on would have
been a strange prelude to the violent restoration of another. [427]

There was yet another difficulty which has been too little noticed by
English writers, but which was never for a moment absent from William's
mind. In the expedition which he meditated he could succeed only by
appealing to the Protestant feeling of England, and by stimulating
that feeling till it became, for a time, the dominant and almost the
exclusive sentiment of the nation. This would indeed have been a
very simple course, had the end of all his politics been to effect
a revolution in our island and to reign there. But he had in view
an ulterior end which could be attained only by the help of princes
sincerely attached to the Church of Rome. He was desirous to unite the
Empire, the Catholic King, and the Holy See, with England and Holland,
in a league against the French ascendency. It was therefore necessary
that, while striking the greatest blow ever struck in defence of
Protestantism, he should yet contrive not to lose the goodwill of
governments which regarded Protestantism as a deadly heresy.

Such were the complicated difficulties of this great undertaking.
Continental statesmen saw a part of those difficulties; British
statesmen another part. One capacious and powerful mind alone took them
all in at one view, and determined to surmount them all. It was no
easy thing to subvert the English government by means of a foreign army
without galling the national pride of Englishmen. It was no easy
thing to obtain from that Batavian faction which regarded France with
partiality, and the House of Orange with aversion, a decision in favour
of an expedition which would confound all the schemes of France, and
raise the House of Orange to the height of greatness. It was no easy
thing to lead enthusiastic Protestants on a crusade against Popery
with the good wishes of almost all Popish governments and of the Pope
himself. Yet all these things William effected. All his objects, even
those which appeared most incompatible with each other, he attained
completely and at once. The whole history of ancient and of modern times
records no other such triumph of statesmanship.

The task would indeed have been too arduous even for such a statesman
as the Prince of Orange, had not his chief adversaries been at this
time smitten with an infatuation such as by many men not prone to
superstition was ascribed to the special judgment of God. Not only was
th