of William and the extreme supporters of peace deemed it prudent for the moment to be silent. The Whigs, although still inferior in numbers to the Tories, were suffered to carry almost what measures they pleased. At their instigation an address was presented to William suggesting that an article should be added to the treaties making it an essential condition of peace that the King of France should offer reparation for the indignity he had put upon his Majesty and the nation in owning the pretended Prince of Wales. A bill was passed, not however without strong signs of disapprobation from the Tories, attainting this unfortunate youth of high treason for the crime of assuming the title of King of England. This measure, cruel in appearance, was followed by another which was in reality cruel and tyrannical. The fear which pervaded nearly the whole population of England that the House of Stuart would recover the throne, amounted in the Whigs to a morbid and unreasonable alarm. Every Tory was, in the eyes of a professed Whig, a Jacobite. The party, eager to reveal to the sovereign and the world the justice of its suspicions, devised a touchstone for ascertaining who was a good subject and who a Jacobite. The Abjuration Bill, as it was termed, was brought in, and after much bandying to and fro between the houses of legislature, was suffered to pass. Under its provisions every person holding office, down to schoolmasters and tutors in private families, was required to acknowledge William as his lawful and rightful sovereign, and to declare his conscientious belief that the person who pretended to be Prince of Wales during the lifetime of the late King James had no right or title whatever to the realm.

The injustice which this bill was calculated to inflict upon peaceable and well-meaning men of scrupulous consciences is at once apparent. For centuries the Church had been inculcating as a doctrine almost necessary to salvation a belief in the divine and indefeasible right of sovereigns. Who, then, a devout Churchman would ask, could be the lawful and rightful sovereign except the eldest son of the deceased James? William might be permitted for the national welfare to exercise the royal functions; but lawful and rightful sovereign he could not be. The right was in James and his heirs, and could not be defeated by any act of man. St. Paul had fortunately provided

an escape for Christians in such difficulties by enjoining them not to meddle with questions about dynasties, but to submit to whomsoever had the power of compelling obedience. A scrupulous believer might therefore satisfy his conscience with such arguments as these: James is, no doubt, my lawful and rightful sovereign; but William is the power whom I am enjoined by Scripture to obey. If Providence should so order it that James should recover his throne, my duty will revert to him; yet so long as he is powerless my duty is to William, and I must not, consistently with my duty, render to my lawful and rightful sovereign any assistance to regain his dominions. A person who should reason in this manner, and there can be little doubt that some such reasoning stayed and comforted the consciences of thousands at this period, could not be regarded as a dangerous subject. To force such a person therefore to the alternative of violating his convictions of right or of abandoning his means of living was nothing but needless tyranny. The bill affords a melancholy instance of the mischief which arises when men holding strong opinions upon metaphysical questions attain to power. The same spirit which induced the Whigs to dictate on mere matters of conscience to the Tories, actuated Ferdinand II. and Louis XIV. in those atrocious edicts which they issued to their subjects on the score of religion.

To William, a foreigner totally ignorant of the composition of the English mind, the Abjuration Bill naturally presented none of those features of tyranny and injustice which it presents to the critic of the nineteenth century. He saw in it only another security added to the securities already in existence that no friend and dependant of Louis should succeed to the English throne. His last political act was to delegate his authority to a commission which gave the bill his royal assent.

The death of William occurred at a critical period. The system of aggression which Louis had pursued during forty years had at length provoked its just retribution. All the great Powers were united in a crusade against France. A war was about to commence, the most general which Europe had yet seen. England, Holland, and the Empire were leagued against France and Spain, and it seemed barely possible for the minor Powers to escape being drawn into the contest. I pur

pose to close this chapter with a brief review of the resources of the combatants.

