last; always liable to lend an ear to temptations from the other party, never sure that they might not to-morrow morning find themselves in open rebellion against the master of to-day. Yet, while almost every individual of note was subject to this strange uncertainty, this confused and troubled vacillation, there was such a sweep of national conviction, so strong a current of the general will, that the supposed leaders of opinion were carried away by it, and compelled to assume and act upon a conviction which was England’s, but which individually they did not possess. Nothing can be made more remarkable, more unexplainable under any other interpretations, than the way in which his entire court, statesmen, soldiers, all who were worth counting, and so many who were not, abandoned King James--some with a sort of consternation, not knowing why they did it, driven by a force they could not resist. No example of this can be more remarkable than that of Clarendon, who received the news of his son’s defection to the Prince of Orange with what seems to be a heartbroken cry: “O God! that my son should be a rebel!” yet, presently, ten days afterward, is drawn away himself in a kind of extraordinary confusion, like a man in a dream, like a subject of mesmeric influence, although in all the following negotiations he maintained James’s cause as far as a man could who did not accept ruin as a consequence. Scarcely one of these men was whole-hearted or had any determined principle in the matter. But in the mass of the nation behind them was a force of conviction, of panic, of determination, that carried them off their feet. The chief names of England appear little more than straws upon the current, indicating its course, but forced along by its fierce sweep and impetus, and not by any impulse of their own.