Afterwards they proceed in this manner:—­

“And to show to your Majesty and all Christendom that the Commons of England will not be amused or diverted from their firm resolutions of obtaining by WAR a safe and honorable peace, we do, in the name of all those we represent, renew our assurances to your Majesty that this House will support your Majesty and your government against all your enemies, both at home and abroad, and that they will effectually assist you in the prosecution and carrying on the present war against France.”

The amusement and diversion they speak of was the suggestion of a treaty proposed by the enemy, and announced from the throne.  Thus the people of England felt in the eighth, not in the fourth year of the war.  No sighing or panting after negotiation; no motions from the opposition to force the ministry into a peace; no messages from ministers to palsy and deaden the resolution of Parliament or the spirit of the nation.  They did not so much as advise the king to listen to the propositions of the enemy, nor to seek for peace, but through the mediation of a vigorous war.  This address was moved in an hot, a divided, a factious, and, in a great part, disaffected House of Commons; and it was carried, nemine contradicente.

While that first war (which was ill smothered by the Treaty of Ryswick) slept in the thin ashes of a seeming peace, a new conflagration was in its immediate causes.  A fresh and a far greater war was in preparation.  A year had hardly elapsed, when arrangements were made for renewing the contest with tenfold fury.  The steps which were taken, at that time, to compose, to reconcile, to unite, and to discipline all Europe against the growth of France, certainly furnish to a statesman the finest and most interesting part in the history of that great period.  It formed the masterpiece of King William’s policy, dexterity, and perseverance.  Full of the idea of preserving not only a local civil liberty united with order to our country, but to embody it in the political liberty, the order, and the independence of nations united under a natural head, the king called upon his Parliament to put itself into a posture “to preserve to England the weight and influence it at present had on the councils and affairs ABROAD.  It will be requisite Europe Should see you will not be wanting to yourselves.”

Baffled as that monarch was, and almost heartbroken at the disappointment he met with in the mode he first proposed for that great end, he held on his course.  He was faithful to his object; and in councils, as in arms, over and over again repulsed, over and over again he returned to the charge.  All the mortifications he had suffered from the last Parliament, and the greater he had to apprehend from that newly chosen, were not capable of relaxing the vigor of his mind.  He was in Holland when he combined the vast plan of his foreign negotiations.  When he came to open