with a French than English Customer And who knows but you may do so There be according to common Fame as black Articles in the Legend of your Life as is that though bad enough But you are in a Mistake to think it more allowable to sell Country and Liberty and all what ought to be most dear to us to our greatest Enemies rather than to allow a present to be given at home betwixt Man and Man in the necessary Commerce of Affairs where no Law intervenes to define it to be a Fault And I am astonished to hear you speak of the French King 's having superfluous Cash it is not long since you allowed that Nation hardly to have Bread nor their King Money to entertain the War It is an unhappy and unadvised Expression after his Majesty has given us Assurance by his Royal Word that a Stop has been put to the Progress of their Arms to make new Nerves of War spring up to them afresh You continue to be uncharitable and pursue your Revenge beyond the Boundary of Honour You will not allow Gentlemen that have given repeated Instances of Fidelity and and done upon occasion great and good Service to the Government to retain Sentiments of Vertue and Justice to their Country even in their Hearts and Wishes and would have the World believe with you That the want of Opportunity to better their Condition by Strangers and by our and their Enemies keeps them within the Limits of what they owe to and do for the Nation Notwithstanding the last Clamour and Noise raised by their Enemies upon the Proceedure of the House against them it will not be easily in their Power to keep them under any Aspersion during their Lives or to render their Memory ungrateful to their Country or Posterity And it has no Relation to their Character That he who can be bought for Money will go for the highest Price You are extreamly ill informed in a long Story of Intelligence you attribute to Monsieur Colbert which may give the World to know that you understand neither ancient nor modern Affairs aright No Colbert had ever a hand in the Matter But 't is impossible your Stories should want Authors you are so well qualified to find them out upon all Occasions You bring in a Regret But alas my Friend when the love of Money gets the ascendant all other Passions and Interests must stoop to its sway That is a most certain Truth and there be many ancient and modern Examples of that kind and a defaming world has said both in this and other a defaming World has said both in this and other Places That your self is not exempted from its powerful Charms Many and that with too much Reason will allow your Instance from a betrayed Jugurtha may be applied to England O! gentem venalem quandoque periturarp si emptorem haberet Sir Had the House of Commons stood upon Point of Honour so far as to have believed the Dignity of their Speaker equal to that of a Roman Proconful and used the Example you have brought from a Roman Province as a Precedent and thereby acquitted the Speaker and been of the Opinion That so high a Dignity was not to be supposed capable to be corrupted for having received a Present would you not then have employed your Praise with as displayed an Eloquence to have fitted that Turn as you have done this of the Speaker's being expelled I make it no question but you would have done so you have your Pipe fitted to every Tune that will please the Multitude The Action of Manlius I cannot approve though I love stedfast Justice but that is not the alone vain-glorious Roman Instance It had been enough for an unfortunate Father to have delivered his Son to Justice and to have carried the Loss temperately upon his Execution There are many Examples where an ill understood love to ones Country has made many Nations and in particular the Tyrians and Carthaginians their Descendants immolate to their own Children to attone their angry Deities they worshipped and their Barbarity is so far preferable to the Romans in that they did it in Honour tof a supposed Divinity and the others for a vain Glory and against Nature Your Transcripts from the Duke of Rohan and Thucydides I can bear But what is your Reason to call Sparta a small State Do you know that it was the first in all Greece and obeyed by all that famous Nation in the Persian War Do you know its Boundaries Revenue or number of Forces Or do you call it little in regard of the Persian Empire If the State of Sparta was little Antiquity had nothing great At last you soar to your highest Pitch In this Place it is you believe to do Justice to his Majesty's Reputation and reflect as severely upon the Vices of the English Nation But let us examin with what Capacity you do the one and the other It is in vain you say for the King to have raised the Reputation of England in War to a greater Height than it has been since the beginning of this Century Though for my own part I think you have done the King neither Honour nor Justice in confining him to the Century you ought in Reason to have carried him up to the great Henries and Edwards nay even to the Conqueror himself yet at the same time there is a Parcel of old