Dr. Bidloo for his care and tenderness, saying, I know that you and the other learned physicians have done all that your art can do for my relief; but, finding all means ineffectual, I submit." He received spiritual consolation from archbishop Tennison, and Burnet, bishop of Salisbury: on Sunday morning the sacrament was administered to him. The lords of the privy-council, and divers noblemen, attended in the adjoining apartments, and to some of them who were admitted he spoke a little. He thanked lord Auverquerque for his long and faithful services; he delivered to lord Albemarle the keys of his closet and scrutoire, telling him he knew what to do with them. He enquired for the earl of Portland; but, being speechless before that nobleman arrived, he grasped his hand, and laid it to his heart, with marks of the most tender affection. On the eighth day of March he expired, in the fifty-second year of his age, after having reigned thirteen years. The lords Lexington and Scarborough, who were in waiting, no sooner perceived that the king was dead, than they ordered Ronjat to untie from his left arm a black ribbon, to which was affixed a ring, containing some hair of the late queen Mary. The body being opened and embalmed, lay in state for some time at Kensington; and on the twelfth day of April was deposited in a vault of Henry's chapel in Westminster-Abbey. In the beginning of May, a will which he had intrusted with Monsieur Schuylemberg was opened at the Hague. In this he had declared his cousin prince Frison of Nassau, stadtholder of Friesland, his sole and universal heir, and appointed the states-general his executors. By a codicil annexed, he had bequeathed the lordship of Breevert, and a legacy of two hundred thousand guilders, to the earl of Albemarle.

William III. was in his person of the middle stature, a thin body, a delicate constitution, subject to an asthma and continual cough from his infancy. He had an aquiline nose, sparkling eyes, a large forehead, and a grave solemn aspect. He was very sparing of speech: his conversation was dry, and his manner disgusting, except in battle,

when his deportment was free, spirited, and animating. In courage, fortitude, and equanimity, he rivalled the most eminent warriors of antiquity; and his natural sagacity made amends for the defects in his education, which had not been properly superintended. He was religious, temperate, generally just and sincere, a stranger to violent transports of passion, and might have passed for one of the best princes of the age in which he lived, had he never ascended the throne of Great-Britain. But the distinguishing criterion of his character was ambition. To this he sacrificed the punctilios of honour and decorum, in deposing his own father-in-law and uncle; and this he gratified at the expense of the nation that raised him to sovereign authority. He aspired to the honour of acting as umpire in all the contests of Europe; and the second object of his attention was, the prosperity of that country to which he owed his birth and extraction. Whether he really thought the interests of the continent and Great Britain were inseparable, or sought only to drag England into the confederacy as a convenient ally, certain it is, he involved these kingdoms in foreign connexions, which, in all probability, will be productive of their ruin. In order to establish this favourite point, he scrupled not to employ all the engines of corruption, by which the morals of the nation were totally debauched. He procured a parliamentary sanction for a standing army, which now seems to be interwoven in the constitution. He introduced the pernicious practice of borrowing upon remote funds; an expedient 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.10 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.

го

THE FIRST VOLUME.

Note A, p. 4.

THE council consisted of the prince of Denmark, the

THE archbishop of Canterbury, the duke of Norfolk, the

marquisses 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. Boscawen.

Note B, p. 6.

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 asceud 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, VOL. I.

NN

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 king, lords, and commons; but when there is no longer a king, the parliament is defective, and the constitution impaired: the members of the lower house are the representatives of the people, expressly chosen to maintain the constitution in church and state, and sworn to support the rights of the crown, as well as the liberties of the nation; but though they are elected to maintain, they have no power to alter the constitution. When the king forfeits the allegiance of his subjects, and it becomes necessary to dethrone him, the power of so doing cannot possibly reside in the representatives who are chosen, under certain limitations, for the purposes of a legislature which no longer exists; their power is of course at an end, and they are reduced to a level with other individuals that constitute the community. The right of altering the constitution, therefore, or of deviating from the established practice of inheritance in regard to the succession of the crown, is inherent in the body of the people, and every individual has an equal right to his share in the general determination, whether his opinion be signified vivá voce, or by a representative whom he appoints and instructs for that purpose. It may be suggested, that the prince of Orange was raised to the throne without any convulsion, or any such difficulties and inconveniencies as we have affirmed to be the necessary consequences of a measure of that nature. To this remark we answer, that since the revolution, these kingdoms have been divided and harassed by violent and :mplacable factions that eagerly seek the destruction of each other: that they have been exposed to plots, conspiracies, insurrections, civil wars, and successive rebellions, which have not been defeated and quelled without