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A62846
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The danger of mercenary Parliaments
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Toland, John, 1670-1722.
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1698
(1698)
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Wing T1765; ESTC R10340
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11,445
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8
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The Danger of Mercenary Parliaments 1. SEveral Treatises have been formerly written and more I doubt not will be in this juncture publish'd with Directions and Informations to the People of England for choosing fit and proper Representatives for the ensuing Parliament wherein sufficient notice will be taken of the Failures and Defects of several who have already been entrusted in that Service and the due Qualifications of such who are now to be elected I shall therefore confine my present thoughts only to one particular Head which yet in my opinion seems to involve in it the inevitable Fate of England which wholly depends upon the choice of Members for the next Session of Parliament I mean the choosing or refusing of such Persons who are now possest of any Places and Preferments depending upon the gift and pleasure of the Court. If herein my Endeavours prove unsuccessful I shall have nothing left but the satisfaction of my own Conscience to support me under the deplorable Consequents and Effects which must necessarily attend the choice of a House of Commons fill'd with Officers and Court-Pensioners This is the last struggle and effort the People of England have left them for their Properties and should we now miscarry in this we may sit down and idly shew our Affections for our Country and fruitlesly bewail the loss of our Liberties but shall never meet with another opportunity of exerting our selves in its Service That I may therefore set the Minds of People right in this Particular ere it be too late I think it will be only necessary to shew the danger of choosing Members that are in Places from two Considerations First From the nature of such a Parliament consider'd in it self And secondly From what has already been done by Parliaments so qualified In both which I shall be very brief and content my self with much fewer Arguments than might be urg'd upon this Subject For I should almost despair of being surviv'd by the Liberties of England if I could imagine there was a necessity of saying much in a case not only of such irresistible Evidence and Demonstration but also of the utmost concern and importance to us 2. First then We shall best be able to understand the nature of such an ill-chosen Parliament by comparing it with a true one and with the original design of Parliaments in their Institution I hope it need not be told that they were at first intended for a Support to the King 's just Prerogative and a Protection to the Subjects in their as just Rights and Privileges For maintaining all due Honour to the Executive Power and all sutable respect and encouragement to those who are intrusted with the Administration of the Laws For a poise and balance between the two extreme contending Powers of absolute Monarchy and Anarchy For a check and curb to insolent and licentious Ministers and a terror to ambitious and over-grown Statesmen For giving their Advice to his Majesty in all matters of Importance For making necessary Laws to preserve or improve our Constitution and abrogating such as were found burdensom and obsolete For giving the King Mony for defraying the Charges and Expences of the Government or maintaining a necessary War against Foreign and Domestick Enemies For examining and inspecting the Public Accounts to know if their Mony be applied to its true use and purposes In short For the best Security imaginable to his Majesty's Honour and Royal Dignities and the Subjects Liberties Estates and Lives 3. This being the nature and true design of a Parliament let us now see whether a House of Commons full of Officers and Court-Pensioners will answer those noble and laudable Ends of their Constitution And here indeed I begin already to be asham'd of my undertaking the proof of the Negative is so ridiculous that it looks too much like a Jest to ask any one in his Wits Whether a Parliament fill'd with Delinquents will ever call themselves to an account or what account would be given if they should Whether an Assembly of public Robbers will sentence one another to be punish'd or to make Restitution Whether it is possible our Grievances can be redrest that are committed by Persons from whom there is no higher Power to appeal Whether there is any hope of Justice where the Malefactors are the Judges Whether his Majesty can be rightly inform'd in Affairs relating to Himself or the Public when they are represented to him only by such Persons who design to abuse him Whether the Public Accounts will be faithfully inspected by those who embezzle our Mony to their own use Whether the King's Prerogative can be lawfully maintain'd by such who only pervert it to their own sinister ends and purposes Whether a Parliament can be a true balance where all the weight lies only in one Scale Or lastly Whether a House of Commons can vote freely who are either prepossest with the hopes and promises of enjoying Places or the slavish fears of losing them Methinks it is offering too much Violence to human Nature to ask such Questions as these I shall therefore leave this invidious Point 4. Yet lest still any should remain unsatisfied or lull'd into a fond opinion that these Mischiefs will not ensue upon the Elections they shall make I shall further endeavour to convince those who are most mov'd by the force of Examples by coming to my second Particular and shewing how Parliaments so qualify'd have all along behav'd themselves And here I must confess there are not many Instances to be given the Project of corrupting Parliaments being but of a late date a Practice first set on foot within the compass of our own Memories as the last and most dangerous Stratagem that ever was invented by an encroaching Tyrant to possess himself of the Rights of a freeborn People I mean K. CHARLES the 2 d. who well remembring with how little success both He and his Father had made use of open Arms and downright Violence to storm and batter down the Bulwarks of our excellent Constitution had recourse at last to those mean Arts and underhand Practices of bribing and corrupting with Mony those who were intrusted with the Conservation of our Laws and the Guardianship of our Liberties And herein he so well succeeded that the Mischiefs and Calamities occasion'd by that mercenary Parliament did not terminate with his Life and Reign but the Effects of them are handed and continued down and very sensibly felt by the Nation to this very hour For it is to that House of Commons the formidable Greatness of France was owing and to their account therefore ought we to set down the prodigious Expences of the late War It was by those infamous Members that Mony was given to make a feign'd and collusive War with France which at the same time was employ'd either in subduing the Subjects at home or oppressing our Protestant Neighbours abroad It was this Venal Parliament in effect that furnish'd the King of