Oliverians and their Disciples about Town who having met with your Letter are stark mad They say That whatever Ignominy or Contempt you intend for the Race of your own Kings you ought to remember what great Things had been done by Oliver at Sea and Land As the Conquest of a great part of England all Scotland and Ireland Jamaica and the important Town of Dunkirk As for Sea Glory he had it they say Brim-full For after he had beaten the Dutch he had no more any Rival upon the Water They say his Actions were performed by English Force and for not above one Million and a half per Annum at most It is in vain that his Majesty has acquired to us a Share in foreign Councils which we either never had or have utterly lost One of the two it must be But I tell you we had formerly a Share in foreign Councils during the greatest of our Wars with France we had Interest in so far as was fit for our Affairs with the Emperors Dukes of Burgundy and Britaigne and may be it is sometimes as safe and honourable for us to manage our Councils by our selves as to mingle them with those of designing Strangers though at this Time it be most necessary during the present Situation of Affairs You enlarge your Rhetorical in Vains but I hope you will meet with a Disappointment when contrary to your Assertion his Majesty shall find all the Satisfaction he proposes to himself in heading a mighty Army upon the Continent when he shall have the Glory and we the Advantage
THE ANSWER TO THE LETTER Written to a Member of Parliament Upon the Occasion of some VOTES OF THE HOUSE of COMMONS against their late Speaker and Others LONDON Printed in the Year MDCXCV THE ANSWER c. SIR WHen you did me the Honour to write me a Letter upon the occasion of some Votes passed in our House against the late Speaker and others I had then leave given me to retire into the Country for my Health It was the Reason I could return you Thanks no sooner for the Favour you put upon me to read your Thoughts upon the Affair handled by the Commons against such Members as had taken Money for expediting of Business I do Sir naturally run into all the Measures of good and unbiassed Men for the Honour Safety and Interest of my Country which never more wanted good Example and Support than at this Day I must likewise tell you That I ever loved Freedom and Ingenuity and will not stick to give your Letter such a suitable Return as may be consistent with your own and its Character I confess when I read your two first Periods I had some Difficulties to guess who might be the Author but after I had proceeded mid-way in your historical and political Reflexions it was no great trouble to find you out So equal a Pace you tread in your admired way of writing that it made me call to mind a frugal Gentleman once my Neighbour in the Country who had the Art to fit a Servant of his own to so many Uses that upon occasion you found the same Man a Gardener Cook Coach-man and Barber by turns I must say That in your learned Works now abroad in the World you use the same Repetitions in your Observators Vindications Inquiries Answers to Declarations Great Bastards Protectors to little ones and in your Letters to your Friends For had not the Letter you did me the Honour to write me exceeded the Bonds of your Ordinary Observators I had taken it for granted you had began a fresh to your Politicks I find you sustain sudden and ill disgested Thoughts with so many Greek Latin and French Transcripts abundance whereof according to your Custom are but upon Hear-say and stoln from some Gentlemens Conversation where you are said to intrude with a great deal of Impudence and ill Breeding You begin then Sir your first Flight with the amends the Parliament has made in the research of the Blood-suckers of the Nation for the Loss of an incomparable Queen but that I may endeavor the better Answer you will give me leave to inform you a little in our Constitution to which by Birth and Knowledge you may be a Stranger The House of Commons in England contains the Representatives of the People originally called to that Honour by the King's Rescript they meet where it pleaseth his Majesty to appoint them and are generally called either to give Money for the pressing Affairs of the Kingdom in War and Peace or to give their Consent to the Establishment of wholesom Laws or to humbly represent the Necessities of the People and their Grievances that thereby redress may be had orderly and according to Law You know the House of Commons is no Judicatory nor cannot do so much as can any ordinary Justice of Peace Administer an Oath The House of Lords Spiritual and Temporal make up the other two Estates and are a Court of Judicatory when assembled together by the King's Order they can determine finally in Legal Differences between Man and Man And if Bribery should unhappily get footing in that House the usual Punishment thereof ought naturally to follow But at the same time what is unhandsomly taken without the knowledge of a Peer by any of his Family be it Wife Son Daughter or Servant it cannot be charged upon himself as a