lies so much under every ones Prospect that it needs only be pointed at and not insisted upon how much the Dutch stand advantag'd to Endamage us by their having the same Benting qualify'd to sit in the House of Lords under the Character of an English Peer In which Capacity abstracting from the Influence he has over his Master to Sway and Determine him to put a Negative upon such Bills as may be prepared there and in the House of Commons to Skreen us from Belgick Encroachments and Rapines he is Capable sometimes by his own single Vote and often so by the many Proxies which some â—hro Fear others thro Flattery and many in order to Court a place and Preferment do lodg with him to get those Bills thrown out which were either Introduced there by some generous Peer that loves his Country or framed and sent up thither by the House of Commons for their Lordships Concurrence in order to protect our Trade preserve our Constitution and to prevent the Slavery as well as the Poverty which the Dutch seek to have Overthrown and wish and endeavour to have us reduced unto Nor was there ever a good Bill formed upon the Design of being a Fence about our Lives Liberties and Estates whether it began in the Upper House or came conveyed thither from the Lower since the Revolution which this Gentleman raised to the Honour of Peerage by a Merit singular and peculiar to himself hath not both given his own Vote and if Occasion was applied all the Right Authority and Power vested in him by Proxies for the casting it out and the rejecting of it To which under this Head I shall only briefly add That it is no less than an avowed and visible Betraying both of the Honour and Interest of England to the Dutch to employ a Batavian under a Character derived from the Crown of England to any Foreign King or State about Brittish Affairs and Concerns And for any one stiling himself King of England to appoint a Dutch Man Amhassador or Envoy to any Court in Europe can be upon no other Motive than of Sarificing the Concernments of England in that Court and Country to the Pleasure and Profit of the Hollanders seeing we want not Men of Quality Sense and Merit of our own to be sent Abroad under those Characters And yet this Belgick Prince now set over us and whom our wise Senators have accustomed themselves to call their and our most Gracious King Values himself upon Treating us after this rate as appears by his Interposing in the Vindicating Justifying and Protecting of Myn Heer Schonenberg at Madrid whom in his Letters to the King and Court of Spain he calls his Ambassador And according Resents the Driving him out of that City as a Violation of the Rights and Laws of Nations tho it was for Crimes that any other Prince besides ours would have Chastised and not have Defended him Nor does the Privelege belonging to the Character he bears give him Security by any Laws in reference to the Cause for which he was Insulted from being as justly as he was ignominiously Dealt with Nevertheless this Belgick Prince hath espoused and pushed the Vindication and Defence of this Dutch Heer so far as to have Forbid the Spanish Ambassador to present any Memorial or to Appear at Court till he havâ— Satisfaction given him in Reference to that Batavian whom he hath the Indiscretion and Confidence in the View and Face of the World to stile an Ambassador from the Crown of England And were the Wheedle of Rescuing Nations from Popery and Slavery as proper to Influence the Subjects of his Catholick Majesty and to Pervert them from the Allegience to their Monarch as they did the weak and credulous People of these Kingdoms This Prince Errant who not only Fancieth himself another Hercules born and raised up to tame Monsters but one Divinely Commissioned to give Laws to all Nations and to Trample on Crowned Heads and wrest Scâ—ptres out of the Hands of Kings he would Embark speedily with his Dutch Janizaries for Cadiz to Drive his Catholick Majesty out of Spain as he did the King of Great Brittain from his Dominions In the mean time the Fraud to which this Schonenberg was accessary and the Insolence he was guilty of towards the King of Spain shews the Prince of Orange's Skill in the choice of his Ministers to be Employed Abroad under publick Characters and how well Qualified this Dutch Man was for being Constituted the Ambassador of the King of England Seeing it is most certain that as Dutch Stadtholder he could not give that Title nor the Powers belonging to it But is not England in the mean time in a safe and fine Condition to have all the Affairs of the Kingdom that are to be Transacted by a Person vested with that Character in the only Nation and Court of Europe where we have now most to do and are most embarkt in Commerce and Traffick and where our Concernments do chiefly lie to be not only Trusted in the Hands and put under the Care and Conduct of a Dutch Man but of one whom the Hollanders themselves have given the same Stile and appendant Powers unto for the Management of what appertains to them both in the way of State and Trade To whom we may be not only sure that he will be Truer than to Us but that it was intended by the Prince of Orange he should be so And should any be so foolishly Favourable as to Entertain a better Construction of his Highness's Intentions Yet it is Demonstrable that Nature and Interest will be prevalent in most Men especially in a Hollander above Duty and Obligation Accordingly Mr. Stanhop who is both an English Man and sent from hence to Reside there in the quality of William's Envoy is not only sensible of the Affront done to himself thro a Dutch Man's being Authorised under a higher Cha racter to meddle at that Court in Brittish Concerns but of the Injury done to the Kingdom by reason of that Hollander's