is undeniable but then those reasons ought to be alledged and proved for the turning a man out of Service is certainly in many cases a great punishment tho not equal to hanging The People themselves are highly concerned in the great Ministers of State who are Servants to the Kingdom as well as to the King and the Commons whose business it is to present all Grievances as they are most likely to observe soonest the folly and treachery of those publick Servants the greatest of all Grievances so this representation ought to have no little weight with the Prince Here is the true reason as long as the Ministers look upon themselves as the Kings Servants they will adhere to the Crown but if they be taught once that they are Servants to the People too then because it is difficult to serve two Masters they will be more distracted and act more timorously especially if according to the modern distinction the Country-Party get the Ascendent of the Court-Party in a Parliament Queen Elizabeth told the Commons by the Lord Keeper that she misliked that such irreverence towards Privy-Counsellors who were not to be accounted as Common Knights and Burgesses of the House that are Counsellors but during the Parliament whereas the other are standing Counsellors and for their Wisdom and great Service are called to the Council of State They were not then thought to be such publick Servants as might be treated at any rate sent to the Tower or to carry up a Bill to the Lords against which they had given their Vote as if it were to triumph over them But Henry IV. a wise and a brave Prince in the Fifth year of his Reign turned out four of his Servants only because the Commons desired they might be removed But then this Prince had no Title and therefore was not in a capacity to dispute any thing with them and in this very Parliament too they gave him so extraordinary a Tax and so troublesom to the Subject that they would not suffer any Record of it to be left in the Treasury and he was obliged to grant them this extraordinary favour in recompence of it He had but newly in Battel conquered one Rebellion wherein Mortimers Title was at the bottom and was ingaged then in a War with France And he had reason to fear a general Defection of the Nation King Richard being reported to be alive And he was then in great want of Money so that for such a Prince so beset to grant any thing was far from a wonder but ought no more to be drawn into Example than that Tax they then gave him and least of all now when things are in a very different posture But then all these Ministers are censured for doing that which was approved by two of the three Estates The Resolve was this That all persons who advised his Majesty in his last Message to this House to insist upon an opinion against the Bill for Excluding the Duke of York have given pernicious Counsel to his Majesty and are promoters of Popery and Enemies to the King and Kingdom Now this Bill was before this thrown out by the House of Lords and therefore there was no reason to Vote the Ministers Enemies to the King and Kingdom for doing that which was approved by two of the three Estates in Parliament But they ought not to have appealed to the People against their own Representatives Why not The unfortunate Reigns of Henry III. Edward II. Richard II. and Henry VI. ought to serve as Land-marks to warn succeeding Kings from preserring secret Councils to the wisdom of their Parliaments And so ought the Example of his Majesties Father to warn both his Majesty and the whole Nation how they suffer the Ministers of State to be trodden under foot by Factious men and the Prerogatives of the Crown to be swallowed up by pretended Priviledges of Parliament for all these things have once already made way for the Ruine of the Monarchy as that did for the enslaving of the People The next thing my Author falls upon is the business of the Revenue but here I cannot imagine what he would have he makes a long Harangue against Alienation of the Revenues of the Crown and about the reasonableness of Resumptions of those that had been alienated And tells us No Country did ever believe the Prince how absolute soever in other things had power to sell or give away the Revenue of the Kingdom and leave his Successor a Beggar That the haughty French Monarch as much power as he pretends to is not ashamed to own that he wanted power to make such Alienations and that Kings had that happy inability that they could do nothing contrary to the Laws of their Country This and much more my Author hath upon this occasion learnedly but very impertinently written about these two Votes believing his Reader could not distinguish betwixt an Alienation and an Anticipation But the best way to have this clearly understood is to insert the Votes of the Commons which are as followeth Resolved That whosoever shall hereafter lend or cause to be lent by way of Advance any money upon the Branches of the Kings Revenue arising by Customs Excise or Hearth-money shall be adjudged to hinder the sitting of Parliaments and shall be responsible for the same in Parliament Resolved That whosoever shall accept or buy any Tally of Anticipation upon any part of the Kings Revenue or whoseever shall pay such Tally hereafter to be struck shall be adjudged to hinder the sitting of Parliaments and shall be responsible therefore in Parliament Now what Advancing money upon the Revenues and accepting Tallys of Anticipation have to do with Alienation of it I cannot devise For certainly it is one thing to advance a Fine and take a Farm so much the cheaper for three four or seven years and another thing to purchase the same to a man and his Heirs for ever