Fault if he have no accession to the Thing I should be heartily glad and I think it would contribute both for the Honour and God of the Nation That there might be an established and explained Law against all taking of Money in both Houses to compass which I think it would be fit to go to the most necessary ways to reform a House of Commons There be two radical Evils that ought to be remedied the one is The manner of Elections where besides all the usual Disorders and Debauche to excess there Reigns a popular Partiality for the Richest or Profusest to run away with the Election upon any occasion and Vertue which is generally modest to be neglected But the greater is Many Men of uneasy Circumstances do get into being Parliament-men and keep there as in a Sanctuary to secure their Estates and Persons from just Debts From which last Source intolerable in a well-governed Nation there is given a natural and necessary handle to take and retain what in Conscience ought to be paid innumerable Families suffering by an abused Constitution so much famed as being the Nations great Barricade against the Enemies of Liberty and Property the darling of Mankind and without which they must be uneasie and unhappy What our House has done in confining or expelling two of its Members to vindicate the Honour of its illustrious Body does not want Censure and Obloquy from the most sensible part of the Nation and Strangers who know not to this day upon what Law the displeasure was founded You seem satisfied to rally the Misfortune of two Gentlemen and while you endavor to descend your Malice to Posterity they have still a sufficient stock of Vertue to defend them It 's true you say it will look but with an ill Grace beyond Sea to hear of one of the English Parliaments sent to the Tower for Bribery so great a Name for the most incorrupted Body of Men in all Christendom has the House of Commons of England ver born Believe me Sir as you do not seem Learned at home so give me leave to conclude you Ignorant of the abroad World Strangers understand so little of our Constitution that hardly any Foreigner has writ tolerable of the Forms or Power of our House and to believe us an incorrupted Body what greater Arguments can be taken against that than from your own Mouth Who often have been heard to aver That in former Reigns many Members of the House of Commons were Pensioners to King Charles the Second and the French King and that certain Sums of Money so appointed had been put at the Roots of Trees in St. James's Park and other hidden Corners where afterwards the Parliament-men went or sent to fetch them But the Misfortune was there was no search made into the Matter then Sir I cannot enough admire why you are so hard upon Mr. G. It may be he has not paid you the Deference and Respect you expected of him or has he incurred your Displeasure as did unhappily once the Master of a Tavern for neglecting to give you the first and lowest Bow or according to the manner of some other
and Satisfaction to see him bring low the only Monarch in Condition to hurt him and us and by his own Example and Chastisement of bad Men put a Stop to Corruptions crept in among us In the following Period you seem to write Vainly for you are not to be understood What do you mean by our being Masters of a Sea to which we never pretended If to be Masters in the Mediterranean be to to have a large Share of the Land on both its Banks to have good Harbours Authority or Command of the Flag there is nothing less We have not one Creek or Bay from Hercules Pillars to St. Jean d'Acre which is the whole streach We have neither Solum Caelum nor Portus in all that vast Gulf. And if you understand by being Masters that we have got the most powerful Fleet in the Mediterranean there you are Right but your Position is False For Oliver Cromwel was in that Sense Master long ago when he sent a Fleet against the African Corsairs and to his Honour made them redeliver not only all English but Christian Slaves and then England without the help of any Confederate was so But you bring us in having a Pretention there of late have a care Sir what you say His Catholique Majesty and all States who conterminate that Share will take it ill if we should fix a Pretention to our Force and perhaps deny us Ports and send us back to the Ocean where you say likewise we are Masters in vain I take this your Position to be in some Sense true though I could be satisfied you would likewise define what you understand by the Ocean Whether it be all Seas that are not Imbayed Or whether it be only where we have a Right to the Flag Before the War most Men allowed Holland it self though inferior to England in marine Power equal at least to France and no body but together think they are Invincible and the greatest Sea Force the World ever saw and all happily under the command of so great a King But by the way If Force make us Masters in the Ocean we are undoubtedly so but if together with our Force we have a Pretention to a Superiority in our own Seas and thereby a right to the Flag then indeed it is