power of the King himself to relieve us For tho his Majesty be deservedly lov'd and honour'd by his People for his readiness to do them justice and ease their oppressions yet can we not expect it from him whilst he is thus beset and surrounded and his Palaces invested by these Conspirators against his own honor and the welfare of his Kingdoms The only remedy therefore that remains is to chuse such a Parliament who he under no temptations and are acted by no other motives but the real and true Interest of his Majesty and his Dominions a Parliament that will fall unanimously upon publick Business and be free from those petty Factions and personal Piques which in the late Session so shamefully obstructed and delay'd the most important Service of the Commonwealth 9. If it should be pretended That the Nation is yet unsettled and the fear of King IAMES has forc'd them upon these extraordinary Methods for their own preservation I answer That no cause whatsoever can be justly alledg'd in vindication of such vile arts and pernicious practices But I would farther ask them what necessity there is upon that account for their gaining such prodigious Estates to themselves in so short a time and in so merciless a way when the Nation was rack'd to the utmost by Taxes in a long and expensive War Is it the fear of King IAMES that has brought such a reproach upon our Revolution as if it needed to be supported by such mean and unjustifiable Practices Is it the fear of King IAMES that makes us content he should live so near us or that he should be maintain'd at our own charge of 50000 l. per annum Or has not rather King IAMES been made the pretence for the unwarrantable Proceedings of our Conspirators during the War and since the conclusion of the Peace It is very strange that King IAMES who is but their Jest in private should be thus made their publick Bugbear to frighten us out of our senses like Children so that King IAMES must be at last our ruin abroad who could not compass it by all his power and interest at home And in this sense I am of their opinion That we are not yet quite delivered from the fear of King IAMES who must be made the instrument of our Slavery by those very Persons who pretend their greatest merit to consist in delivering us from him But what is this but making the old abdicated Tyrant a footstool to ascend the Throne of absolute Power and a Scaffold for erecting that proud and stately Edifice from whence we have so justly tumbled him down headlong But 't is to be hop'd the Nation will be no longer impos'd on by such stale pretences as these and that a well-chosen Parliament will not fail to pass their severest Censures upon those who would thus jest us out of all that is dear and valuable amongst us That they will no longer resemble a flock of Sheep as CATO said of the Romans in his time that follow the Belweather and are contented when all together to be led by the noses by such whose Counsels not a man of them would make use of in a private cause of his own That they will at last vindicate the honor of England and imitate their wise Ancestors in hunting down these Beasts of prey these noxious Vermin to the Commonwealth rather than suffer themselves to be led in collars and couples by one mighty NIMROD who upon the turning up of his Nose shall expect a full cry of sequacious Animals who must either join voices or be turn'd out of the pack 10. Notwithstanding what I have said I would not have any of them either really imagine themselves or falsly suggest to others that I envy them their Places and Preferments which I am so far from doing that I wish they rather had them for the term of their lives I desire only they may be subject to the laws and to some Power on Earth that may call them to account for their Misbehaviours that they may not be their own Judges that our soveraign Remedy may not prove our chief Disease and that the Kid may be seeth'd in something else than its Mother's milk Nor would I by any means deny them their Seats in Parliament provided they are in a condition to speak and act freely and discharg'd from those temptations which I find they have not constancy enough to withstand for after all I still believe many of them so honest that nothing but Mony or Preferments will corrupt them But if nothing will satisfy them but the downright subversion of our Constitution if they will be content with nothing but the utter abolishing of all Laws and the rooting up of those fences and securities provided by our Ancestors for the preservation of all things that are sacred and esteem'd amongst mankind it is high time for the Electors to look about them and disappoint their unreasonable and exorbitant hopes and to spew them out as detestable Members of the Commonwealth not only as unfit to be trusted with their Liberties but as unworthy to breath in the air of a Free Government 11. If any should say That the alterations in Elections will stand us in no stead since whoever are chosen will still be bought off and brib'd by Court-preferments I answer it will require a considerable time to new-model and debauch a House of Commons nor can it be done but by displacing all those who are already possess'd to make room for these new comers which will make the trade and mystery of Bribery more plain and consequently more abhor'd And since no Parliament can now fit above three years the Court will meet with fresh Difficulties to interrupt them which may possibly at last make them weary of these Practices 'T is true indeed this Consideration ought to make us more circumspect in our choice of Members for tho we should choose but an inconsiderable number of Pensioners yet will they soon be able to work over a majority to their side so true is the saying A little leaven leavens the whole Lump Whoever therefore out of any particular friendship or other motives of fear or private Interest should vote for any one Person so qualify'd let him consider that as much as in him lies he makes a complement of all the Liberties of England to the unsatiable avarice and ambition of Statesmen and Court-Ministers Since therefore we have so narrowly escap'd our destruction and one Session more of the last Parliament would infallibly have ruin'd our Constitution we cannot surely be so grosly overseen as to neglect the opportunity now put into our hands for avoiding the like hazards in time to come which may easily be done if the Freeholders and Burghers in England will petition and engage their Representatives to consent to a Bill which shall be brought into the House to incapacitate all Members for holding Offices and Preferments or if it should be thought too much