And it is one thing to receive an Order to take such a Sum of Money of the Tenant out of the next half years Rent and a quite other thing to purchase the Feesimple of an Estate which is an Alienation The Revenues of the Crown of England are in their own nature appropriated to Publick Service and therefore cannot without injustice be diverted or Anticipated May not an Anticipation be as well imployed upon the Publick Service as a growing Revenue when it is become due Does Anticipation signifie mispending or diverting from a Publick to a private use Is it impossible the Publick should at any time need a greater Sum of money than the Revenue will afford and may not a Prince in such a case Anticipate and afterward get it up again by his good Husbandry No for Either the Publick Revenue is sufficient to answer the necessary occasions of the Government and then there is no colour for Anticipations or else by some extraordinary Accident the King
four they fell upon the Exclusion Bill and that being rejected by the Lords they fell upon the Revenue and seemingly Voted the King a Bankrupt Jar. 7. by declaring that no man ought to trust him further than he had ready money nor lend him any and Declared that several eminent men of the Privy Counsellors were favourers of Popery and enemies to the King and Kingdom and for which and the other things they were dissolved then comes that at Oxford with the Votes I have recited for which and for insisting upon the Bill for Excluding the Duke of York they were dissolved Could none of these Parliaments have tried the Popish Lords without these things Yes doubtless they might but they would not but kept these Lords in the Tower that whatever provocation they should give the King to Dissolve or Prorogue them still the clamour might be that it was to prevent their Trials And I am fully persuaded there are some men in England would almost choose to be hanged themselves rather than be deprived of this glorious and popular pretence of insensing the People against the King and the Court. If there be no other Evidence of the Unparliamentary and mean Solicitations used to promote this pretended Rejection of the Commons Accusation than this scurvy Hint in my Author which he acknowledgeth not fit to be remembred tho he cannot forbear Printing it I suppose it is but a small part of the Nation that will be extremely sensible of it But yet however if their Impeachment had not been rejected Fitz-Harris had long since been executed or deserved mercy by a full discovery of these malicious designs against the King and People and the secret Authors of them And that he would certainly have done to have saved his own life and then we should have had an opportunity to have made the World believe that the King did hire Fitz-Harris to raise a Rebellion against himself to defame himself and insense the minds of the People against him for thus he defamed the King at his Trial. This was all he could do to merit a Pardon by and this he did at his Trial but was able to produce no testimony to back it But this Trial occasioned strange talk in Westminster Hall and Questions were raised of a strange nature that will never have a determination in any inferiour Court but will assuredly at one time or other have a further Examination These questions were moved then by Fitz-Harris his Counsel and need never be determined By the Term in the Declaration of the Lords having done themselves right by refusing to admit the Impeachment he hath discovered the Penman of the Declaration and says he has done himself and the Nation Right and discovered himself by using his ordinary Phrase upon this occasion Now I thought verily the next word would have been his Name no but stay you there The Person is well known without naming him who always tells men they have done themselves no right when he is resolved to do them none Now cannot I tell any more whom he means by this private token than the man in the Moon and if he had graciously vouchsafed to have whispered his name in my Ear and I had known that he had usually thus expressed himself yet I should still be a little jealous some Frenchman or other might be the Author of it because my Author hath given full as good evidence Page 5. to prove it was so As for the Commons nothing says my Author was carried on to extremity by them nothing done but what was Parliamentary they could not desire a Conference till they had first stated their own Case and asserted by Votes the matter which they were to maintain at a Conference This was done effectually in the first part of the first and second Vote without adding That the refusal of the Lords to proceed in Parliament upon such Impeachment is a denial of Justice and a violation of the Constitution of Parliaments and in the second Vote and an obstruction to the further discovery of the Popish Plot and of great danger to his Majesties Person and the Protestant Religion Here the Declaration lays the stress of the business and says That when either of the Houses are so far transported as to pass such Votes concerning the proceedings of the other without Conferences first had to examine upon what grounds such proceedings are made and how far they might be justified this puts the Two Houses out of a Capacity of Transacting business together and consequently is the greatest violation of the Constitution of Parliaments Now surely the House of Commons might have asserted their Right without these Expressions which must needs insense the Lords especially when they were Printed and spread over the whole Nation But the House of Commons was so far from thinking themselves to be out of a Capacity of Transacting with the Lords