in vain that we are Masters while we are used like Fellow-Servants by the Danes and Suedes both which Nations in the space of eight Months have braved our Flag not only in remoter Places but in the View of our Royal Forts and Castles even in the Downs An Accident that has not happen'd within this Century nor in the Seven last Reigns But it is not to be thought that a King of so great Wisdom and Courage as is King William can easiy part with a Right of which this Nation is particularly fond and whereof it has been immemorially possessed I believe Sir the English Courage was never called in question in the time of profoundest Peace and there are many Instances of it by Sea and Land even then I allow us to be happy in being under the Conduct and Example of so great a King and Captain and I hope as it is not in vain that we are restored to our Laws and Liberties so I trust we shall never feel the Miseries of other Nations though we are not exempted from some of our own and those even great ones I shall not pursue your repeated Vanities any further for if Vertue Probity and Love to our Country be wanting and if the Foundation of our Happiness by Corruption and other inglorious Practices be sapped we are in a fair way to be miserable But I hope you will be kind to our falling Condition and give us one Word of Comfort e're you end His Majesty will certainly reap Triumphal Honour for his warlike Actions and Toil and I am sorry that I must give way to your Prophetick Reproch in the Mouths of after Ages That these Nations might have been happy but would not The World was once blest with an Epaminondas Truly Sir I am assured it is not long since your self was blest with the Knowledge of that brave Greek he might have passed with you for a King of Tartary since the Revolution All the flourish of Epaminondas you bring in may serve as well for your next Pamphlet as for this And why not his Cotemporary Pelopidas who had some nay a great Share in that critical Glory of Thebes And though you are pleased to say That the glorious Actions of Epaminondas served only to render the Fall of Thebes more conspicuous and less pitied I am of Opinion that the Thebeans lost their Liberty with the greatest Honour For their City did not out-live the Vertue of their Citizens as did Sparta Athens Corinth Argos Massine and even that Triumphant Rome herself fell a Prey to the base hands of barbarous Nations after she had long out-lived the great Vertue and heroick Valour of so many Councellors and Captains while small Thebes fell by a no less Person than the great Alexander and in so Tragical a Manner as every one may say That there was more Revenge than Honour in the Action and more of Barbarian than Grecian For the Thebeans having after the Death of the common Enemy to Greece and its Liberty struck off the Macedonian Yoke the Athenians upon the march of Alexander's Army returned to their Slavery But the magnanimous Thebeans stood it out and though their Force was inferior to their Courage they did what was humanly possible for them in so great a Strait In fine their Force was beaten the Citizens put to the Sword or sold as Slaves And while the Aged and some Women whom the Enemies Swords had spared begged the unclement Conqueror by the Memory of the good Education bestowed by their City upon his Father Philip where he had been once Hostage in his Youth and by the Memory of Hercules to whom this City had given Life and of whom the great Alexander himself descended to spare at least their innocent Walls the Intercession was in vain slaughter raged every where and Thebes was rased After you have gon over three Parts of the World to adorn your Pamphlet and over all manner of History within your Knowledge you cannot rest satisfied without a Voyage to the new World where if you can find neither State Kingdom nor Philosopher you will have it from a Vice-roy of Mexico You might have saved Charges and have staid at hom It is an ordinary Saying That the greatest Criminals are safe at the Old Baily and every where else in England provided they have Money to buy themselves off Next you bring in Cato and Solomon The first was too good for the Age he lived in and the other foresaw the Danger that attends a rigid Vertue in degenerated Times Your Sense is not easily understood foresee relates to the Future and your that attends to the Present But I will not hit your Grammatical Sores I
