During all these years the English had never ceased to chafe at the continued existence of a standing army. The country gentlemen, who had made the Revolution of 1642, had the terror of Oliver Cromwell before their eyes, and dreaded lest the Stuarts might emulate his summary and efficient methods. They professed, some of them no doubt conscientiously, solicitude for the liberties of England, forgetting that their forerunners of the Long Parliament had abolished the Monarchy and the House of Lords and erected themselves into a permanent committee of tyrants. They protested that a standing army was unknown to the Constitution of England, but they had not awaked to the fact that there was a British Empire in the making, and that such an Empire requires police. They could not, or at any rate did not, look one inch before their noses except at one principal object, namely the supplanting of the monarchy, in substance if not in fact, by an oligarchy of their noble selves. They therefore encouraged sedition and discontent with the new arrangements in the colonies, and invited William of Orange to come with an armed force and accept the Crown from them. It suited William's policy exactly to have in his hands the resources of England for his desperate struggle against France; and he came, bringing with him the certainty of a great war. It has been my fate to study the departmental administration of England at various periods, but I have never found it quite so corrupt and inefficient as in the early years of King William's reign. James had improved it amazingly in his three years of power; but his men were of course displaced in favour of the Whig magnates and their nominees, naturally with bad results. The administrative reforms of James in the American colonies were likewise upset by the Revolution; and this folly brought us within measurable distance of the loss of North America, besides taking the resources of England to defend people who ought to have been able to defend themselves. However there the matter was. It was necessary to raise a number of regiments and improvise an army for the pacification of Ireland, which was, I think, the very worst force ever put together under the English flag. After many disgraceful episodes Ireland was reconquered; and then the army, which was by this time beginning to improve, was transported over to Flanders for operations there. It fought in many severe actions with credit but mostly without success, for William III was not a great general. However, it learned a great deal, particularly in the matter of sieges, of which it had known very little, and being thrown into company with some good troops and into opposition against others, it was roused to emulation of the high standard of French and Dutch efficiency. In 1697 the war came to an end through the exhaustion of both parties.