Note 22 — Chapter XIV

The context of the passage, "The Commons murmured, etc., 'His Majesty tells us,' they said, 'that the debts fall to us, and the forfeitures to him'" (Hist. Eng. v. 271), appears clearly to show that Macaulay supposed William to be speaking of the whole of the forfeitures as not justly applicable to the public debt. His own previous words will just admit (though not in strict grammar) of the construction that the King was referring only to the "one-fifth part of these estates" which had passed to deserving grantees; but if this is to be its construction, Macaulay's favourite boast that he had written no sentence capable of being misunderstood would have to be abandoned.