Sacrificing them to a Belgick Interest So that by this Conduct of the Gentleman at Kensington the Sheep are committed to the Wolves to keep and the Guards allotted for our Defence are Placed upon us in Order to Assassinate Us. Nay at other Courts and particularly at the Hague where he pretends to Employ English Men under the Character of Envoys and Ambassadors from this Kingdom He Trusts none of them in the great Affairs and Concerns of State which are Transacted in that Court but Useth them only in Complements Trifles and Baggatells or at most in receiving and delivering such Letters as are of no Importance Witness among others my Lord Dursly whom I do therefore name because he is both a Person who for Honour Prudence and good Sense is qualified to discharge the Duties of a Publick Minister in any Court whatsoever and is one who preserves that Regard to his Country and to his own Dignity
Undertaking And it is a surprise to all thinking disinterested Men that Trade being the Source and Fountain of the Wealth Strength and Populace of a Nation and that this Kingdom being more adapted for it by its Situation Harbours and the Genius of its People than any other Country whatsoever that yet it should be so far from being encouraged in the way manner and degrees it ought that the Trade of England is more Clogged Loaded and has greater Burthens laid upon it than that of any other Nation But if this Method of counteracting the Scots should not be thought convenient when the Kingdom is to be charged with so many and large Grants of Mony to the Government for the upholding and carrying on the present War there is still another way of obviating all the Evils we are apprehensive of from the Scots Act and from the old East India Company yea and not only of defeating the Design of the Dutch who were the first and under-hand Advisers to it but of improving it into an Occation of strengthening our selves to chastise the Hollanders and to exact Reparations from them for all the Injuries of one kind and â—â—other which they have done us And that is the bringing these two Kingdoms into an Union of Councils Laws and Privileges of all Sorts as they are already united under one Monarch encompassed by the same Seas Inhabitants upon one Island and not differing in Language farther than in tone and dialect Which as it would be to the mutual Safety and Prosperity of both Nations so it is not to be questioned but that the Scots in consideration and acknowledgment of the Benefit that would accrue to them by an Incorporation with England would chearfully surrender their late Act and be as forward as we can wish to repeal it Nor would it be sound so difficult as some do imagine it to effect compass and perfect such an Union upon Terms that both Kingdoms may think equal could we on each side renounce national Piques and give up little private Interests in order to the obtaining a general common Good I am told that some are so ignorant and others so impudent as say That King William in virtue of that Sovereign Power which that Kingdom hath granted him may by his own personal and immediate Authority without the concurrence of a Parliament or the Prescription of a Law impose upon Trade what Duty Customs or Taxes he pleaseth and this they alledg to stand vested in him as a part of his Prerogative by the Gift and Concession of an Act of Parliament made in one of those Sessions when Launderdale was King Charles the Second's High Commissioner To which I reply three Things 1. That such a Supposition were to put all Traders of the Kingdom of Scotland into the state and condition of Slaves by making their whole Property acquirable by the way of Traffick to be under the protection of no Law but to be sâ—isable and disposable at the arbitrary Will and despotical Pleasure of the King which I think that Nation which justly boasts it self a free Kingdom as much as any other whatsoever will not easily acquiesce in and submit unto from any King But especially not from one of their own making who being as the Clay in their hands of which they have made a Vessel of Honour they may either break it or mould it again when the Humour takes them into a Vessel of Dishonour 2. Whatsoever Prerogative this Man under the Notion of being their King may have as to the laying Impositions upon Goods and Merchandise where no Law doth preclude and bar him from doing it and where the Concession Liberty and Right for them to trade to such and such Places and in such and such Commodities proceed and are derived meeâ—ly from his personal Grant and Charter which gives them all their Title so to do yet it is most absurd to imagine that he can have any such Prerogative or Power where a publick Law hath given them both a Right and Authority to trade and an Immunity from all Impositions whatsoever in reference to such Places and the Productions and Superfluities thereof and it is also Tyranny in him to challenge it For by this means no Laws can be a Fence about Mens Estates and Properties nor give them the Security which they both promise and were made and enacted for the ensuring to them And for King William to claim and exercise such a Jurisdiction and Authority were to usurp a dispensing Power that is both infinitely worse in it self and more fatal in its consequences than that for which we so much blamed and have hostily treated King James Seeing all the dispensing Power King James challenged was only in reference to penal Laws and those also relative meerly to Religious Matters as to both which the King has a greater extent and latitude of Jurisdiction inherent in him by reason of his Sovereign Power than he hath in reference to other Laws But should King William take upon him to dispense with the Act we are speaking of it were to