Human passions envenom the best intentions, and corrupt the most sincere souls. William was accused of feeling intense distrust of his Parliament; his most intimate counsellors were personally attacked. Burnet, the preceptor of the little Duke of Gloucester, only surviving son of the Princess Anne, was insulted, as well as Somers. When the report concerning the confiscations was finally presented in Parliament, the gifts accorded to the Dutch favorites and to the Countess of Orkney (formerly, when Elizabeth Villiers, devotedly attached to the Prince of Orange), were violently attacked. "We were sent here to fly in the king's face," said the partisans of the report. William III. was at the same time reproached for the indulgence he had shown towards the Irish. A part of the property confiscated had been restored to the despoiled families. "All has been given to Dutch favorites, to French refugees and Irish papists," it was said. Carried away by leaders as violent as imprudent, the Commons annulled all the royal grants, and joined to this arbitrary and unjust bill, a law regulating the land tax for the following year. This move compelled the House of Lords either to pass both bills or to reject both, in defiance of the financial needs of the state. "Affairs are very bad in Parliament," wrote the king to Heinsius; "I say this to you with a deep feeling of grief, and filled with apprehension that this will end badly some day. You can have no idea what these men are; it is necessary to live in the midst of them and to be acquainted with every circumstance, in order to judge of them."
The wisdom of the House of Lords, and the prudence of the king, prevailed against the violence of party struggles in the Commons. The peers passed the bill, but not without protest and attempted amendments, which, however, were rejected; the king gave it his sanction, but the same day that the lower house voted that his Majesty be supplicated not to admit foreigners into his councils, Parliament was prorogued to the second of June. { 83} For the first time William did not close Parliament with an address. "Parliament was finally prorogued, yesterday," wrote he, to Holland: "I have never seen a session more vexatious. After having committed many blunders and more extravagances, they separated amidst great confusion; their intrigues are incomprehensible to any one who is not in the midst of them; a description of them is quite impossible." The king had likewise wisely demanded the seals of Lord Somers. The Tories were triumphant, but they failed to seriously disturb the equilibrium of the Constitution; they had struck a blow against justice, as well as against the royal prerogatives, and the privileges of the House of Lords. "They have entered a dangerous path," says Mr. Hallam; "they will be arrested by that force which has always maintained among us the equilibrium of the powers, the reflective opinion of a free people opposed to flagrant innovations, and soon shocked by the violence of party passions."