But in the earlier part of the reign of William there was no ministry.

The heads of the executive departments had not been appointed exclusively from either party.
Some were zealous Whigs, others zealous Tories.

The most enlightened statesmen did not hold it to be unconstitutional that the King should exercise his highest prerogatives on the most important occasions without any other guidance than that of his own judgment.

His refusal, therefore, to assent to a bill which had passed both Houses indicated, not, as a similar refusal would now indicate, that the whole machinery of government was in a state of fearful disorder, but merely that there was a difference of opinion between him and the two other branches of the legislature as to the expediency of a particular law.

Such a difference of opinion might exist, and, as we shall hereafter see, actually did exist, at a time when he was, not merely on friendly, but on most affectionate terms with the Estates of the Realm.
The circumstances under which he used his Veto for the first time have never yet been correctly stated.