nd Mary were invited to occupy it. To
William the invitation was irresistible. It gave him the assistance of
the first maritime power in Europe against the imperialism of Louis XIV.
It ensured the survival of Protestantism against the encroachments of an
enemy who never slumbered. Nor did England find the new regime
unwelcome. Every widespread conviction of her people had been wantonly
outraged by the blundering stupidity of James. If a large fraction of
the English Church held aloof from the new order on technical grounds,
the commercial classes gave it their warm support; and many who doubted
in theory submitted in practice. All at least were conscious that a new
era had dawned.

For William had come over with a definite purpose in view. James had
wrought havoc with what the Civil Wars had made the essence of the
English constitution; and it had become important to define in set terms
the conditions upon which the life of kings must in the future be
regulated. The reign of William is nothing so much as the period of that
definition; and the fortunate discovery was made of the mechanisms
whereby its translation into practice might be secured. The Bill of
Rights (1689) and the Act of Settlement (1701) are the foundation-stones
of the modern constitutional system.

What, broadly, was established was the dependence of the crown upon
Parliament. Finance and the army were brought under Parliamentary
control by the simple expedient of making its annual summons essential.
The right of petition was re-affirmed; and the independence of the
judges and ministerial responsibility were secured by the same act which
forever excluded the legitimate heirs from their royal inheritance. It
is difficult not to be amazed at the almost casual fashion in which so
striking a revolution was effected. Not, indeed, that the solution
worked easily at the outset. William remained to the end a foreigner,
who could not understand the inwardness of English politics. It was the
necessities of foreign policy which drove him to admit the immense
possibilities of the party-system as also to accept his own best
safeguard in the foundation of the Bank of England. The Cabinet,
towards the close of his reign, had already become the fundamental
administrative instrument. Originally a committee of the Privy Council,
it had no party basis until the ingenious Sunderland atoned for a score
of dishonesties by insisting that the root of its efficiency would be
f