blind to dangers which
his sagacity perceived to be real, near and formidable, and morbidly
apprehensive 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 liberties which he had saved from extreme peril,
which he had fenced with new securities, which he had defended with the
hazard of his life, and which from the day of his accession he had never
once violated. He was attached, and not 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 entrusted 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 honour 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 slave
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