e foreigners. Were our countrymen naturally
inferior to men of other races in any of the qualities which, under
proper training, make excellent soldiers? That assuredly was not the
opinion of the Prince who had, at the head of Ormond's Life Guards,
driven the French household troops, till, then invincible, back over
the ruins of Neerwinden, and whose eagle eye and applauding voice had
followed Cutts's grenadiers up the glacis of Namur. Bitter spirited
malecontents muttered that, since there was no honourable service which
could not be as well performed by the natives of the realm as by alien
mercenaries, it might well be suspected that the King wanted his alien
mercenaries for some service not honourable. If it were necessary to
repel a French invasion or to put down an Irish insurrection, the Blues
and the Buffs would stand by him to the death. But, if his object were
to govern in defiance of the votes of his Parliament and of the cry
of his people, he might well apprehend that English swords and muskets
would, at the crisis, fail him, as they had failed his father in law,
and might well wish to surround himself with men who were not of our
blood, who had no reverence for our laws, and no sympathy with our
feelings. Such imputations could find credit with no body superior in
intelligence to those clownish squires who with difficulty managed to
spell out Dyer's Letter over their ale. Men of sense and temper admitted
that William had never shown any disposition to violate the solemn
compact which he had made with the nation, and that, even if he were
depraved enough to think of destroying the constitution by military
violence, he was not imbecile enough to imagine that the Dutch brigade,
or five such brigades, would suffice for his purpose. But such men,
while they fully acquitted him of the design attributed to him by
factious malignity, could not acquit him of a partiality which it was
natural that he should feel, but which it would have been wise in him
to hide, and with which it was impossible that his subjects should
sympathise. He ought to have known that nothing is more offensive to
free and proud nations than the sight of foreign uniforms and standards.
Though not much conversant with books, he must have been acquainted with
the chief events in the history of his own illustrious House; and he
could hardly have been ignorant that his great grandfather had commenced
a long and glorious struggle against despotism by e