ld be formally done in the
Privy Council and all its decisions signed by its members. These two
last provisions went far to complete the parliamentary Constitution
which had been drawn by the Bill of Rights.

[Sidenote: The Country and the War.]

But, firm as it was in its loyalty to the Revolution, and in its resolve
to maintain the independence of the Netherlands, the Parliament had
still no purpose of war. It assented indeed to the alliance with Holland
in the belief that the pressure of the two powers would bring Lewis to a
peaceful settlement of the question. Its aim was still to avoid a
standing army and to reduce taxation; and its bitterness against the
Partition Treaties sprang from a belief that William had entailed on
England by their means a contest which must bring back again the army
and the debt. The king was bitterly blamed, while the late ministers,
Somers, Russell, and Montague (now become peers), were impeached for
their share in the treaties; and the Commons prayed the king to exclude
the three from his counsels for ever. But a counter-prayer from the
Lords gave the first sign of a reaction of opinion. Outside the House of
Commons indeed the tide of national feeling rose as the designs of Lewis
grew clearer. He refused to allow the Dutch barrier to be
re-established; and a great French fleet gathered in the Channel to
support, it was believed, a fresh Jacobite descent which was proposed by
the ministers of James in a letter intercepted and laid before
Parliament. Even the House of Commons took fire at this, and the fleet
was raised to thirty thousand men, the army to ten thousand. But the
country moved faster than the Parliament. Kent sent up a remonstrance
against the factious measures by which the Tories still struggled
against the king's policy, with a prayer "that addresses might be turned
into Bills of Supply"; and William was encouraged by these signs of a
change of temper to despatch an English force to Holland, and to
conclude a secret treaty with the United Provinces for the recovery of
the Netherlands from Lewis and for their transfer with the Milanese to
the house of Austria as a means of counterbalancing the new power added
to France.

[Sidenote: The Grand Alliance.]

England however still clung desperately to a hope of peace; and even in
the Treaty with the Emperor, which followed on the French refusal to
negotiate on a basis of compensation, William was far from disputing the
right