know you do not understand Grammar It were happy for a vertuous Man according to your Opinion to be lost in the Croud If he comes to be known he runs the Hazard of being undone It may be thought by your excellent Advice that some preaching Philosopher is up in your Person I am willing to unceil and disabuse the Multitude and to tell them That by all Characters given you hang out a fair Colour upon as bad a Bulk as any It is said That some of your own Country being unwilling you should put the same Cheat upon us in this Place as you have done at home had framed the History of your obscure Birth and Life with all its black Articles attested by Men of Probity and Honour and that some good-natured English Men had intreated or bought off the Edge of their Anger upon your Application to them in the Thing But that unhappily there is still an authentique preserved to which they pretend to add a Second Part of your Transactions here in England Where besides Ingratitude Disingenuity and want of Integrity in all your Dealing you are said to be Perjured back and fore that is Sir both ways in a late calumnious Suit stirred up by you against some honest Gentlemen But seeing there is a possibility you may amend your Errors I will not open a Shrine to send your infected Manners over the World being you are a Stranger to me and what I write is only that Mankind may be aware of your Impostors and Villanies But to come back with you to your new Friend Epicurus that ancient Philosopher is but your late Acquaintance neither And to say the truth you cultivate your first Friendship very honourably with him after your having explained his Sentiment of Happiness you are pleasep to vindicate him from all Aspersions his Reputation lies under from a calumnious and foul-mouth'd World I must tell you though there is one of the most eloquent and wise Men of all Greece you have taken upon your Top who has writ a particular Treatise against your sensible Philosopher's Doctrine and it were worth your while to peruse it After all I perceive your Friendship is not without some Self-interest you have screwed from about him though with very hard Labour a very wandering and vagabond Similitude to make up another Sentence When Honour was the Reward of Vertue it was more courted than now is Gold and a Triumph or Statue at Rome was infinitely more valued than all the Riches of the East Your Sublime Infinite and Immortal you are pleased to croud every where are Words beyond common reach and methinks enter with as much Decency and Order in your Expressions as should do a Church-Steeple in every ordinary Dwelling-house There have been Instances in all Ages where there have been Men of Vertue but I confess Rome has given more Examples than most other Cities But it is a terrible Skip betwixt the most vertuous and high Time of Romes primitive Glory and the Reign of Queen Elizabeth betwixt your immortal Heroes that affected a Triumph or Statue above all the Gold in the East and an obscure English ' Squire in 1588. If you was resolved to burn Incense to any Friend or Benefactor in the City or Country descended of that Tilbury Heroe you had another Time and Place for it than this Here it is you bring strange and little Gods to the Capitol without leave of the Senate Was there never another English Man since the Creation of bulk enough in Vertue to stand just next the Romans What do you think of many English Kings The brave Talbots Father and Son whom one of our ablest Pens do oppose to all Antiquity And to whom the best of the French Historians now extant gives the Elogy in few Words Talbot le plus brave de sa Nation le plus zele pour sa Gloire But as to our Gentleman who only proposed to be Knighted a Mark of Favour in those Days granted but to a few It would seem your Design in this Period next That to gratifie your Friend is to reflect upon the present easiness to confer and obtain Honours and yet the Merit you pretend to is no Instance of that being you have not as yet obtained any But to deal curteously with you seeing you are pleased to honour my Country-man's Loyalty and Fidelity I will do the like for yours They say it is the Custom of your Land when your King's Host for so you call his Army is in the Field that upon the Occasion there be many Gentlemen who bring 800 or 1000 Men into the Service and after with great Toil and Patience they have served out the Compaigne return joyfully to their Wifes and Families without looking for or expecting any Reward for their Fatigue and Danger besides that Roman one of having done their Duty to their King and Country And upon the matter I think your Country-men preferable to our own only we are better used to Trade than you are and love to have something for our Pains was it never so little Your Passion and Regret of the Instability of human Greatness in the Person of the great Lord Chancellor Bacon is good and tender in you but there were other Grounds for his sad Fall besides a present of Plate Buttons taken by one of his Servants The Earl of Middlesex was no less unhappy in being arraigned for Corruption and Bribery These be Arguments of the Severity of Fortune and Justice of the Nation at a Time with the last of which I confess I am led along to believe That besides the Honour that ought to rest in the Bosom of every Peer as a Judge of the Land an accumulated Office of the highest Trust the Crown can give is a Thing so tender clean and delicate of it self that the smallest Tash ought to be expiated with that severe Chastisement Bribery does deserve Perhaps you say I will tell you That those who gave our late Speaker the Gratuity mentioned in our Votes were to blame and you think not After which you bring in the most ungentlemanly and