with which he could dispense whenever he thought fit.

The situation of William was very different. He could not, like those
who had ruled before him, pass an Act in the spring and violate it
in the summer. He had, by assenting to the Bill of Rights, solemnly
renounced the dispensing power; and he was restrained, by prudence as
well as by conscience and honour, from breaking the compact under which
he held his crown. A law might be personally offensive to him; it might
appear to him to be pernicious to his people; but, as soon as he had
passed it, it was, in his eyes, a sacred thing. He had therefore a
motive, which preceding Kings had not, for pausing before he passed such
a law. They gave their word readily, because they had no scruple about
breaking it. He gave his word slowly, because he never failed to keep
it.

But his situation, though it differed widely from that of the princes of
the House of Stuart, was not precisely that of the princes of the House
of Brunswick. A prince of the House of Brunswick is guided, as to the
use of every royal prerogative, by the advice of a responsible ministry;
and this ministry must be taken from the party which predominates in the
two Houses, or, at least, in the Lower House. It is hardly possible to
conceive circumstances in which a Sovereign so situated can refuse
to assent to a bill which has been approved by both branches of the
legislature. Such a refusal would necessarily imply one of two things,
that the Sovereign acted in opposition to the advice of the ministry, or
that the ministry was at issue, on a question of vital importance, with
a majority both of the Commons and of the Lords. On either supposition
the country would be in a most critical state, in a state which, if
long continued, must end in a revolution. But in the earlier part of
the reign of William there was no ministry. The heads of the executive
departments had not been appointed exclusively from either party.
Some were zealous Whigs, others zealous Tories. The most enlightened
statesmen did not hold it to be unconstitutional that the King should
exercise his highest prerogatives on the most important occasions
without any other guidance than that of his own judgment. His refusal,
therefore, to assent to a bill which had passed both Houses indicated,
not, as a similar refusal would now indicate, that the whole machinery
of government was in a state of fearful disorder, but merely that there
was a differe