Selected quad for the lemma: power_n
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A25599
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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
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1695
(1695)
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Wing A3417; ESTC R110
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23,110
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60
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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