moving in the matter--before William himself proceeded to grant away the forfeited lands. William was not entitled, under the circumstances, to infer any surrender of parliamentary control over the forfeitures from mere parliamentary inaction. Such an inference would in any case have been a somewhat questionable one; but this was a case in which the wishes of one branch of the Legislature had already been recorded in the form of a distinct legislative project. The King knew, in short, that the Commons desired to make Irish rebellion as far as possible pay for its own suppression; he knew that they looked to the value of the rebels' lands to afford partial relief to the English tax-payer from the heavy imposts to which he was being subjected; and when, knowing this, he proceeded to grant away large tracts of these lands, thus affected to the national service, at his own will and pleasure, and in many cases to persons whom the nation would never have consented to endow so munificently out of its own pocket, he was unquestionably dealing with his Parliament and people after a fashion which, in the case of a private individual standing in analogous relation to other parties, would be severely condemned. If he intended to ignore his promise of January 1691 altogether, his grants were mere high-handed usurpations of right; if he relied upon the mere "allowance of opportunities" in the manner above mentioned as being a fulfilment of that promise, then he was guilty of something which can only be described in modern phraseology as sharp practice.