ill Similitude in the World Give me leave Sir to say I know not which rides the foremost Horse your Malice or Ignorance It is good to vindicate ones Friends but that must be done by the way of Honour and Justice which last is only known by the Law interposed betwixt Man and Man and is the Light the Nation walks by If a Man of that sordid Principle will not do you Justice without Money you know not why you may not give it him Here is in this Sentence both a Mistake and Calumny The Speaker of the House of Commons is no Judge you can require nothing at his hand but dispatch and that is pinned to so many various Accidents That a Preference in point of Time is an extraordinary Favour in the uncertain sitting of a Parliament And if a Multitude or single Person offer of their own accord a
than was the Sicilian Tyrant The happy Philosopher was too wisefor the unclement Tyrant but our happy Courts are too wise for Philosophers Come in what Shape they will or with what Suit they please unless they will or can speak to the Fist are sure to be rejected But what a hopeful Condition is the Nation in when it comes to this Where Money without Merit will open the Doors Fools and Knaves will be sure to enter sooner than honest Men. You have no Reason to complain you are an Example and Instance where neither Merit nor Money made open the Door For your entry into a Place that would have much better fitted an honest Man And to embellish your Character of Gratitude you have so well recompensed your Benefactor for the Thing that he has been constrained to forbid you any more coming to his House being you detracted from and defamed that Learned Prelate where-ever you came preferring your own Pen to his You are pleased very ignorantly to bring in and misapply a Story from the Chatlet of Paris in the Reign of Francis the First of which I take no further Notice than to recommend you as many have done already to your Studies and no more to expose your self seeing you are not now in Want and Necessity Now you arrive at your last and Romantick Page in this Period it is that you restore England to her Glory and Splendor You give us the Comfort after so many Examples of Corruption and Vice That the Body of the Nation is as yet incorrupted That our Judges Ministers of State and almost all Men in Places of Trust do what they can to bring Honour and Justice into request by their Example And what more can we wish for What more can be said of the best Ages Rome or Greece in their meridian Glory ever beheld This is not to be worse than was Rome in the Days of Antoninus Is not this to give the Lye to all the rest of your Pamphlet A Shrewsbery a Pembroke a Sommers or a Holt are not to be found in every Age. You might have added Nor in any Kingdom save England You bestow your Incense very sparingly one would think you had been Footman under Leonidas before Alexander's Conquest in the East Learn to be more sumptuous when you entertain Men of the first Quality and of so rare Merit It is true you distinguish them from the rest of the Nation you grant them an honourable Apartment by themselves you separate them from the Croud you grant them a favourable stroke of your Pen But what is that to their Character Your bare Expression of every Age is a hackney Honour it will serve every where it will accommodate Vice as well as Vertue If you will have so many Mecena's you ought to provide them a suitable Entertainment Where is now your Infinite Sublime and Immortal Cannot you bestow some part of the Honour upon English Men of the first Quality and Merit you have done upon Roman Citizens and Soldiers Shall the French King's Subjects in spight of all the horid Invasions made by that Monarch upon their Liberties and of the innumerable Hardships and Miseries his Ambition has brought upon them continue yet to serve him and their Country with an inviolable Fidelity I admired all along to find so little concerning the French King and his Qualities he has been upon several Occasions your very helpful Friend and furnished you Matter for many admirable Sallies of Wit and Eloquence And to say the truth you have treated him very Cavalierly he has neither been beholding to his being of the same Elood with our Kings nor to the Rank he holds in the World They have been weak and feeble Defences and Lines against your Attaques But I am afraid you have out-run your Inclinations and by your Pen in this your Period granted him to be full Master of the illustrious Crimes the noble Romans possessed and by which instead of stooping as you say to so low a Quarry as Gold they became Lords of the World Truly Sir Emulation being set aside for the which there is no great Ground in the Age we live among Princes you have often allowed that Monarch Ambition and Thirst after Dominion in a supreme Manner and made these his Qualities the original Source of the many Streams of human Blood which have run for so many Years almost over all the Fields of Europe But you seem to begin to attone a little for your illustrious Criminal in allowing him the Vertue and Conduct to keep