You seem to know, or at least very strongly to conjecture, who those persons are that give you so much weekly disquiet.  Will you dare to assert that any of these are Jacobites, endeavour to alienate the hearts of the people, to defame the prince, and then dethrone him (for these are your expressions) and that I am their patron, their bulwark, their hope, and their refuge?  Can you think I will descend to vindicate myself against an aspersion so absurd?  God be thanked, we have had many a change of ministry without changing our prince:  for if it had been otherwise, perhaps revolutions might have been more frequent.  Heaven forbid that the welfare of a great kingdom, and of a brave people, should be trusted with the thread of a single subject’s life; for I suppose it is not yet in your view to entail the ministryship in your family.  Thus I hope we may live to see different ministers and different measures, without any danger to the succession in the royal Protestant line of Hanover.

You are pleased to advance a topic, which I could never heartily approve of in any party, although they have each in their turn advanced it while they had the superiority.  You tell us, “It is hard that while every private man shall have the liberty to choose what servants he pleaseth, the same privilege should be refused to a king.”  This assertion, crudely understood, can hardly be supported.  If by servants be only meant those who are purely menial, who provide for their master’s food and clothing, or for the convenience and splendour of his family, the point is not worth debating.  But the bad or good choice of a chancellor, a secretary, an ambassador, a treasurer, and many other officers, is of very high consequence to the whole kingdom; so is likewise that amphibious race of courtiers between servants and ministers; such as the steward, chamberlain, treasurer of the household and the like, being all of the privy council, and some of the cabinet, who according to their talents, their principles, and their degree of favour, may be great instruments of good or evil, both to the subject and the prince; so that the parallel is by no means adequate between a prince’s court and a private family.  And yet if an insolent footman be troublesome in the neighbourhood; if he breaks the people’s windows, insults their servants, breaks into other folk’s houses to pilfer what he can find, although he belong to a duke, and be a favourite in his station, yet those who are injured may, without just offence, complain to his lord, and for want of redress get a warrant to send him to the stocks, to Bridewell, or to Newgate, according to the nature and degree of his delinquencies.  Thus the servants of the prince, whether menial or otherwise, if they be of his council, are subject to the enquiries and prosecutions of the great council of the nation, even as far as to capital punishment; and so must ever be in our constitution, till a minister can procure a majority even of that council to shelter him; which I am sure you will allow to be a desperate crisis under any party of the most plausible denomination.