any further that they were preparing to send a Message for a Conference to Accommodate this difference at the very instant when the Black Rod called them to their dissolution But this it is very probable was not known to his Majesty so that it came too late to save them If every difference in Opinion and Vote should put the Two Houses out of a Capacity of transacting business together every Parliament must be dissolved as soon as called Now Sir I could never have thought that it is so usual a thing for the Two Houses to make such Votes as these against each other I am persuaded the Lords would never have treated with the Commons if a Conference had been demanded till the Conclusions of the first and second Vote had been recanted But the Ministers promoted this difference between the Two Houses what did any of them dictate these Votes and then broke the Parliament lest it should be composed And for this my Author gives you his own honest word over again in the next Page and hopes no man will be so hard-hearted as not to believe him But my Author hath another quarrel against the Ministers because they censure these Votes of the Commons as the greatest violation of the Constitution of Parliaments They ought certainly says my Author to have excepted the power which is here assumed of giving such a Judgment and Publishing such a charge as being not only the highest violation of the Constitution but directly tending to the destruction of it Well then I for my part will never undertake to defend them in it Aut I have observed one thing in these debates that the Priviledges of the House of Commons are not much unlike the Power claimed by the Pope which is to judge all men and to be judged by no man So that whatever they are pleased to call Priviledge of Parliament I am bound to believe is so with an implicit faith For these Priviledges of Parliament are known to none but those that sit in St. Stephens Chappel and if
had been but for half an hour he would not have consented to it because of the ill consequences it might have hereafter the Militia being wholly in the Crown c. Now I believe it would be difficult for my Author to make and prove the like instance in any of our former Princes And in the first of the short Westminster Parliaments his Majesty passed the Act for the better securing of the Liberty of the Subject and for preventing imprisonment beyond Seas to which an honourable Person adds The Act against quartering of Souldiers upon the Subject and saith his Majesty might have had many Millions for these Acts if he had insisted on a bargain or known how to distinguish between his own private Interest and that of the Subject or the truckling way of Bartering when the good of his People was concerned And in the last short-lived Westminster Parliament his Majesty passed the Act against Importation of Irish Cattel for no other visible cause but because both Houses had passed it tho it tended to the Diminution of his Revenue And now let us see how gratefully our Author treats him for all these Royal and Prince-like Favours Therefore the Favorites did little consult his Majesties Honour when they bring him in solemnly declaring to his Subjects that his intentions were as far as would have consisted with the very Being of the Government to have complied with any thing that could have been proposed to him to accomplish those Ends he had mentioned which were the satisfying the desires of his Subjects and securing them against all their just fears when they are not able to produce an instance wherein they suffered him to comply in any one thing Whatever the House of Commons Addressed for was certainly denied tho it was only for that reason and there was no surer way of Intituling ones self to the favour of the Court than to receive a Censure from the representative body of the People As to the Addresses made by the House of Commons alone they were many of them such as his Majesty could not comply with without great mischief to himself or them that had exprest the greatest Zeal for his Service and when for that case only they seemed to be persecuted it would have been very impolitick in his Majesty tho he had been his own man and not under the dominion of the Favorites as it seems he was to have yielded to the Commons against them But cannot the Favorites instance wherein they suffered his Majesty to comply in any one thing with the House of Commons Did not his Majesty at their single request Pardon a great many Informers against the Plotters Did he not pardon B. Harris too his 500 l. Fine and Imprisonment which he had incurred by Printing disloyal and seditious Pamphlets Did not his Majesty upon their Address discharge all the Protestant Dissenters who were then under prosecution upon several Penal Statutes without paying Fees as far as it could be done according to Law and promise also to recommend them to the Judges There might many other instances be given of moneys issued out of persons taken care for and the like upon the single request of the Commons so that I cannot but wonder where my Authors modesty was when he pressed the Favorites to give one instance of his Majesties compliance with the House of Commons But his Majesty and the Court were kind to all that received any Censure from the representative body of the People They might thank themselves for that who bestowed their Censures so freely on men that had deserved very well of his Majesty and the Government and yet I believe there may be some instances given of men whom they Censured or imprisoned that have not been mightily advanced since by the Court but let us examine those few particular Examples my Author hath marked out Let