usurp a dispensing Power both in reference to beneficial Laws and those made for the protection of our Civil Rights Properties and Estates which all Men who have common Sense know to be more out of the verge and reach of Kings to supercede and controle than those are which refer to Ecclesiastical Officers and which are likewise of a penal Nature 3. Should it be admitted that by that Act of Lauderdale's Parliament an absolute unlimitted and despotical Authority became vested in King Charles and stood conveyed to King James in relation to this laying Taxes and Impositions on Trade yet no Power of this kind accrues by this Act to King William in that it was complained of as one of the Grievances which were presented to him antecedently to his having Crown conferred upon him and whereof Redress only was demanded But it was stipulated and made a part of the Original Contract betwixt the Kingdom of Scotland and Him That no such Power as Lauderdale's Act imported should ever be claimed or exercised over them And for King William now to pretend to it were not only to violate his Coronation Oath and proclaim himself perjured to all the World but it were to discharge that Nation from all Obligation of Fealty to him and to give them a legal Right as well as Cause to proceed to the deposing and abdicating him Before I shut up this Discourse which the variety and importance of the matter has already made longer than I at first designed it though I hope it will not be found tedious I shall for the sake of many Thousands as well as my own humbly applying my self to the Senate of the Kingdom to the Members of the Privy Council and to the Gentlemen of both the Gowns for their resolving me Two or Three Questions which it is of great Concernment with respect to our Constitution our Laws our Religâ—on and our Consciences
and them could not have been much to the Prejudice either of the Kingdom or of Trade farther than as it involved us in an unnecessary and unjust War meerly to gratify the Ambition of our Dutch King and to hinder the Return of our Legal and Rightful Sovereign Because otherwise as it would have been agreeable to our Interest both as we are an Island and a Trading Nation so it would not only have proved a means of keeping all our Mony at home and of the having had it to circulate among our selves but we should thereby had Treasure enough to have rigged out a Royal Navy superior to the marine Power of France and to have equipped and maintained more than a sufficient Number of Men of War as Cruisers and Convoys to have protected our Trade But to be first at the vast Expence we have been in raising and maintaining so great an Army on the Continent meerly for the Benefit of others and not our own and then to equip and set out double the Quota that the Dutch have towards the câ—nstituting the Confederate Fleet of both Nations was plainly to disable our selves from having that Number of Cruisers and Convoys as is necessary to be kept at Sea during the present War against so potent an Enemy as the King of France and his Subjects are upon that Element Nor was this concerted between our Belgick Prince and his beloved Dutch upon any other Motives or to other Ends but that we might be put out of Capacity of safe-guarding our Coasts and protecting our trading Vessels whilst the Dutch through furnishing a small Quota to the the General Fleet are left in a Condition to employ the rest of their marine and naval Strength in securing and protecting their Traffick And the Event hath fully answered the Design in that while we by furnishing so many Ships of War to the Royal Navy did leave our selves destitute of such a Number of Ships of War as might in the Quality of Cruisers and Convoys in all Seas as well as in the Chanel have covered and defended our trafficking Vessels and as we have in consequence thereof lost above 4000 trading Ships to the empoverishing of the Kingdom as well as of many Families that were before the Revolution opulent and rich while the Dutch in the mean time through their furnishing so small a Proportion of Men of War to the General Fleet and being thereby provided of the larger number of Men of War as well to defend their Merchant Ships as to guard their Coasts have not sâ—stained the Third nay nor the Fourth part of the Loss of Vessels and Cargoes that we have done Not but that our Chanels might have been better guarded and our trading Ships more protected than they have been by those Convoys and Cruisers that were appointed and ordained by Parliament had not our Commissioners of the Admiralty been treacherous and slothful as well as blockish and ignorant in the Service Duty and Province which they undertook So that if the Parliament as I have formerly hinted do not make those Persons accountable for the Losses at Sea which Merchants and in and through them the Kingdom hath sustained all thinking Men will have reason to believe That those they have chosen to be their Representatives do take pleasure in theâ—r Empoverishment Misery and Ruin and will be provoked to judge them in a Conspiracy with those Gentlemen to promote all those Desolations and Mischiefs Seeing the Parliaments over looking the Crimes of those Commissioners or their conniving at their Conduct will more than intimate that they are so And indeed by the whole Management of publick Affairs for near these Seven Years both in Parliament and out of it those called to sit in the Senate as well as those employed in civil Offices have been doing to the Nation as the Daughters of Peleus did by the Advice of Medea to their aged Father whom they hackt in pieces in hopes that by her Magick they should have restored him both to Life and Youth again For through the Influence of Dutch Councils and the Administration