allies that he was making efforts to induce the King of France to waive the demand for the restoration of James; the French Ambassador hinted at a compromise. This, it has been suggested, was that "James should waive his rights, and that the Prince of Wales should be sent to England, be bred a Protestant, and, being adopted by William and Mary, be declared his heir." To such an arrangement Macaulay thinks that William would probably have had no objection, but that he "neither would nor could have made it a condition of peace with France, since the question who should reign in England was to be decided by England alone." Undoubtedly William "could" not have independently assented to a condition which, to acquire the least validity, would have necessitated the statutory revision of the succession settlement, as effected by the Convention and ratified by the Convention Parliament; but there does not seem to be much evidence that he would have assented to the condition if he could. There is no trace of any endeavour on his part to sound the chiefs of his parliamentary parties on the subject, and I cannot but think it far more likely that neither in this nor in any other matter of foreign policy was William at all disposed to share any of his discretionary powers in his capacity of virtual Foreign Minister with his Parliament, so long as he could obtain what he wanted from that body without admitting it any more fully to his confidence. His rejection of Louis's overtures, including this offer of compromise, if it was made, was probably not dictated by any high constitutional considerations at all. He thought, and rightly, that pacific advances made by so haughty an enemy indicated greater exhaustion than had been suspected, and reckoning justly that another year or two of fighting would get him better terms still, he decided that another year or two of fighting there should be. The supplies had been cheerfully voted him, and that was enough. That the Parliament which had voted them had any paramount right to decide whether they would go on voting money or accept Louis's terms almost certainly never entered his mind. To suppose that it did is to attribute to him a theory of the constitution anachronistic by fully fifty years. That such a theory is more or less designedly attributed to him in the above-quoted passage from Macaulay appears unquestionable; and the Whig historian's anticipation of history in this respect is of a piece with his exaggeration of the permanent significance of the constitutional changes which fall to be treated of in the next chapter. CHAPTER XI 1693-1694 Formation of the first party Ministry--Reintroduction of the Triennial Bill and its defeat--Of the Place Bill and its veto--Causes of the disallowance--Macaulay's account examined--Campaign of 1694--Death of Mary.