But the clamor of the people reached her councils. It was said our plans were betrayed to the enemy; treachery was justifiably suspected; and all who were familiar with the period will join the writer in thinking it not only possible, but probable. During these trials the spirit of William remained unchanged; and, rejecting all overtures from France, he exhibited to the world the soldiership for which he was remarkable. At Namur he fought in the trenches, ate his dinner with the soldiers, animated them with his presence, shared their dangers, and won their hearts. Namur capitulated, and the scene changed. The French power was shaken in Catalonia; its coasts were assailed; its people were suffering, and Louis, whose great general was dead, was sufficiently humbled to renew his proposals for peace, which, after nine years’ war, costing Europe 480 millions of money and 800,000 men, was gained by the pacification of Ryswick. A deep thinker of the present day has said of the war anterior to 1688,—and the argument is supported by that school of which Cobbett was chief,—“The cost happily fell upon those who lived about the time,—it was not transmitted to posterity, according to the clever contrivance devised in a more enlightened and civilized age. They spent their own money, and not that of their grandchildren. They did as they liked with their own labor and its results; they did not mortgage the labor of succeeding generations.” Men do not argue thus, ordinarily. The case is very similar to that of a land-proprietor mortgaging his estate to defend it from a suit which endangers it. His posterity may regret, but they cannot complain; they know it is better to have the estate partially mortgaged than not to have an estate at all. It seems, to the writer, similar with the national debts of the reign of William. He was bound to defend the people who had chosen him; war was then, as now, a popular pastime; and William is no more to be blamed that he was not in advance of the time, than the nobles of the present day are to blame because they bring up their younger sons to be shot at for glory and a few shillings a day, instead of seeing, as their successors will probably see, the anti-progressive and anti-Christian nature of the principle thus supported. The one great evil was, that the difficulty of getting money tempted William to borrow on irredeemable annuities. Had he borrowed only on annuities terminable in a century, he would have attained his money at a little extra cost, but the pressure on the people would have decreased year by year, the credit of the government have increased, and the discontent of the nation been less.