hich now perplex us; but he was not destined for
ordinary times; and though his capacity was vast and his spirit lofty,
he had not that passionate and creative genius required by an age of
revolution. The French outbreak was his evil daemon: he had not the
means of calculating its effects upon Europe. He had but a meagre
knowledge himself of continental politics: he was assisted by a very
inefficient diplomacy. His mind was lost in a convulsion of which he
neither could comprehend the causes nor calculate the consequences; and
forced to act, he acted not only violently, but in exact opposition to
the very system he was called into political existence to combat; he
appealed to the fears, the prejudices, and the passions of a privileged
class, revived the old policy of the oligarchy he had extinguished, and
plunged into all the ruinous excesses of French war and Dutch finance.

If it be a salutary principle in the investigation of historical
transactions to be careful in discriminating the cause from the
pretext, there is scarcely any instance in which the application of this
principle is more fertile in results, than in that of the Dutch invasion
of 1688. The real cause of this invasion was financial. The Prince of
Orange had found that the resources of Holland, however considerable,
were inadequate to sustain him in his internecine rivalry with the great
sovereign of France. In an authentic conversation which has descended to
us, held by William at the Hague with one of the prime abettors of the
invasion, the prince did not disguise his motives; he said, "nothing but
such a constitution as you have in England can have the credit that is
necessary to raise such sums as a great war requires." The prince came,
and used our constitution for his purpose: he introduced into England
the system of Dutch finance. The principle of that system was to
mortgage industry in order to protect property: abstractedly, nothing
can be conceived more unjust; its practice in England has been equally
injurious. In Holland, with a small population engaged in the same
pursuits, in fact a nation of bankers, the system was adapted to the
circumstances which had created it. All shared in the present spoil, and
therefore could endure the future burthen. And so to this day Holland
is sustained, almost solely sustained, by the vast capital thus created
which still lingers amongst its dykes. But applied to a country in
which the circumstances were enti