forget what they called me
over for as that they had called me over. The security of their
religion, the maintenance of their liberty, were no longer their care.
All was to yield to the incomprehensible doctrine of right divine and
passive obedience. Thus the Tories grew Jacobites, after having
renounced both that doctrine and King James, by their opposition to him,
by their invitation of me, and by every Act of the Parliament which gave
me the Crown. But the most troublesome of my enemies were a set of
Republicans, who violently opposed all my measures, and joined with the
Jacobites in disturbing my government, only because it was not a
commonwealth.
_De Witt_.--They who were Republicans under your government in the
Kingdom of England did not love liberty, but aspired to dominion, and
wished to throw the nation into a total confusion, that it might give
them a chance of working out from that anarchy a better state for
themselves.
_William_.--Your observation is just. A proud man thinks himself a lover
of liberty when he is only impatient of a power in government above his
own, and were he a king, or the first Minister of a king, would be a
tyrant. Nevertheless I will own to you, with the candour which becomes a
virtuous prince, that there were in England some Whigs, and even some of
the most sober and moderate Tories, who, with very honest intentions, and
sometimes with good judgments, proposed new securities to the liberty of
the nation, against the prerogative or influence of the Crown and the
corruption of Ministers in future times. To some of these I gave way,
being convinced they were right, but others I resisted for fear of
weakening too much the royal authority, and breaking that balance in
which consists the perfection of a mixed form of government. I should
not, perhaps, have resisted so many if I had not seen in the House of
Commons a disposition to rise in their demands on the Crown had they
found it more yielding. The difficulties of my government, upon the
whole, were so great that I once had determined, from mere disgust and
resentment, to give back to the nation, assembled in Parliament, the
crown they had placed on my head, and retire to Holland, where I found
more affection and gratitude in the people. But I was stopped by the
earnest supplications of my friends and by an unwillingness to undo the
great work I had done, especially as I knew that, if England should
return into the hands of
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