The statesmen whose administration had been so beneficent might be pardoned if they expected the gratitude and confidence which they had fairly earned.

But it soon became clear that they had served their country only too well for their own interest.

In 1695 adversity and danger had made men amenable to that control to which it is the glory of free nations to submit themselves, the control of superior minds.

In 1698 prosperity and security had made men querulous, fastidious and unmanageable.
The government was assailed with equal violence from widely different quarters.

The opposition, made up of Tories many of whom carried Toryism to the length of Jacobitism, and of discontented Whigs some of whom carried Whiggism to the length of republicanism, called itself the Country party, a name which had been popular before the words Whig and Tory were known in England.