Note 222 — Chapter XV · ON THE REIGN OF WILLIAM III.

Parl. Hist.; State Trials, xiv. 233. The letters of William, published in the Hardwicke State Papers, are both the most authentic and the most satisfactory explanation of his policy during the three momentous years that closed the seventeenth century. It is said, in a note of Lord Hardwicke on Burnet (Oxford edit. iv. 417), (from Lord Somers's papers), that when some of the ministers objected to parts of the treaty, Lord Portland's constant answer was, that nothing could be altered; upon which one of them said, if that was the case, he saw no reason why they should be called together. And it appears by the Shrewsbury Papers, p. 371, that the duke, though secretary of state, and in a manner prime minister, was entirely kept by the king out of the secret of the negotiations which ended in the peace of Ryswick: whether, after all, there remained some lurking distrust of his fidelity, or from whatever other cause this took place, it was very anomalous and unconstitutional. And it must be owned, that by this sort of proceeding, which could have no sufficient apology but a deep sense of the unworthiness of mankind, William brought on himself much of that dislike which appears so ungrateful and unaccountable.

As to the impeachments, few have pretended to justify them; even Ralph is half ashamed of the party he espouses with so little candour towards their adversaries. The scandalous conduct of the tories in screening the Earl of Jersey, while they impeached the whig lords, some of whom had really borne no part in a measure he had promoted, sufficiently displays the factiousness of their motives. See Lord Haversham's speech on this. Parl. Hist. 1298.