it for the present be admitted saith my Author that some of the things desired by that Parliament were exorbitant and because we will put the objection as strong as is possible inconsistent with the very being of the Government yet at least some of their Petitions were more reasonable Doubtless there was some such which therefore were freely granted by his Majesty as I have proved The Government might have subsisted though the Gentlemen put out of the Commission of the Peace for their zealous acting against the Papists had been restored And so might the Protestant Religion by Law established be preserved without the assistance of these zealous Gentlemen and therefore his Majesty was not to be instructed by these Representatives whom he should imploy as Justices of the Peace especially after they had discovered so much kindness for the Dissenters who have something an odd Notion of Papists and Popery Nor would a final Dissolution of all things have ensued tho Sir George Jefferies had been removed out of all Publick Offices or my Lord Hallifax himself from his Majesties Presence and Councils The first of these Sir George Jefferies was then Recorder of London and was prosecuted by a part of the City for that he by traducing and obstructing Petitioning for the sitting of that Parliament had betrayed the Rights of the Subject Now that Gentleman opposed them as many others did in obedience to his Majesties Proclamation and the Laws of the Land and it was a little unreasonable that his Majesty should joyn with the Commons to ruine him though it could be made out that his Majesties Proclamation was illegal and that there were a mistake also in the point of Law My Lord Hallifax was prosecuted only for opposing the Bill for disinheriting the Duke of York in the House of Lords and no fault whatsoever laid to his charge Now he being a Member of that House it had been very unreasonable for his Majesty to have punished him for using his own just and legal freedom in a case especially wherein his Majesty had declared his own resolution so very often before Now Sir tho these two Persons are not essentially necessary to the preservation of the Government yet it is absolutely so that his Majesty do not give up those that have faithfully and legally served him in their proper Stations either to please the People or their Representatives without a legal trial and a just defence We may all remember what the Consequences of his Majesties Fathers giving up the Earl of Strafford in the beginning of the late troubles were and I hope I shall never live to see that sort of compliance reacted again Had the Statute of 35. Eliz. which had justly slept for Eighty years and of late unreasonably revived been repealed surely the Government might still have been safe And though the Fanaticks perhaps had not deserved so well as that in favour to them his Majesty should have passed that Bill yet since the Repeal might hereafter be of great use to those of the Church of England in case of a Popish
he was of the Kings Speech I cannot say because it is not in my power to examine those Articles But his mentioning our obligation to assist Spain in the West-Indies and Philippine Islands where it is impossible against the Duke of Brandenburg and the King of Portugal where it would be unjust and against his Protestant Subjects opprest by him as they were by his Grandfather Philip are such things would make a man suspect his sincerity a little and the rather because his Majesty tells us The League was suitable to that which he had before with the States of the Vnited Provinces and they also had with Spain consisting of mutual obligations of Succour and Defence Now the account my Author gives of it is in part so impossible and in the rest so improbable that no Mortal in his right Wits can believe that Spain should desire or England grant any such things And therefore if he had at all expected to have been believed he ought to have Transcribed those three Articles for a proof of what he had said And whereas he tells us it engages us indefinitely to enter into all the quarrels of the Spaniards That if true will bear a fair Construction and will no more oblige us to those things he mentions if they be not express'd nay I think I may say if they be in plain terms than it will to help the King of Spain to destroy our selves in case he should happen to have a quarrel with us hereafter For no League can bind any further than as it is just and possible But that which concerns us yet nearer saith my Author in this League is that this obligation of Assistance was mutual so that if a Disturbance should happen hereafter in England upon any attempt to change our Religion or our Government tho it was in the time of his Majesties Successors The most Catholick King is obliged by this League which we are still to believe was entered into for the security of the Protestant Religion and the good of the Nation to give aid to so pious a design and to make War upon their Majesties the People with all his Forces both by Land and Sea And therefore it was no wonder that the Ministers were not forward in shewing this League to the Parliament who would have soon observed all these inconveniences and have seen how little such a League could contribute to the preserving the General Peace or to the securing of Flanders since the French King may within one months time possess himself of it and we by our League are not obliged to send our Succours till three months after the Invasion so that they would upon the whole matter have been inclined to suspect that the main end of this League was only to serve for a handsom pretence to raise an Army in England and