so standing up they should only make that prejudice stronger and more noxious, the day came which the Commons had fixed for taking the royal speech into consideration. The House resolved itself into a committee. The great question was instantly raised: What provision should be made for the defence of the realm? It was naturally expected that the confidential advisers of the crown would propose something. As they remained silent, Harley took the lead which properly belonged to them, and moved that the army should not exceed seven thousand men. Sir Charles Sedley suggested ten thousand. Vernon, who was present, was of opinion that this number would have been carried if it had been proposed by one who was known to speak on behalf of the king. But few members cared to support an amendment which was certain to be less pleasing to their constituents, and did not appear to be more pleasing to the court than the original motion. Harley's resolution passed the committee. On the morrow it was reported and approved. The House also resolved that all the seven thousand men who were to be retained should be natural-born English subjects. Other votes were carried without a single division either in the committee or when the mace was on the table.

The king's indignation and vexation were extreme. He was angry with the opposition, with the ministers, with all England. The nation seemed to him to be under a judicial infatuation, blind to dangers which his sagacity perceived to be real, near, and formidable, and morbidly ap

prehensive of dangers which his conscience told him were no dangers at all. The perverse islanders were willing to trust every thing that was most precious to them, their independence, their property, their laws, their religion, to the moderation and good faith of France, to the winds and the waves, to the steadiness and expertness of battalions of ploughmen commanded by squires; and yet they were afraid to trust him with the means of protecting them, lest he should use those means for the destruction of the liberies which he had saved from extreme peril, which he had enced with new securities, which he had defended with he hazard of his life, and which from the day of his accesion he had never once violated. He was attached, and ot without reason, to the Blue Dutch Foot-guards. That brigade had served under him for many years, and had been eminently distinguished by courage, discipline, and fidelity. In December, 1688, that brigade had been the first in his army to enter the English capital, and had been intrusted with the important duty of occupying Whitehall and guarding the person of James. Eighteen months later, that brigade had been the first to plunge into the waters of the Boyne. Nor had the conduct of these veteran soldiers been less exemplary in their quarters than in the field. The vote which required the king to discard them merely because they were what he himself was, seemed to him a personal affront. All these vexations and scandals he imagined that his ministers might have averted if they had been more solicitous for his honor and for the success of his great schemes of policy, and less solicitous about their own popularity. They, on the other hand, continued to assure him, and, as far as can now be judged, to assure him with perfect truth, that it was altogether out of their power to effect what he wished. Something they might perhaps be able to do. Many members of the House of Commons had said in private that seven thousand men was too small a number. If his majesty would let it be understood that he should consider those who should vote for ten thousand as having done him good service, there might be hopes. But there could be no hope if gentlemen found that by voting for ten thousand they should please nobody; that they should be held up to the counties and towns which they represented as turncoats and slaves for going so far to meet his wishes, and that they should be at the