that necessarily hatched a
brood of usurers, brokers, contractors, and stock-jobbers, to prey upon
the vitals of their country. He entailed upon the nation a growing debt,
and a system of politics big with misery, despair, and destruction. To
sum up his character in a few words--William was a fatalist in religion,
indefatigable in war, enterprising in politics, dead to all the warm and
generous emotions of the human heart, a cold relation, an indifferent
husband, a disagreeable man, an ungracious prince, and an imperious
sovereign.

NOTES:

[Footnote 001: Note A, p. 1. The council consisted of the prince
of Denmark, the archbishop of Canterbury, the duke of Norfolk, the
marquises of Halifax and Winchester, the earls of Danby, Lindsey,
Devonshire, Dorset, Middlesex, Oxford, Shrewsbury, Bedford, Bath,
Macclesfield, and Nottingham; the viscounts Fauconberg, Mordaunt,
Newport, Lumley; the lords Wharton, Montague, Delamere, Churchill; Mr.
Bentinck, Mr. Sidney, sir Robert Howard, sir Henry Capel, Mr. Powle, Mr.
Russel, Mr. Hambden, and Mr. Boseawen.]

[Footnote 002: Note B, p. 2. This expedient was attended with an
insurmountable absurdity. If the majority of the convention could not
grant a legal sanction to the establishment they had made, they could
never invest the prince of Orange with a just right to ascend the
throne; for they could not give what they had no right to bestow; and if
he ascended the throne without a just title, he could have no right to
sanctify that assembly to which he owed his elevation. When the people
are obliged, by tyranny or other accidents, to have recourse to the
first principles of society, namely, their own preservation, in electing
a new sovereign, it will deserve consideration, whether that choice is
to be effected by the majority of a parliament which has been dissolved,
indeed by any parliament whatsoever, or by the body of the nation
assembled in communities, corporations, by tribes or centuries, to
signify their assent or dissent with respect to the person proposed
as their sovereign. This kind of election might be attended with great
inconvenience and difficulty, but these cannot possibly be avoided when
the constitution is dissolved by setting aside the lineal succession
to the throne. The constitution of England is founded on a parliament
consisting of kings, lords, and commons; but when there is no longer a
king, the parliament is defective, and the constitution impair