Conscience or Interest be ’t, or both in one,
  The Panther answer’d in a surly tone,
  The first commands me to maintain the crown,
  The last forbids to throw my barriers down. 
  Our penal laws no sons of yours admit,
  Our Test excludes your tribe from benefit. 830
  These are my banks your ocean to withstand,
  Which, proudly rising, overlooks the land;
  And, once let in, with unresisted sway,
  Would sweep the pastors and their flocks away. 
  Think not my judgment leads me to comply
  With laws unjust, but hard necessity;
  Imperious need, which cannot be withstood,
  Makes ill authentic, for a greater good. 
  Possess your soul with patience, and attend: 
  A more auspicious planet may ascend; 840
  Good fortune may present some happier time,
  With means to cancel my unwilling crime;
  (Unwilling, witness all ye Powers above!)
  To mend my errors, and redeem your love: 
  That little space you safely may allow;
  Your all-dispensing power protects you now.

    Hold, said the Hind, ’tis needless to explain;
  You would postpone me to another reign;
  Till when you are content to be unjust: 
  Your part is to possess, and mine to trust. 850
  A fair exchange proposed of future chance,
  For present profit and inheritance. 
  Few words will serve to finish our dispute;
  Who will not now repeal, would persecute. 
  To ripen green revenge your hopes attend,
  Wishing that happier planet would ascend. 
  For shame let Conscience be your plea no more: 
  To will hereafter, proves she might before;
  But she’s a bawd to gain, and holds the door.

    Your care about your banks infers a fear 860
  Of threatening floods and inundations near;
  If so, a just reprise would only be
  Of what the land usurp’d upon the sea;
  And all your jealousies but serve to show
  Your ground is, like your neighbour-nation, low. 
  To intrench in what you grant unrighteous laws,
  Is to distrust the justice of your cause;
  And argues that the true religion lies
  In those weak adversaries you despise.

   Tyrannic force is that which least you fear; 700
  The sound is frightful in a Christian’s ear: 
  Avert it, Heaven! nor let that plague be sent
  To us from the dispeopled continent.

   But piety commands me to refrain;
  Those prayers are needless in this monarch’s reign. 
  Behold! how he protects your friends oppress’d,
  Receives the banish’d, succours the distress’d: 
  Behold, for you may read an honest open breast. 
  He stands in day-light, and disdains to hide
  An act, to which by honour he is tied, 880
  A generous, laudable, and kingly pride. 
  Your Test he would repeal, his peers restore;
  This when he says he means, he means no more.