of a Belgick King and by this wheedle and under pretence of rescuing us from Popery and Slavery of banishing Tyranny securing Liberty and of making us an opulent and glorious Nation they have empoverished us beyond Remedy and Retrieve and have brought us so near to the brink of Vassalage and Thraldom that it will require more Vertue and Courage to prevent it than we have much ground of hoping to find the generality of this debauched rebellious and disloyal Generation endowed with And if some of those that have been principally Accessory to our Misery and Ruin be not speedily made Examples of Parliamentary Justice who knows but upon the late President of making a King accountable for the Offences of his Ministers whether the Body of the People from Wapping to Westminster may not assault Kensington and Whitehall as well as the Admiralty Office if not instead of it For as Plebâ— non Judicium so furiosis nulla voluntas as the Populace and Mob is commonly void both of Judgment and Equity so they do not act when provoked under the Guidance of Reason but under the Agitations of intemperate Rage Nor will your Dutch Ingineers brought lately over if we may believe the Paper called the Post man from December the 10th to December the 12th St. vet who tells That by Letters from Brussels of December the 14th St. N. there were divers Ingineers ordered from Maestricht to London to deter an injured and thereupon an enraged People from attempting more than I will say and 〈◊〉 call it the doing themselves Right and the Nation Justice And having mentioned those outlandish Ingineers I crave leave to recommend it to the Parliament to enquire into their Business and what they come hither to be employed about seeing there are no French Garisons in England to be besieged and bombed But if it be in order to King William's erecting a Citadel for enslaving London and Westminster it is to be hoped that the terrour of Bombs and Carcasses will not frighten English-men quietly to surrender their Liberties and Properties and tamely to put on and wear Chains To all which might be further added the very small Quota which they furnish the Confederate Fleet are not only many times subsisted upon our Provisions and Stores instead of their own and supplied with our naval Preparations but in the Place of attending constantly upon the Flag as they ought many of those Ships of War are detached from the Fleet and employed as Convoys to their trading Vessels Which as it may at some time or other prove of fatal consequence to the Royal Fleet of England and the whole Kingdom so in the mean time they make their Profit by it through the enlarging and securing their Traffick while ours is narrowed and crippled for want of Cruisers and Convoys and while such Merchant Ships as will venture upon Voyages are left
their Ships of War or their Vessels of Commerce and Traffick Nor has he any more Right to deprive me of my Liberty save when where and in what Cases the Laws have declared me to have forfeited it than I have to break into the Prince of Orange's Closet at Kensington and to snatch from thence the Testimonials of his Reconciliation to the Church of Rome But by these little sportful Preludiums of the young Cub we may guess what we are to expect from the Animal when grown up to the full strength and vigour of a Tyger or a Lion But the next Depradation and Invasion committed upon our Trade is more vilanous and ought to be more provoking as well as surprising than any of the former seeing it was neither compassed nor executed by meer Cunning and Fraud nor upon Pretences of avowed Authority derived and received from King William but which they perpetrated by open Force and direct Violence Whereof though there may possibly be found divers Instances yet I shall only assign one but which shall be of that hainous Nature that we need require no more and ought henceforth to think how to do our selves Right and take our Revenge upon them The Hostility and Violence which I mean is that committed by the Dutch upon the African Company of England in driving them by armed Force out of two Factories in Africa the one whereof brought the Company Forty Marks of Gold per Mensem and the other not much less besides other Commodities For the said Company having among other Factories which they had erected and quietly held in Africa established one at a Place called Commenda and which they stood possessed of and had furnished with all Things necessary for the defence and protection of their Servants and for the management of their Trade both in the Sale of what they transported thither from hence and for the obtaining and securing whatsoever the adjacent Coast and the neighbouring Ports on that Continent afforded fit to be brought hither the Dutch having a Factory adjoyning thereunto did about Two years ago instigate and stir up the Natives against the English Factory by telling them that the English were a conquered Nation and not able any longer to help and assist or to trade with them in that they had subdued the Kingdom of England and made their Stadtholder who was but their Servant King and Monarch of it By which fraudulent Means and Language as reproachful of us as it was false in it self the Natives who are all a kind of unthinking Mob and easily misled as well through the Habitude and Dulness of their Understandings as through the little Acquaintance and Knowledge which they have of the European Parts of the World made an Insurrection against the English and in Multitudes assaulted and attacked their Factory But the Africans being no better than an undisciplined Rout and not well furnished with the Materials and Utensils of War and especially being unprovided with great Artillery were easily repelled and beaten off by those of