the Love and Good-will of an oppressed and ruined People still chained to his Service with an inviolable Fidelity Is not this to exalt the French King with a Witness You propose us the French Subjects as an Example of Imitation notwithstanding all the cruel Oppressions put upon their Liberties by their King and desire us therein to imitate our Enemies in what is Noble and Just meaning the French Submission and Love to an oppressing King To let pass your severe Reflexion upon all French Protestants I hope his Majesty has no Reason nor never shall have any to doubt of the Affections of his good People we hold our Lives Liberties and our All of his Majesty It was his great and gallant Undertaking his Conduct and indefatigable Pains his rare and distinguished Wisdom have brought us to what we so happily enjoy under his most auspicious Reign But Sir your Morals and Politiques seems to have changed their Course and Channel Do you remember what you have writ for these Six Years by gone Do you know upon what Foot the Nation stands It is not long since this your French Example you propose would have been looked on as an Intention in you to endeavour the Subversion of the Government And you are pleased to call it Just and Noble in any oppressed People whose All is seized who have nothing in Property nay nor in Reversion inviolably to love and adhere to such a Master as they have Truly had the two Gentlemen who gave occasion to your scandalous Pamphlet used such Language in Print established Law could have gone far enough in punishing the Crime and then it had been time for you to have levelled what Spite Ignorance or Malice could suggest against them Though I dare say for what is past they Undervalue Pity and Contemn you I dare say Passive Obedience was never preached with more Art in the last Reign than you do it in this your last Period Besides you ruin and undermine the Foundation of the present Establishment And while our King does what 's possible to raise us to at least an equal Level with them in point of War Let us not fall short of them in those Vertues that make a Peace when it comes to be Lasting and Happy This is as an unhappy a Sentence as you could have stumbled upon to make the Vertues necessary for the Nation in time of Peace an inviolable Fidelity whatever Fate the poor Subject may meet withal and this you desire we may transcribe from the French Copy This was not your Advice upon England in the late Revolution Was there no other well-governed Nation in Europe you could have proposed for our Imitation besides those we fight against to bestow upon some Thousands of miserable Ones we daily hear of or see among us the dear Liberty and Country they are expelled and torn from What do you mean by our King 's doing what is possible to raise us to at least c. We never expected Impossibilities from the King we believe his Majesty a great Captain and at the Head of a numerous Army that he will do what 's fit to be done in the War Whereas you seem to make a previous and anteceding Excuse as if you foresaw Matters would fall short of our Expectation To an equal Level The Expression is neither Sense nor English Besides it will not suit our Affairs to go no farther For what you understand by That is to be in a Condition only never to end the War or to be always in fear it may break out with more Violence We must be in a superior Sphere to our Enemies and we have reason to believe it may fall out so We have his Majesties Royal Word besides repeated Assurances from beyond Seas that the Progress of the French Arms is stopt that an End is put to that furious Career and we are perswaded of it by the Channel the War now runs in by their having changed its Method the King being Aggressor And his having broke the French Barrier where strongest with all the Circumstances of Fame and Glory to himself and of Shame and Dishonour to his Enemies But I am glad to hear the happy Word Peace begins to be heard and appear within our Horizon after so long and cruel a War I dare say though it be in the Nature and for the Interest of some Persons to love that War may be continued and your own in particular there are many more who wish it at an end provided that may be so accomplished as to liberat us from further Apprehensions of what is or may be destructive or fatal to the true Interest Religion Liberty and Honour of England Having finished to answer your Libel permit me so far to be Nationally affected as to say Wherever the Three Estates or any of them pursues violently a New Emergent as a Politique Sore without Law Arbitrary Power lies in that Case as heavy upon the Subject as if the King invaded their Right There is a Remedy for the Evil It is consentaneous and agreeable to the best defined human Wisdom That Temper intervene until positive Law distinguish what ought to be done from what ought to be avoided And this I take to be a Maxim inseparable from every well-established Government I have done and do assure you That you take many more Liberties than Honour or good Sense can allow any Man But am Yours FINIS