The standing army of France in 1660 probably amounted to about ninety thousand men. This force, even then sufficient to overawe every surrounding nation, had been increased until, during the wars towards the close of the century, it was estimated to be not far short of four hundred thousand. In point of courage and discipline the French troops were regarded as having no equals. Even their accoutrements moved the envy of Spaniards and Germans. The fleet was on a scale which may excite astonishment even at the present day. In 1690 the King possessed no less than a hundred and ten ships of war, each carrying from sixty to a hundred and four guns. A hundred thousand sailors manned this formidable navy. That the nation, with such burdens upon its resources, could be rich and thriving was of course impossible; and those resources, such as they were, had been grievously impaired by the bigotry of Louis and the incapacity of his financial counsellors. Both the manufactures and the commerce of France had been all but extinguished by the cruel and absurd persecutions of the Protestants. The King's revenue, derived principally from taxes on land, amounted at the beginning of his actual reign to eighty-four millions of livres. At the close of the century it had increased to a hundred and nineteen millions; but between 1702 and 1712, a period of frightful distress, it declined to about a hundred millions. Before 1700, however, a debt had rolled up which absorbed fifty millions annually for interest, so that the revenue applicable to war, government, and the King's personal extravagancies did not exceed fifty millions. This amount was insufficient to cover expenditure in periods of profound peace. In every war which the King had undertaken he had been compelled to borrow money, and the manner adopted towards the royal creditors was not calculated to inspire the confidence of capitalists. So low had the King's credit fallen indeed that it was obvious that in future his only alternative would lie between promising usurious rates of interest for money or taking money by force.*

I have extracted these details about finance with much difficulty from Forbonnais. They must not be regarded as more than an approximation to the

It was evident that in the war about to commence Louis would have to protect not only his own frontiers, but also all the scattered dominions of Spain. From his grandson it was hopeless to expect assistance. The splendid Spanish navy had rotted away almost to the last ship. The Spanish troops dis persed about the empire would have been shamed, in point of discipline and equipment, by the brigands of some countries. The royal treasury was empty, and the unparalleled destitution prevailing all over Spain might be regarded as an augury that it could not speedily be replenished. Philip, in fact, looked to his grandfather to supply him with efficient statesmen, ships, soldiers, arms, ammunition, and money.

England presented a remarkable contrast to the great military power of France. The entire number of professional soldiers which the jealousy of the Parliament permitted William to retain after the peace of Ryswick was only seven thousand in England and twelve thousand in Ireland. But the pride and glory of the country lay in its incomparable fleet. It numbered no less than a hundred and seventy-four ships of war, each carrying from twenty-four to a hundred and ten guns, in addition to innumerable fire-ships and gunboats, or yachts, as these were then termed. The size and gorgeous decorations of the interiors of our first-rates were subjects upon which it was the delight of every Englishman to expatiate. Beside the ships of other nations these vessels appeared, in his admiring eyes, as floating palaces. The public revenue at the close of the century did not exceed two millions four hundred thousand pounds, a sum not half that which was annually raised by the King of France. Yet the large debt due from the French crown and the high rate of interest payable for that debt probably produced something near equality between the revenues of England and France applicable for state purposes. The debt of England amounted to six millions seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds, nearly the whole of which had been incurred during the reign of William, and the deduction from the state revenues on account of this debt was four hundred

truth. The financial condition of France presents at this period a perfect labyrinth of confusion. During the war, the King's expenditure averaged about two hundred millions of livres annually.

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The resources of Holland resembled in some respects the resources of England. Her native army was small, but her fleet was fine, admirably manned and directed, and her public credit was good. The power of Holland at the close of the seventeenth century was relatively much greater than it is now. The small extent of her territory, scarcely larger than Wales or a single province of France, has prevented her from keeping pace with the growth of surrounding nations. But at the period of which I write she was entitled to be regarded as a Power of the first magnitude. She had been able to repel the enormous military strength of France, and had frequently disputed with England the supremacy of the seas. A review of the internal state of the Republic fills the mind of the student with admiration. It was estimated that in 1669 its seven pros, i vinces contained two millions four hundred thousand souls, and that of this population only two hundred thousand persons, comprising the gentry, the officers of government, soldiers, Was invalids, and beggars, were not employed in the production of wealth. The riches of the state showed themselves by unmistakable signs-by streets composed of the finest houses in Europe, by public buildings erected at enormous cost, by banks and exchanges constantly filled with busy men, and by ports crowded with shipping. It was said that Holland, although not a corn-producing country, was by her commerce with Muscovy and Poland, Sicily and Barbary, the granary of the world; and that although she possessed not a vineyard, the finest wines could be bought at the Hague at cheaper rates than in Paris. The trade of the Dutch in distant countries, and especially in the East Indies, seems at this period to have equalled, if it did not even surpass, the trade of the English. Poverty was little known, and the houses of the merchant

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* Political State of England; Davenant's Discourses on the Revenues, 1698. In addition to the funded, there was a large floating, debt. The total indebtedness of the country Davenant estimated at seventeen millions and a half.