racter which no obstacle could daunt, no
conflict weary; he pursued his designs with an ardor as exhaustless as
his patience, whether through the slowest and most tortuous ways, or the
most abrupt and daring. He excelled equally in winning men, and in
ruling them by personal and familiar intercourse; he displayed equal
ability in leading an army or a party. He had the instinct of popularity
and the gift of authority, and he let loose factions with as much
audacity as he subdued them. But born in the midst of a revolution, and
raised to sovereign power by a succession of violent shocks, his genius
was, from first to last, essentially revolutionary; and though he was
taught by experience the necessity of order and government, he was
incapable of either respecting or practicing the moral and permanent
laws on which alone government can rest. Whether it was the fault of his
nature, or the vice of his position, he wanted regularity and calmness
in the exercise of power; had instant recourse to extreme measures, like
a man constantly in dread of mortal dangers, and, by the violence of his
remedies, perpetuated or even aggravated the evils which he sought to
cure. The establishment of a government is a work which requires a more
regular course, and one more conformable to the eternal laws of moral
order. Cromwell was able to subjugate the revolution he had so largely
contributed to make, but he did not succeed in establishing any thing in
the place of what he had destroyed.

Though less powerful than Cromwell by nature, William III., and
Washington succeeded in the undertaking in which he failed; they fixed
the destiny and founded the government of their country. Even in the
midst of a revolution they never accepted nor practiced a revolutionary
policy; they never placed themselves in that fatal situation in which a
man first uses anarchical violence as a stepping-stone to power, and
then despotic violence as a necessity entailed upon him by its
possession. They were naturally placed, or they placed themselves, in
the regular ways and under the permanent conditions of government.
William was an ambitious prince. It is puerile to believe that, up to
the moment of the appeal sent to him from London in 1688, he had been
insensible to the desire of ascending the throne of England, or ignorant
of the schemes long going on to raise him to it. William followed the
progress of these schemes step by step; he accepted no share in the
me