quainted
with submission, he was yet able to direct them to his purposes, and,
partly from the ascendant of his vehement character, partly from art
and dissimulation, to establish an unlimited authority. Though not
insensible to generosity, he was hardened against compassion; and he
seemed equally ostentatious and equally ambitious of show and parade in
his clemency and in his severity. The maxims of his administration were
austere, but might have been useful, had they been solely employed to
preserve order in an established government:[*] they were ill calculated
for softening the rigors which, under the most gentle management, are
inseparable from conquest.

[* M. West. p. 230. Anglia Sacra, vol. i. p. 258.]

His attempt against England was the last great enterprise of the kind,
which, during the course of seven hundred years, has fully succeeded
in Europe, and the force of his genius broke through those limits which
first the feudal institutions, chen the refined policy of princes, have
fixed to the several states of Christendom. Though he rendered himself
infinitely odious to his English subjects, he transmitted his power
to his posterity, and the throne is still filled by his descendants; a
proof that the foundations which he laid were firm and solid, and that,
amidst all his violence, while he seemed only to gratify the present
passion, he had still an eye towards futurity.

Some writers have been desirous of refusing to this prince the title of
conqueror, in the sense which that term commonly bears; and on pretence
that the word is sometimes in old books applied to such as make an
acquisition of territory by any means, they are willing to reject
William's title, by right of war, to the crown of England. It is
needless to enter, into a controversy, which, by the terms of it, must
necessarily degenerate into a dispute of words. It suffices to say, that
the duke of Normandy's first invasion of the island was hostile; that
his subsequent administration was entirely supported by arms; that in
the very frame of his laws he made a distinction between the Normans and
English, to the advantage of the former;[*] that he acted in every thing
as absolute master over the natives, whose interests and affections he
totally disregarded; and that if there was an interval when he assumed
the appearance of a legal sovereign, the period was very short, and was
nothing but a temporary Sacrifice, which he, as has been the case