for it was worn to rags when you put out this medal.
Never was there practised such a piece of notorious
impudence in the face of an established Government.
I believe, when he is dead, you will wear him in thumb-rings,
as the Turks did Scanderbeg; as if there were virtue
in his bones to preserve you against monarchy.
Yet all this while, you pretend not only zeal for the
public good, but a due veneration for the person of
the king. But all men, who can see an inch before
them, may easily detect those gross fallacies.
That it is necessary for men in your circumstances
to pretend both, is granted you; for without them
there could be no ground to raise a faction. But
I would ask you one civil question: What right
has any man among you, or any association of men (to
come nearer to you) who, out of Parliament cannot
be consider’d in a public capacity, to meet,
as you daily do, in factious clubs, to vilify the
Government in your discourses, and to libel it in
all your writings? Who made you judges in Israel?
Or how is it consistent with your zeal for the public
welfare, to promote sedition? Does your definition
of loyal, which is to serve the King according
to the laws, allow you the licence of traducing the
executive power, with which you own he is invested?
You complain, that his Majesty has lost the love and
confidence of his people; and, by your very urging
it, you endeavour, what in you lies, to make him lose
them. All good subjects abhor the thought of
arbitrary power, whether it be in one or many; if you
were the patriots you would seem, you would not at
this rate incense the multitude to assume it; for
no sober man can fear it, either from the King’s
disposition or his practice; or even, where you would
odiously lay it, from his ministers. Give us
leave to enjoy the Government, and the benefit of
laws, under which we were born, and which we desire
to transmit to our posterity. You are not the
trustees of the public liberty; and if you have not
right to petition in a crowd, much less have you to
intermeddle in the management of affairs, or to arraign
what you do not like; which in effect is everything
that is done by the King and Council. Can you
imagine, that any reasonable man will believe you
respect the person of his Majesty, when ’tis
apparent that your seditious pamphlets are stuffed
with particular reflections on him? If you have
the confidence to deny this, ’tis easy to be
evinced from a thousand passages, which I only forbear
to quote because I desire they should die and be forgotten.
I have perused many of your papers; and to show you
that I have, the third part of your No-Protestant
Plot is much of it stolen from your dead author’s
pamphlet called the Growth of Popery; as manifestly
as Milton’s defence of the English people is
from Buchanan, de jure regni apud Scotos; or
your first covenant, and new association, from the
holy league of the French Guisards. Anyone, who
reads Davila, may trace your practices all along.