desirable that all who bore a part in the executive
administration should act cordially together, there was serious
dissension between him and his ablest councillors. For that
dissension neither he nor they can be severely blamed. They were
differently situated, and necessarily saw the same objects from
different points of view. He, as was natural, considered the
question chiefly as an European question. They, as was natural,
considered it chiefly as an English question. They had found the
antipathy to a standing army insurmountably strong even in the
late Parliament, a Parliament disposed to place large confidence
in them and in their master. In the new Parliament that
antipathy amounted almost to a mania. That liberty, law,
property, could never be secured while the Sovereign had a large
body of regular troops at his command in time of peace, and that
of all regular troops foreign troops were the most to be dreaded,
had, during the recent elections, been repeated in every town
hall and market place, and scrawled upon every dead wall. The
reductions of the preceding year, it was said, even if they had
been honestly carved into effect, would not have been sufficient;
and they had not been honestly carried into effect. On this
subject the ministers pronounced the temper of the Commons to be
such that, if any person high in office were to ask for what His
Majesty thought necessary, there would assuredly be a violent
explosion; the majority would probably be provoked into
disbanding all that remained of the army; and the kingdom would
be left without a single soldier. William, however, could not be
brought to believe that the case was so hopeless. He listened too
easily to some secret adviser, Sunderland was probably the man,
who accused Montague and Somers of cowardice and insincerity.
They had, it was whispered in the royal ear, a majority, whenever