on cause of all reformed Churches. He set before
the two heads of the House of Austria the danger with which they were
threatened by French ambition, and the necessity of rescuing England
from vassalage and of uniting her to the European confederacy. [453] He
disclaimed, and with truth, all bigotry. The real enemy, he said, of
the British Roman Catholics was that shortsighted and headstrong monarch
who, when he might easily have obtained for them a legal toleration, had
trampled on law, liberty, property, in order to raise them to an odious
and precarious ascendency. If the misgovernment of James were suffered
to continue, it must produce, at no remote time, a popular outbreak,
which might be followed by a barbarous persecution of the Papists. The
Prince declared that to avert the horrors of such a persecution was one
of his chief objects. If he succeeded in his design, he would use the
power which he must then possess, as head of the Protestant interest, to
protect the members of the Church of Rome. Perhaps the passions excited
by the tyranny of James might make it impossible to efface the penal
laws from the statute book but those laws should be mitigated by a
lenient administration. No class would really gain more by the proposed
expedition than those peaceable and unambitious Roman Catholics who
merely wished to follow their callings and to worship their Maker
without molestation. The only losers would be the Tyrconnels, the
Dovers, the Albevilles, and the other political adventurers who, in
return for flattery and evil counsel, had obtained from their credulous
master governments, regiments, and embassies.

While William exerted himself to enlist on his side the sympathies both
of Protestants and of Roman Catholics, he exerted himself with not less
vigour and prudence to provide the military means which his undertaking
required. He could not make a descent on England without the sanction
of the United Provinces. If he asked for that sanction before his design
was ripe for execution, his intentions might possibly be thwarted by
the faction hostile to his house, and would certainly be divulged to the
whole world. He therefore determined to make his preparations with all
speed, and, when they were complete, to seize some favourable moment for
requesting the consent of the federation. It was observed by the agents
of France that he was more busy than they had ever known him. Not a day
passed on which he was not seen spu