No doubt it may have caused him some irritation to observe with what rapidity the coalition of Whigs and Tories, which had formed for the purpose of limiting his independence, dissolved again when that work was done. In a few weeks the two parties were as fiercely at odds as ever upon a Whig Abjuration Bill, the main object of which, though in one quite indefensible clause it went far beyond this, was to impose a test which the official Tories could not swallow, and so to drive them from office. It was not enough that a man should have sworn allegiance to King William; he must also expressly abjure allegiance to King James. Who knew but that he might have taken the former oath in some non-natural sense or with some mental reservations? And though the answer seemed obvious that he might take the latter in the same sense and with the same reservations, the Bill was prosecuted to its rejection in the House of Commons by a majority of thirty-three. An Abjuration Bill of a somewhat less stringent kind was then introduced into the House of Lords, the debate upon which William personally attended. He had let it be known, however, that he was opposed to the former measure, and it is probable that he had no great liking for the latter. Anyhow, it underwent so much mutilation in committee that its authors did not care to persevere with it. The Tory majority, however, was soon after employed to an even more useful purpose in the final accomplishment of William's policy of pacification. Resolved that on this occasion the measure of indemnity should not be defeated by delay, the King submitted it personally to the Upper House in the form of an Act of Grace for political offences--a proceeding which, according to constitutional practice, abridged its deliberative stages in each House of Parliament to a single reading. Introduced under such auspices, and assured of the support of a party always dominant in the Upper House, and now possessing a majority in the Lower, it passed without any opposition into law, and is undoubtedly entitled to take its place among the most honourable and statesmanlike acts of William's career. Its value as a political precedent was scarcely capable of exaggeration even by Macaulay; and if he somewhat inordinately applauds the enlightened clemency which it was as easy for any brave and dispassionate foreigner to recommend as it was difficult for English parties embittered by the mutual wrongs of a generation of conflict to accept, it would be falling into the converse error to insist on any serious qualification of the historian's praises. William's great qualities were his own; they must at least divide the credit of his high-minded and sagacious policy with the accident of his antecedents in his own country and of his position in ours; nor would it be gracious to attempt too nice an apportionment of the shares.