single division either in the Committee or when the mace was on
the table.

The King's indignation and vexation were extreme. He was angry
with the opposition, with the ministers, with all England. The
nation seemed to him to be under a judicial infatuation, blind to
dangers which his sagacity perceived to be real, near and
formidable, and morbidly apprehensive of dangers which his
conscience told him were no dangers at all. The perverse
islanders were willing to trust every thing that was most
precious to them, their independence, their property, their laws,
their religion, to the moderation and good faith of France, to
the winds and the waves, to the steadiness and expertness of
battalions of ploughmen commanded by squires; and yet they were
afraid to trust him with the means of protecting them lest he
should use those means for the destruction of the liberties which
he had saved from extreme peril, which he had fenced with new
securities, which he had defended with the hazard of his life,
and which from the day of his accession he had never once
violated. He was attached, and not without reason, to the Blue
Dutch Foot Guards. That brigade had served under him for many
years, and had been eminently distinguished by courage,
discipline and fidelity. In December 1688 that brigade had been
the first in his army to enter the English capital, and had been
entrusted with the important duty of occupying Whitehall and
guarding the person of James. Eighteen months later, that brigade
had been the first to plunge into the waters of the Boyne. Nor
had the conduct of these veteran soldiers been less exemplary in
their quarters than in the field. The vote which required the
King to discard them merely because they were what he himself was