has made it the arbiter of court factions, and the regulator of foreign connections. It is to this transference of the executive government (for the phrase is hardly too strong) from the Crown to the two houses of parliament, and especially the Commons, that we owe the proud attitude which England has maintained since the revolution, so extraordinarily dissimilar, in the eyes of Europe, to her condition, under the Stuarts. The supplies meted out with niggardly caution by former parliaments to sovereigns whom they could not trust, have flowed with redundant profuseness, when they could judge of their necessity and direct their application. Doubtless the demand has always been fixed by the ministers of the Crown, and its influence has retrieved in some degree the loss of authority; but it is still true that no small portion of the executive power, according to the established laws and customs of our government, has passed into the hands of that body, which prescribes the application of the revenue, as well as investigates at its pleasure every act of the administration.[172] _Dissatisfaction of the king._--The convention parliament continued the revenue, as it already stood, until December 1690.[173] Their successors complied so far with the king's expectation as to grant the excise duties, besides those that were hereditary, for the lives of William and Mary, and that of the survivor.[174] The customs they only continued for four years. They provided extraordinary supplies for the conduct of the war on a scale of armament, and consequently of expenditure, unparalleled in the annals of England. But the hesitation, and, as the king imagined, the distrust they had shown in settling the ordinary revenue, sunk deep into his mind, and chiefly alienated him from the whigs, who were stronger and more conspicuous than their adversaries in the two sessions of 1689. If we believe Burnet, he felt so indignantly what appeared a systematic endeavour to reduce his power below the ancient standard of the monarchy, that he was inclined to abandon the government, and leave the nation to itself. He knew well, as he told the bishop, what was to be alleged for the two forms of government, a monarchy and a commonwealth, and would not determine which was preferable; but of all forms he thought the worst was that of a monarchy without the necessary powers.[175]