, very unwillingly,
that there was, at that moment, no choice but between William and public
ruin. They therefore, without altogether relinquishing the hope that he
who was King by right might at some future time be disposed to listen to
reason, and without feeling any thing like loyalty towards him who was
King in possession, discontentedly endured the new government.

It may be doubted whether that government was not, during the first
months of its existence, in more danger from the affection of the Whigs
than from the disaffection of the Tories. Enmity can hardly be more
annoying than querulous, jealous, exacting fondness; and such was the
fondness which the Whigs felt for the Sovereign of their choice. They
were loud in his praise. They were ready to support him with purse and
sword against foreign and domestic foes. But their attachment to him was
of a peculiar kind. Loyalty such as had animated the gallant gentlemen
who fought for Charles the First, loyalty such as had rescued Charles
the Second from the fearful dangers and difficulties caused by twenty
years of maladministration, was not a sentiment to which the doctrines
of Milton and Sidney were favourable; nor was it a sentiment which a
prince, just raised to power by a rebellion, could hope to inspire. The
Whig theory of government is that kings exist for the people, and not
the people for the kings; that the right of a king is divine in no
other sense than that in which the right of a member of parliament, of
a judge, of a juryman, of a mayor, of a headborough, is divine; that,
while the chief magistrate governs according to law, he ought to be
obeyed and reverenced; that, when he violates the law, he ought to be
withstood; and that, when he violates the law grossly, systematically
and pertinaciously, he ought to be deposed. On the truth of these
principles depended the justice of William's title to the throne. It is
obvious that the relation between subjects who held these principles,
and a ruler whose accession had been the triumph of these principles,
must have been altogether different from the relation which had
subsisted between the Stuarts and the Cavaliers. The Whigs loved William
indeed: but they loved him not as a King, but as a party leader; and it
was not difficult to foresee that their enthusiasm would cool fast if he
should refuse to be the mere leader of their party, and should attempt
to be King of the whole nation. What they expected from him