if the People here should grow discontented at it and any little disorders should ensue The Spaniard is thereby obliged to send over Forces to suppress them This is fraught with such rare new Politicks and he has taken such care to make Rebellion safe whether it happens in his Majesties time or in his Successors especially if it were in order to the preservation of our Religion and Government and wo be to the man that begins one on any other pretence that I thought sit to transcribe it intire But Sir whatever the Spaniard hath promised or the Ministers intended against the People must needs come to nothing for you know that his Affairs were lately through the defects of his own Government and the Treachery of our Ministers reduced to so desperate a state that he might well be a Burthen to us but there was little to be hoped for from a friendship with him and therefore as little in hast to be feared from his Forces too if he should be so Popishly inclined as to think it a Pious design to help the King to bring in Arbitrary Government by the handsom pretence of an Army raised for his assistance or that and Popery too in the time of his Majesties Successor to which this Gentleman knows no man better the People have no Maw tho the Ministers have a filthy inclination and therefore cunningly took care by their Treachery to reduce his Affairs whose help they chiefly relied on into that desperate condition we lately see them in Well but for all that he may recover some part of his ancient Power yes who doubts that to hurt us but not to help us And now no man can blame the Ministers that they were not forward in shewing this League to the Parliament who would doubtless have forthwith Addressed to the King against them and ushered it in with a Vote that they were all of them Promoters of Popery and Spanish Counsels and Enemies to the King and Kingdom By this League in seems the King was not obliged to send over any Succours till three months after an Invasion tho it is as plain as the Nose on a mans face that the French King may in one months time possess himself of Flanders He may however take longer time if he please for any care was taken here to prevent it so that if his Majesty had taken a little too long a time to send in his Aids which all things considered few men will think he did yet they that should have backed him in it have taken a longer time and therefore ought not to complain The next thing saith my Author recommended to them was the further Examination of the Plot and every one who have observed what has passed for more than two years together cannot doubt but that this was sincerely desired by such as are most in credit with his Majesty And then surely the Parliament deserved not to be censured upon this account since the Examination of so many new Witnesses the Trial of the Lord Stafford the great preparations for the trial of the rest of the Lords and their diligent inquiry into the Horrid Irish Treasons shew that the Parliament wanted no diligence to pursue his Majesties good intentions in that affair Now Sir If they had but suspended the Bill for disinheriting the Duke of York and their Votes that followed upon the throwing it out in the Lords House and could but have held their hands from sending for their fellow-Subjects into Custody till they had dispatched this great Affair tried all the other Lords in the Tower it is thought by wiser men than I they might have had time enough to have gone through with this business but some body tells us the Plot was to be kept on foot else they would be defeated It was to be used like the Holy War always a doing never done withal till it made way for some other designs that would not go merrily without the noise of a Plot to drive them When his Majesty desired from the Parliament their Advice and assistance concerning the Preservation of Tangier the Commons did
ill men upon his Royal mind c. Now let all the World judge betwixt the King and this Party they grant the King has been heretofore compliant enough to their desires and then in the rudest Language that spight and scorn could dictate conclude against sense and reason that it was not fondness to his Brother nor kindness to the Monarchy but the ill influence of a few men that had thus disposed him A likely thing that he which could give up a Brother and be so unconcerned for his Crown should be so stupid rather than stiff as to venture all for a few ill men Creatures to the Duke and Pensioners to France wicked Wretches who have infected him with the fatal Notion that the Interests of his People are not only distinct but opposite to his No words I can write are sharp enough to reprove this Miscreant that thus rails against his and my Sovereign the Lords Anointed and therefore to God Almighty I leave it He tells us in the next place his Majesty doth not seem to doubt of his Power in Conjunction with his Parliament to Exclude his Brother He very well knows this Power hath been often Exerted in the time of his Predecessors Yes doubtless his Majesty hath read the English Story and observed at the same time that more Princes have been deposed by Pretended power of Parliament than Excluded and he very well knows that if he shall yield that an Argument drawn from Example is valid he will then stand upon slippery ground He also knows that the right Heir was never put by but a good plenty of Miseries Wars and Calamities followed upon it and he is able to foresee that if the same should happen again the French King may easily possess himself of these miserable Kingdoms and therefore it is fairly probable love to his People as well as his Brother hath kept him from consenting The reasons