Never would such disasters have befallen the monarchy but for the fatal law which secured that assembly from dissolution.

[409] There was, it must be owned, a flaw in this reasoning which a man less shrewd than William might easily detect.

That one restriction of the royal prerogative had been mischievous did not prove that another restriction would be salutary.

It by no means followed because one sovereign had been ruined by being unable to get rid of a hostile Parliament that another sovereign might not be ruined by being forced to part with a friendly Parliament.

To the great mortification of the ambassador, his arguments failed to shake the King's resolution.