what they want in the justice of their undertaking.  This was the true and only reason why the majority of Votes was for the Petition:  but if the business had not been carried by this surprise, My Lord Mayor might have only been troubled to have carried the Addresses of Southwark, &c. of another nature:  without his offering them with one hand, and the City Petition with the other; like the Childrens play of, This Mill grinds Pepper and Spice; that Mill grinds Ratts and Mice.

In the next place he informs us, That if has been long the practice of the Popish and Arbitrary Party, that the King should call, frequent, short, and useless Parliaments, tell the Gentry, grown weary of the great expences of Elections, should sit at home, and trouble themselves no more but leave the People expos’d to the practices of them, and of their Party; who if they carry one House of Commons for their turn, will make us Slaves and Papists by a Law.

Popish and Arbitrary, are words that sound high amongst the multitude; and all men are branded by those names, who are not for setting up Fanaticism and a Common-wealth.  To call short and useless Parliaments, can be no intention of the Government; because from such means the great end of Settlement cannot be expected.  But no Physician can command his Physick to perform the effects for which he has prescrib’d it:  yet if it fail the first or second time, he will not in prudence lay aside his Art, and despair of his Patient:  but reiterate his Medicines till he effect the cure.  For, the King, as he declares himself, is not willing to have too hard an Opinion of the Representatives of the Commons, but hopes that time may open their eyes, and that their next meeting may perfect the Settlement of Church and State.  With what impudence can our Author say, That an House of Commons can possibly be so pack’d, as to make us Slaves and Papists by a Law? for my part I should as soon suspect they would make themselves Arbitrary, which God forbid that any Englishman in his right sences should believe.  But this supposition of our Author, is to lay a most scandalous imputation upon the Gentry of England; besides, what it tacitly insinuates, that the House of Peers and his Majesty, (without whom it could not pass into a Law,) would suffer it.  Yet without such Artifices, as I said before, the Fanatique cause could not possibly subsist:  fear of Popery and Arbitrary power must be kept up; or the St. Georges of their side, would have no Dragon to encounter; yet they will never persuade a reasonable man, that a King, who in his younger years, when he had all the Temptations of power to pursue such a Design, yet attempted it not, should now, in the maturity of his Judgment, and when he sees the manifest aversion of his Subjects to admit of such a change, undertake a work of so much difficulty, destructive to the Monarchy, and ruinous to Himself, if it succeeded not; and if