he saith that his Majesty hath aliedged are because it concerned him so near in Honour Justice and Conscience not to do it And are not these three powerful Arguments But my Author can ridicule them and turn them all against the King It is not saith he honourable for a Prince to be true and faithful to his Word and Oath To keep and maintain the Religion and Laws Established Yes who doth question it but all this and all that he hath said besides may be done without Excluding his Brother who would have just as much right supposing the King dies without lawful Issue to the Reversion as his Majesty hath to the present Possession And can his Majesty wrong him of that Right without a blemish to his Honour Justice and Conscience Who will ever after dare to relie upon his Majesty if they once see him desert his own Brother But that which follows is amazing All Obligations of Honour Justice and Conscience are comprehended in a grateful return of such benefits as have been received can his Majesty believe that he doth duly repay unto his Protestant Subjects the kindness they shewed him when they recalled him from a miserable helpless Banishment and with so much dutiful affection placed him in the Throne enlarged his Revenue above what any of his Predecessors had enjoyed and gave him vaster Sums of Money in twenty years than had been bestowed upon all the Kings since William the First Should he after all this deliver them up to be ruined by his Brother It should have been Should he after all this deliver them up to be ruined by the Dissenter and the Faction that Murthered his Father drew up an Oath of Abjuration of the whole Family of the Stuarts hanged plundered murthered sequestred and destroyed so many of his Loyal Nobility Gentry and Clergy Sir I am not so ill bred as to Catechise my Sovereign but I thing I may without offence ask the Whigs a few small questions Have you the impudence after all the Villanies you have done to Usurp the Loyalty that you never were guilty of Was it not enough to banish your Sovereign and keep him twelve years in that miserable helpless condition but you must reproach him too with it Did he not pardon you when you had sormited your Lives and all you had to his Justice by all the Laws of God and man Must he once more put himself into your power that he may try whether you will use him as you did his Father Have you not repined at his Restitution endeavoured to Banish him the second time by all the Arts imaginable Have you not murmur'd at all that has been given him Slandered that Parliament that gave it whilst it fate and since it was dissolved laboured to represent it to the Nation as the worst Parliament that ever sate Have not you Sir called them Danby's Pensioners Mercenary Pensioners c. And can you shew any vast or indeed competent Sums of Money given to the King since you know when And after all this have you the insolence to call your selves Protestants or own your selves Subjects And expect the King should in pure gratitude for what you never did lay all at your feet again As for those Protestant Subjects who besides all that you have falsely ascribed to your selves fought for him and his Father they do not fear his Majesties Brother would ruine them if he could and therefore have by thousands thanked his Majesty for his care in preserving the Succession in its due and legal course of descent In the next Paragraph my Author is very Politick and tells us Our Ancestors have been always more careful to preserve the Government inviolable than to favour any personal pretences and have therein conformed themselves to the practice of all other Nations whose examples deseve to be followed That is they have been more careful to preserve the Mornarchy it self and the Liberties of the Subject than the due and legal Descent in the Succession This is certainly true And they have paid well for neglecting the other as is apparent to any body that has read the History of England I will instance only in the Wars betwixt the Houses of Lancaster and York Richard II. being deposed and murthered Henry IV. who had no Title but was a brave Prince was set up But mark the Consequence before this Quarrel could be ended in B sworth Field there perished 80998 Private Souldiers two Kings one Prince ten Dukes two Marquesses twenty one Earls twenty seven Lords two Vicounts once Lord Prior one Judge one hundred thirty nine Knights four hundred forty one Esquires and my Author knows not how many Gentlemen in twelve Battels The total saith my Author of all the persons that have been slain is 85628. Christians and most of them of this Nation Is it fit to run the Risque of suffering all this over again As to his Examples of Princes that have been Excluded upon the account of Religion or for other smaller matters they prove nothing but that ill
of them We should question his Majesties Wisdom did we not believe him to have understood that never Parliament had greater Opportunites of doing good to Himself and his People He could not but be sensible of the dangers and of the necessities of his Kingdom and therefore could not without exceeding great trouble be prevailed upon for the sake of a few desperate men whom he thought himself concerned to love now only because he had loved them too well and trusted them too much before not only to disappoint the Hopes and Expectations of his own People but of almost all Europe His Majesty did indeed do his part so far in giving opportunities of proving for our good as the calling of Parliaments do amount to and it is to be imputed to the Ministers only that the success of them did not answer his and our Expectations Thus far my Author is recited verbatim that it may appear I do him no wrong By which discourse of his taking for the present no notice of his reflection on his Majesty for a person whose Promises were not real it is agreed that the two last Parliaments had great opportunities of doing good to his Majesty and his People and my Author goes further and adds the Hopes and Expectation of almost all Europe to them That his Majesty called these Parliaments he owns That one of them sat a competent time for that purpose cannot be denied viz. from Thursday October 21. 