Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/315

to places of trust and emolument, from the highest to the lowest, in numbers altogether out of proportion to their position in the State, and that a huge army was being collected in the neighbourhood of London, at a moment when there was no reasonable apprehension of a foreign war, and therefore with every appearance of being either intended to overawe the country, or of being used to co-operate with France in a fresh attack upon Holland—which, if successful, would be followed by the suppression of Protestant liberties in England. Meanwhile the country was full of refugees flying from persecution in France, and the conviction slowly forced itself on the public mind that, whatever might have been the case in 1678, a conspiracy against the liberties of the nation was now on foot, and that the King was conniving at it, if not himself the actual instigator.