[Footnote 11:  This refers to the election of the governor and directors of the Bank of England on April 12th and 13th.  All the Whig candidates were returned, and Sir H. Furnese was on the same day chosen Alderman for Bridge Within.  See also No. 41, post, p. 267, [T.S.]]

NUMB. 40.[1]

FROM THURSDAY APRIL 26, TO THURSDAY MAY 3, 1711.

  Quis tulerit Gracchos de seditione querentes?[2]

There have been certain topics of reproach, liberally bestowed for some years past, by the Whigs and Tories, upon each other.  We charge the former with a design of destroying the established Church, and introducing fanaticism and freethinking in its stead.  We accuse them as enemies to monarchy; as endeavouring to undermine the present form of government, and to build a commonwealth, or some new scheme of their own, upon its ruins.  On the other side, their clamours against us, may be summed up in those three formidable words, Popery, Arbitrary Power, and the Pretender.  Our accusations against them we endeavour to make good by certain overt acts; such as their perpetually abusing the whole body of the clergy; their declared contempt for the very order of priesthood; their aversion for episcopacy; the public encouragement and patronage they gave to Tindall, Toland, and other atheistical writers; their appearing as professed advocates, retained by the Dissenters, excusing their separation, and laying the guilt of it to the obstinacy of the Church; their frequent endeavours to repeal the test, and their setting up the indulgence to scrupulous consciences, as a point of greater importance than the established worship.  The regard they bear to our monarchy, hath appeared by their open ridiculing the martyrdom of King Charles the First, in their Calves-head Clubs,[3] their common discourses and their pamphlets:  their denying the unnatural war raised against that prince, to have been a rebellion; their justifying his murder in the allowed papers of the week; their industry in publishing and spreading seditious and republican tracts; such as Ludlow’s “Memoirs,” Sidney “Of Government,"[4] and many others; their endless lopping of the prerogative, and mincing into nothing her M[ajest]y’s titles to the crown.

What proofs they bring for our endeavouring to introduce Popery, arbitrary power, and the Pretender, I cannot readily tell, and would be glad to hear; however, those important words having by dexterous management, been found of mighty service to their cause, though applied with little colour, either of reason or justice; I have been considering whether they may not be adapted to more proper objects.