coats and red
coats," said a vehement Whig in the House of Commons, "are the curses
of the nation." [7] But the discontent was not confined to the black coats
and the red coats. The enthusiasm with which men of all classes had
welcomed William to London at Christmas had greatly abated before the
close of February. The new king had, at the very moment at which
his fame and fortune reached the highest point, predicted the coming
reaction. That reaction might, indeed, have been predicted by a less
sagacious observer of human affairs. For it is to be chiefly ascribed
to a law as certain as the laws which regulate the succession of the
seasons and the course of the trade winds. It is the nature of man to
overrate present evil, and to underrate present good; to long for what
he has not, and to be dissatisfied with what he has. This propensity, as
it appears in individuals, has often been noticed both by laughing
and by weeping philosophers. It was a favourite theme of Horace and
of Pascal, of Voltaire and of Johnson. To its influence on the fate
of great communities may be ascribed most of the revolutions and
counterrevolutions recorded in history. A hundred generations have
elapsed since the first great national emancipation, of which an account
has come down to us. We read in the most ancient of books that a
people bowed to the dust under a cruel yoke, scourged to toil by hard
taskmasters, not supplied with straw, yet compelled to furnish the daily
tale of bricks, became sick of life, and raised such a cry of misery as
pierced the heavens. The slaves were wonderfully set free: at the moment
of their liberation they raised a song of gratitude and triumph: but, in
a few hours, they began to regret their slavery, and to murmur against
the leader who had decoyed them away from the savoury fare of the house
of bondage to the dreary waste which still separated them from the land
flowing with milk and honey. Since that time the history of every great
deliverer has been the history of Moses retold. Down to the present
hour rejoicings like those on the shore of the Red Sea have ever been
speedily followed by murmurings like those at the Waters of Strife. [8]
The most just and salutary revolution must produce much suffering. The
most just and salutary revolution cannot produce all the good that had
been expected from it by men of uninstructed minds and sanguine tempers.
Even the wisest cannot, while it is still recent, weigh quite fai