The committee, by which the act for licensing the stage was drawn up, had too long known the inconvenience of giving reasons, and were too well acquainted with the characters of great men, to lay the lord chamberlain, or his deputy, under any such tormenting obligation.

Yet, lest Mr. Brooke should imagine that a license was refused him without just reasons, I shall condescend to treat him with more regard than he can reasonably expect, and point out such sentiments, as not only justly exposed him to that refusal, but would have provoked any ministry less merciful than the present, to have inflicted some heavier penalties upon him.

His prologue is filled with such insinuations, as no friend of our excellent government can read without indignation and abhorrence, and cannot but be owned to be a proper introduction to such scenes, as seem designed to kindle in the audience a flame of opposition, patriotism, publick spirit, and independency; that spirit which we have so long endeavoured to suppress, and which cannot be revived without the entire subversion of all our schemes.

The seditious poet, not content with making an open attack upon us, by declaring, in plain terms, that he looks upon freedom as the only source of publick happiness, and national security, has endeavoured with subtilty, equal to his malice, to make us suspicious of our firmest friends, to infect our consultations with distrust, and to ruin us by disuniting us.

This, indeed, will not be easily effected; an union founded upon interest, and cemented by dependence, is naturally lasting; but confederacies which owe their rise to virtue, or mere conformity of sentiments, are quickly dissolved, since no individual has any thing either to hope or fear for himself, and publick spirit is generally too weak to combat with private passions.

The poet has, however, attempted to weaken our combination by an artful and sly assertion, which, if suffered to remain unconfuted, may operate, by degrees, upon our minds, in the days of leisure and retirement, which are now approaching, and, perhaps, fill us with such surmises as may at least very much embarrass our affairs.

The law by which the Swedes justified their opposition to the encroachments of the king of Denmark, he not only calls

  Great Nature’s law, the law within the breast,

but proceeds to tell us, that it is

  —­stamp’d by heaven upon th’ unletter’d mind.

By which he evidently intends to insinuate a maxim, which is, I hope, as false as it is pernicious, that men are naturally fond of liberty till those unborn ideas and desires are effaced by literature.

The author, if he be not a man mewed up in his solitary study, and entirely unacquainted with the conduct of the present ministry, must know that we have hitherto acted upon different principles.  We have always regarded letters as great obstructions to our scheme of subordination, and have, therefore, when we have heard of any man remarkably unlettered, carefully noted him down, as the most proper person for any employments of trust or honour, and considered him as a man, in whom we could safely repose our most important secrets.