William of Orange, I maintain then, is not to be regarded as altogether that "patriot king," that "sovereign of the people," which it has pleased his Whig devotees to discover in him, still less as that sort of anticipatory and prophetic political philosopher for which he passes in the legend of some Whig constitutionalists. No doubt he had a distinct popular fibre in his nature. The great-grandson of his great-grandfather can hardly have been wanting in sympathy with popular aspirations, or in belief in the might and virtue of popular forces. But such sentiments have been the birthright of many a man whose instincts were the very reverse of democratic; and there is no reason to think that William either foresaw or would have relished that growth of the democratic element in English government to which he inevitably contributed so powerful a stimulus. He was not, it must be remembered, a democrat even in his own country; on the contrary, his strongest impulses were essentially of aristocratic origin. It was not his Protestant enthusiasm, though this was ardent enough, nor his love of his country and his hatred of foreign dictation, though these passions were strong and sincere enough, which were the dominant influences in moulding his youthful character. It was pride of ancestry, the memory of William the Silent, resentment at the fallen fortunes of his house, and resolution to restore them. These it was which first inspired him with an ambition essentially personal in its character, and it was not till this ambition had been gratified by his elevation to higher dignities even than his forefathers, that the other impulses of birth or training can be said to have begun to sway him at all. And until that ambition was gratified he was not only capable of all the virtues of the ambitious, but an adept in their vices also. He was but sixteen when he taught his mother the wisdom of disarming the suspicion of the Pensionary De Witt by pretended cordiality, and earned the criticism of the shrewd French envoy d'Estrades that he was "a great dissembler, and omitted nothing to gain his ends." So, too, one can hardly doubt that it was ambition rather than zeal for liberty and Protestantism that first inspired him with that design of intervention in England, which must have just taken shape in his mind shortly after the return of Dykvelt from his mission of 1687. His succession, or rather his wife's succession, was safe enough if Mary of Modena bore no male issue to James. But she might and did bear such issue, in a child whose claims could only be set aside by a revolution; and even had no heir apparent been born to the throne, the position of William accepting the English crown conjointly with his wife in his capacity as liberator of the English people would be something very different from that of a king-consort, which was all he could otherwise have hoped to be. It is surely not unjust to a man of