r of the island. But in truth, when the voyage had ended,
the difficulties of his enterprise would have been only beginning. Two
years before he had received a lesson by which he should have profited.
He had then deceived himself and others into the belief that the English
were regretting him, were pining for him, were eager to rise in arms
by tens of thousands to welcome him. William was then, as now, at a
distance. Then, as now, the administration was entrusted to a woman.
Then, as now, there were few regular troops in England. Torrington had
then done as much to injure the government which he served as Russell
could now do. The French fleet had then, after riding, during several
weeks, victorious and dominant in the Channel, landed some troops on
the southern coast. The immediate effect had been that whole counties,
without distinction of Tory or Whig, Churchman or Dissenter, had risen
up, as one man, to repel the foreigners, and that the Jacobite party,
which had, a few days before, seemed to be half the nation, had crouched
down in silent terror, and had made itself so small that it had, during
some time, been invisible. What reason was there for believing that
the multitude who had, in 1690, at the first lighting of the beacons,
snatched up firelocks, pikes, scythes, to defend, their native soil
against the French, would now welcome the French as allies? And of the
army by which James was now to be accompanied the French formed the
least odious part. More than half of that army was to consist of Irish
Papists; and the feeling, compounded of hatred and scorn, with which the
Irish Papists had long been regarded by the English Protestants, had
by recent events been stimulated to a vehemence before unknown. The
hereditary slaves, it was said, had been for a moment free; and that
moment had sufficed to prove that they knew neither how to use nor how
to defend their freedom. During their short ascendency they had done
nothing but slay, and burn, and pillage, and demolish, and attaint, and
confiscate. In three years they had committed such waste on their native
land as thirty years of English intelligence and industry would scarcely
repair. They would have maintained their independence against the world,
if they had been as ready to fight as they were to steal. But they had
retreated ignominiously from the walls of Londonderry. They had fled
like deer before the yeomanry of Enniskillen. The Prince whom they
now presumed to