that the issue of the Princess Anne should be preferred in the succession to any issue that he might have by any other wife than the Princess. All this he delivered to them in so cold and unconcerned a manner, that those who judged of others by the dispositions that they felt in themselves, looked on it all as artifice and contrivance."
The suspicions may have been well or ill grounded, but they were certainly not unnatural when William's past diplomatic successes were remembered. And on this occasion, as before, William obtained exactly what he wanted, and we may admit his ability.
But when some special points of his character are considered, it is difficult to see how any defence can be set up for him. "He had no vice," says Bishop Burnet, "but of one sort, in which he was very cautious and secret." When contemporaries accused William of the vilest and basest crimes, they no doubt did him cruel wrong; but of this saying of Burnet's Lord Stanhope wrote very justly: "It is no light charge that is here implied. It is no light quarter from which the charge proceeds. It comes from a familiar friend and a constant follower—from one who owed to William not only his return from exile but his episcopal rank—from one who had no imaginable motive to deceive us, and who was most unlikely to be himself deceived." Indeed, it is impossible to condemn his predecessors and absolve William III. It is only too evident that throughout his life William was immoral as Charles II. and James II.
