Selected quad for the lemma: friend_n
Text snippets containing the quad
|
ID |
Title |
Author |
Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) |
STC |
Words |
Pages |
|
A25599
|
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
|
|
1695
(1695)
|
Wing A3417; ESTC R110
|
23,110
|
60
|
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
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