of the burdens of the war,
that they might obtain commercial advantages at our expense. But the
French would conquer us; the French would enslave us; the French would
inflict on us calamities such as those which had turned the fair fields
and cities of the Palatinate into a desert. The hopgrounds of Kent would
be as the vineyards of the Neckar. The High Street of Oxford and the
close of Salisbury would be piled with ruins such as those which covered
the spots where the palaces and churches of Heidelberg and Mannheim had
once stood. The parsonage overshadowed by the old steeple, the farmhouse
peeping from among beehives and appleblossoms, the manorial hall
embosomed in elms, would be given up to a soldiery which knew not what
it was to pity old men or delicate women or sticking children. The
words, "The French are coming," like a spell, quelled at once all
murmur about taxes and abuses, about William's ungracious manners
and Portland's lucrative places, and raised a spirit as high and
unconquerable as had pervaded, a hundred years before, the ranks which
Elizabeth reviewed at Tilbury. Had the army of Humieres landed, it would
assuredly have been withstood by almost every male capable of bearing
arms. Not only the muskets and pikes but the scythes and pitchforks
would have been too few for the hundreds of thousands who, forgetting
all distinction of sect or faction, would have risen up like one man to
defend the English soil.

The immediate effect therefore of the disasters in the Channel and in
Flanders was to unite for a moment the great body of the people. The
national antipathy to the Dutch seemed to be suspended. Their gallant
conduct in the fight off Beachy Head was loudly applauded. The inaction
of Torrington was loudly condemned. London set the example of concert
and of exertion. The irritation produced by the late election at once
subsided. All distinctions of party disappeared. The Lord Mayor was
summoned to attend the Queen. She requested him to ascertain as soon
as possible what the capital would undertake to do if the enemy should
venture to make a descent. He called together the representatives of
the wards, conferred with them, and returned to Whitehall to report that
they had unanimously bound themselves to stand by the government with
life and fortune; that a hundred thousand pounds were ready to be
paid into the Exchequer; that ten thousand Londoners, well armed and
appointed, were prepared to march at