endeavour to excel in the duties of a religious life, in order to qualify themselves for public service.  I may possibly be wrong in some of the means I prescribe towards this end; but that is no material objection against the design itself.  Let those who are at the helm contrive it better, which, perhaps, they may easily do.  Everybody will agree that the disease is manifest, as well as dangerous; that some remedy is necessary, and that none yet applied hath been effectual, which is a sufficient excuse for any man who wishes well to his country, to offer his thoughts, when he can have no other end in view but the public good.  The present Queen is a princess of as many and great virtues as ever filled a throne:  How would it brighten her character to the present and after ages, if she would exert her utmost authority to instil some share of those virtues into her people, which they are too degenerate to learn only from her example!  And, be it spoke with all the veneration possible for so excellent a sovereign, her best endeavours in this weighty affair are a most important part of her duty, as well as of her interest and her honour.

But, it must be confessed, that as things are now, every man thinks that he has laid in a sufficient stock of merit, and may pretend to any employment, provided he has been loud and frequent in declaring himself hearty for the government.  ’Tis true, he is a man of pleasure, and a freethinker, that is, in other words, he is profligate in his morals, and a despiser of religion; but in point of party, he is one to be confided in; he is an assertor of liberty and property; he rattles it out against Popery and Arbitrary Power, and Priestcraft and High Church.  ’Tis enough:  He is a person fully qualified for any employment, in the court or the navy, the law or the revenue; where he will be sure to leave no arts untried, of bribery, fraud, injustice, oppression, that he can practise with any hope of impunity.  No wonder such men are true to a government where liberty runs high, where property, however attained, is so well secured, and where the administration is at least so gentle:  ’Tis impossible they could choose any other constitution, without changing to their loss.

Fidelity to a present establishment is indeed the principal means to defend it from a foreign enemy, but without other qualifications, will not prevent corruptions from within; and states are more often ruined by these than the other.

To conclude.  Whether the proposals I have offered toward a reformation, be such as are most prudent and convenient, may probably be a question; but it is none at all, whether some reformation be absolutely necessary; because the nature of things is such, that if abuses be not remedied, they will certainly increase, nor ever stop, till they end in the subversion of a commonwealth.  As there must always of necessity be some corruptions, so, in a well-instituted state, the executive power will be always contending against