Page:History of England (Macaulay) Vol 2.djvu/396

 three kingdoms. But in truth the success of Lillibullero was the effect, and not the cause, of that excited state of public feeling which produced the Revolution.

While James was thus raising against himself all those national feelings which, but for his own folly, might have saved his throne, Lewis was in another way exerting himself not less effectually to facilitate the enterprise which William meditated.

The party in Holland which was favourable to France was a minority, but a minority strong enough, according to the constitution of the Batavian federation, to prevent the Stadtholder from striking any great blow. To keep that minority steady was an object to which, if the Court of Versailles had been wise, every other object would at that conjuncture have been postponed. Lewis however had, during some time, laboured, as if of set purpose, to estrange his Dutch friends; and he at length, though not without difficulty, succeeded in forcing them to become his enemies at the precise moment at which their help would have been invaluable to him.

There were two subjects on which the people of the United Provinces were peculiarly sensitive, religion and trade; and both their religion and their trade the French King assailed. The persecution of the Huguenots, and the revocation of the edict of Nantes, had everywhere moved the grief and indignation of Protestants. But in Holland these feelings were stronger than in any other country; for many persons of Dutch birth, confiding in the repeated and solemn declarations of Lewis that the toleration granted by his grandfather should be maintained, had, for commercial purposes, settled in France, and a large proportion of the settlers had been naturalised there. Every post now brought to Holland the tidings that these persons were treated with extreme rigour on account of their religion. Dragoons, it was reported, were quartered on one. Another had been held naked before a fire till he was half roasted. All were forbidden, under the severest penalties, to celebrate the rites of their religion, or to quit the country into which they had, under false pretences, been decoyed. The