I look upon the Whigs and Dissenters to be exactly of the same political faith; let us, therefore, see what share each of them had in advancing arbitrary power.  It is manifest, that the fanatics made Cromwell the most absolute tyrant in Christendom:[8] The Rump abolished the House of Lords; the army abolished the Rump; and by this army of saints, he governed.  The Dissenters took liberty of conscience and employments from the late King James, as an acknowledgment of his dispensing power; which makes a King of England as absolute as the Turk.  The Whigs, under the late king, perpetually declared for keeping up a standing army, in times of peace; which has in all ages been the first and great step to the ruin of liberty.  They were, besides, discovering every day their inclinations to destroy the rights of the Church; and declared their opinion, in all companies, against the bishops sitting in the House of Peers:  which was exactly copying after their predecessors of ’Forty-one.  I need not say their real intentions were to make the king absolute, but whatever be the designs of innovating men, they usually end in a tyranny:  as we may see by an hundred examples in Greece, and in the later commonwealths of Italy, mentioned by Machiavel.

In the third place, the Whigs accuse us of a design to bring in the Pretender; and to give it a greater air of probability, they suppose the Qu[een] to be a party in this design; which however, is no very extraordinary supposition in those who have advanced such singular paradoxes concerning Gregg and Guiscard.  Upon this article, their charge is general, without ever offering to produce an instance.  But I verily think, and believe it will appear no paradox, that if ever he be brought in, the Whigs are his men.  For, first, it is an undoubted truth, that a year or two after the Revolution, several leaders of that party had their pardons sent them by the late King James,[9] and had entered upon measures to restore him, on account of some disobligations they received from King William.  Besides, I would ask, whether those who are under the greatest ties of gratitude to King James, are not at this day become the most zealous Whigs?  And of what party those are now, who kept a long correspondence with St. Germains?

It is likewise very observable of late, that the Whigs upon all occasions, profess their belief of the Pretender’s being no impostor, but a real prince, born of the late Queen’s body:[10] which whether it be true or false, is very unseasonably advanced, considering the weight such an opinion must have with the vulgar, if they once thoroughly believe it.  Neither is it at all improbable, that the Pretender himself puts his chief hopes in the friendship he expects from the Dissenters and Whigs, by his choice to invade the kingdom when the latter were most in credit:  and he had reason to count upon the former, from the gracious treatment they received from his supposed father, and their joyful acceptance of it.  But