be just beginning to learn their
business when they had undone the nation by their blunders. To be a
rebel and a schismatic was surely not all that ought to be required of
a man in high employment. What would become of the finances, what of
the marine, if Whigs who could not understand the plainest balance
sheet were to manage the revenue, and Whigs who had never walked over a
dockyard to fit out the fleet. [75]

The truth is that the charges which the two parties brought against each
other were, to a great extent, well founded, but that the blame which
both threw on William was unjust. Official experience was to be found
almost exclusively among the Tories, hearty attachment to the new
settlement almost exclusively among the Whigs. It was not the fault
of the King that the knowledge and the zeal, which, combined, make a
valuable servant of the state must at that time be had separately or
not at all. If he employed men of one party, there was great risk of
mistakes. If he employed men of the other party, there was great risk of
treachery. If he employed men of both parties, there was still some risk
of mistakes; there was still some risk of treachery; and to these risks
was added the certainty of dissension. He might join Whigs and Tories;
but it was beyond his power to mix them. In the same office, at the
same desk, they were still enemies, and agreed only in murmuring at the
Prince who tried to mediate between them. It was inevitable that, in
such circumstances, the administration, fiscal, military, naval, should
be feeble and unsteady; that nothing should be done in quite the
right way or at quite the right time; that the distractions from which
scarcely any public office was exempt should produce disasters, and
that every disaster should increase the distractions from which it had
sprung.

There was indeed one department of which the business was well
conducted; and that was the department of Foreign Affairs. There William
directed every thing, and, on important occasions, neither asked the
advice nor employed the agency of any English politician. One invaluable
assistant he had, Anthony Heinsius, who, a few weeks after the
Revolution had been accomplished, became Pensionary of Holland. Heinsius
had entered public life as a member of that party which was jealous of
the power of the House of Orange, and desirous to be on friendly terms
with France. But he had been sent in 1681 on a diplomatic mission to
Versailles;