own power, of the liberty of my country, and of its
maritime greatness; for I made it my care to keep up a very powerful
navy, well commanded and officered, for the defence of all these against
the English; but, as I feared nothing from France, or any Power on the
Continent, I neglected the army, or rather I destroyed it, by enervating
all its strength, by disbanding old troops and veteran officers attached
to the House of Orange, and putting in their place a trading militia,
commanded by officers who had neither experience nor courage, and who
owed their promotions to no other merit but their relation to or interest
with some leading men in the several oligarchies of which the Government
in all the Dutch towns is composed. Nevertheless, on the invasion of
Flanders by the French, I was forced to depart from my close connection
with France, and to concur with England and Sweden in the Triple
Alliance, which Sir William Temple proposed, in order to check her
ambition; but as I entered into that measure from necessity, not from
choice, I did not pursue it. I neglected to improve our union with
England, or to secure that with Sweden; I avoided any conjunction of
counsels with Spain; I formed no alliance with the Emperor or the
Germans; I corrupted our army more and more; till a sudden, unnatural
confederacy, struck up, against all the maxims of policy, by the Court of
England with France, for the conquest of the Seven Provinces, brought
these at once to the very brink of destruction, and made me a victim to
the fury of a populace too justly provoked.

_William_.--I must say that your plan was in reality nothing more than to
procure for the Dutch a licence to trade under the good pleasure and
gracious protection of France. But any State that so entirely depends on
another is only a province, and its liberty is a servitude graced with a
sweet but empty name. You should have reflected that to a monarch so
ambitious and so vain as Louis le Grand the idea of a conquest which
seemed almost certain, and the desire of humbling a haughty Republic,
were temptations irresistible. His bigotry likewise would concur in
recommending to him an enterprise which he might think would put heresy
under his feet. And if you knew either the character of Charles II. or
the principles of his government, you ought not to have supposed his
union with France for the ruin of Holland an impossible or even
improbable event. It is hardly excusable