1680. till Monday the tenth day of January following which deducting the time spent in the Trial of Viscount Stafford was in some mens opinions sufficient to have dispatched much more business than was then done And yet it doth not appear that his Majesty was enclined to have prorogued them then if he had not been highly provoked by them What my Author means by those few desperate men that prevailed upon his Majesty so much against his Will to part with that Parliament I cannot guess except they be the Eminent Persons which were declared Enemies to the King and Kingdom which if they were they are neither so few nor such desperate men as to be laid aside barely upon a Vote of the House of Commons without any Order or Process of Law any hearing of their Defence or any proof so much as offered against them And I believe the meanest of them is equal to this Gentleman as scornfully as he speaks of them But then in the last place whether or no the dissolution be to be imputed to the Ministers or to the Parliament i. e. the House of Commons will appear best in the examination of his discourse and of the Declaration It is certain saith my Author it cannot be imputed to any of the proceedings of either of those Parliaments which were composed of men of as good sence and quality as any in the Nation and proceeded with as great moderation and managed their debates with as much temper as ever was known in any Parliament If all this is as certainly true as it is confidently asserted then is it but a folly to dispute any further about it But because his Majesty in his Declaration hath said some things that seem to look another way my Reader may if he please suspend his belief of this particular too till his Majesties Allegations and this Gentlemans defence are examined and then he will be better able to pass his Judgment If they seemed to go too far in any thing his Majesties Speeches or Declarations had misled them by some of which they had been invited to enter into every one of those debates to which so much exception hath been since taken Did he not frequently recommend the prosecution of the Plot to them with a strict and impartial inquiry Did he not tell them That he neither thought himself nor them safe till that matter was gone through with Yes doubtless his Majesty did all this but then where is any exception taken against any thing of this Nature they have done Did he not in his Speech April 30 1679. assure them that it was his constant care to secure our Religion for the future in all events and that in all things which concerned the Publick Security He would not follow their Zeal but lead it But Sir did not his Majesty then also let you know that he excepted one thing in which he would neither lead nor follow their Zeal which was the altering the descent of the Crown in the right Line or defeating the Succession which his Majesty commanded to be further explained by the Lord Chancellour in such manner that it appeared to the whole Nation that his Majesty was resolved to do any thing for the freeing his People from their fears of Popery but what might tend to the disinheriting the Duke of York or any other Lawful Successor Now you Sir may remember that nothing but this would satisfie the Commons in either of the two last Parliaments in which they were not misled by any of his Majesties Speeches or declarations much less by this which was made of purpose to prevent the Bill before it was moved in the House of Commons Has he not often wished that he might be enabled to exercise a power of Dispensation in reference to those Protestants who through tenderness of misguided Conscience did not conform to the Ceremonies Discipline and Government of the Church and promised that he would make it his special care to encline the wisdom of the Parliament to concur with him in making an Act to that purpose And did not that very Parliament draw up a long Address to his Majesty containing the reasons why they could not concur with him in that point And is not this one good proof that his Majesty was not unmindful of his Declaration at Breda but was kept from doing what he was otherwise enclined enough to not by a few desperate men but by the Parliament And least the malice of ill men i. e. the Dissenters might object that these gracious inclinations of his continued no longer than while there was a possibility of giving the Papists equal benefit of a Toleration Has not his Majesty since the discovery of the Plot since there was no hopes of getting so much as a connivance for them in his Speech of March 6. 1678-9 express'd his zeal not only for the Protestant Religion in general but for an Vnion amongst all sorts of Protestants His Majesties words here are not truly recited but are these I meet you here with the most earnest desire that man can have to unite the minds of all my Subjects both to me and to one another and I resolve it shall be your faults if the success be not suitable to my desires c. And a little after Besides that end of Vnion which I aim at and which I wish could be extended to Protestants abroad as well as at home I propose by this last great step I have made the