institutions might spring. We firmly believe that, if his first
Parliament had not commenced its debates by disputing his title,
his government would have been as mild at home as it was
energetic and able abroad. He was a soldier; he had risen by war.
Had his ambition been of an impure or selfish kind, it would have
been easy for him to plunge his country into continental
hostilities on a large scale, and to dazzle the restless factions
which he ruled, by the splendour of his victories. Some of his
enemies have sneeringly remarked, that in the successes obtained
under his administration he had no personal share; as if a man
who had raised himself from obscurity to empire solely by his
military talents could have any unworthy reason for shrinking
from military enterprise. This reproach is his highest glory. In
the success of the English navy he could have no selfish
interest. Its triumphs added nothing to his fame; its increase
added nothing to his means of overawing his enemies; its great
leader was not his friend. Yet he took a peculiar pleasure in
encouraging that noble service which, of all the instruments
employed by an English government, is the most impotent for
mischief, and the most powerful for good. His administration was
glorious, but with no vulgar glory. It was not one of those
periods of overstrained and convulsive exertion which necessarily
produce debility and languor. Its energy was natural, healthful,
temperate. He placed England at the head of the Protestant
interest, and in the first rank of Christian powers. He taught
every nation to value her friendship and to dread her enmity. But
he did not squander her resources in a vain attempt to invest her
with that supremacy which no power, in the modern system of
Europe, can safely affect, or can long retain.