the English Factory which the Dutch observing and being sensible that time would both asswage the mutinous Passions of the Natives and discover the Fraud by which they had hurâ—ied them into that hasty and intemperate Rage against the Factory there having been noâ— just Cause administered by the English whereby the Natives might be provoked to fall upon them thereupon the Dutch did not only make fresh Applications unto and renew their Instigations of the Africans to persevere in and persue the Design of expelling the English out of the forementioned Factory but these treacherous Hollanders did hostily turn and fire the Guns of their own Fort against the English Factory that stood near unto it and by armed Violence drove them from thence and forced them to leave and abandon it And as these are some of the blessed Fruits and Effects of the Revolution so having by our departure from our Loyalty lost together with our Vertue our Honour and our Concerns for the safety and welfare of our Country these Encroachments Rapines and Robberies of the Dutch are not only overlookt by most tamely digested by all but have a Merit and Sanctity ascribed to them by some of our Sycophant and Mercenary Clergy under the Notion of the Tributes of our Gratitude paid to the Hollanders as our Deliverers from Popery and Slavery And it is but Reason That owing our Lives Liberties and Estates to the Friendship and Bounty of their Assistance when the Gospel and every Thing that is valuable in it self and dear to us was at Stake they should at pleasure claim and exercise a Jurisdiction over them and we be contented with a precarious Right in all that we are and have For through the Bigottry of most and the Treachery of a great many it is now arrived at this That even for a House of Peers to take upon them the representing the Decays and Sufferings of the Nation in point of Trade is by your Salisbury Burnet thought worthy of being branded with the alarming and ignominious Name of Remonstrating against the Government But I will venture to say That if speedy Remedies be not fallen upon and used by the Senate of the Kingdom for the relieving us from our Distresses and Miseries of that kind that the forenamed miâ—red Gentleman will soon find the Heats of the Nation to rise beyond the Remedy of his Vinegar-bottle how effectual soever he may have found that Liquor to have been to check and allay warm and â—ustful Insurrections in himself Yea in vain do both Houses of Parliament labour to help and relieve us in this matter while we have a King so linked and united to the Dutch by manifold ties of Interest and Affection and who thinks himself no otherwise obliged by the Title and Authority we have given him over this Nation than to sacrifice us to their Safety and Prosperity and to raise them to Greatness Power and Wealth upon our Poverty Thraldom and Ruin So that the only mean of Deliverance and Rescue is to dissolve the Bonds between him and us and to return and leave him where we found him in the separate and amorous Embraces of his darling and beloved Hollanders All I have further to add in reference to the damage done to the Trade of this Nation by the Dutch and of the Design which King William out of kindness to them has been promoting for the Ruin and Subversion of our Traffick shall be briefly to take notice of and to reflect a little upon his erection of a Scotch African and East India Company with such Immunities and Privileges as will prove destructive of the Trade of England to those Parts Which Scotch Company as it is established by a late Act of Parliament of that Kingdom to which King William gave the enacting Fiat and Royal Sanction so he did it without giving his English Privy Council or any other of this Nation the least antecedent Notice of it and much
more without asking or taking their Advice about it though a matter both of great Importance in it self and of vast Consequence to the Trade of this Kingdom Nor can it be imagined that the said Act for erecting of a Scotch Company was surreptitiously obtained or precipitately passed without his Knowledg and Information of the Tenor of it Seeing the Instructions were formed and digested here and signed by him which upon being sent down thither gave occasion and encouragement there to make and enact such a Statute at this Juncture And it is highly worthy of remark That this Scotch Law containing so many unusual Privileges and beneficial Concessions as were never granted heretofore by any King of Great Britain should be made at a Season when the Trade of England is so loaded and depressed by late grievous Impositions and Taxes laid upon It by several Laws since the Revolution in order to the carrying on of the present War and for the defraying the Charges of it Nor is it conceivable how after so many Discouragements given to the English East India Company not only in refusing them an Establishment by Law but in Delaying for several Years to grant them a Confirmation of their Charter and thereby putting them both to vast Expenses through their being so long in soliciting of it and the leaving them all that while naked and exposed to be undermined and supplanted by Interlopers that this unwonted and exuberant Grace should be exercised to the Kingdom of Scotland were it not done upon the Influence of Dutch Councils and in pursuance of Measures from Holland for the ruining the Trade of England And whosoever considers the little respect and the less affection which King William hath for the Scots Nation and with what disdain and contempt he speaks oâ— that whole Kingdom and treats those of the first Quality of it will easily believe That he did not authorise the Establishment of the forementioned Company out of kindness unto or concern for the Prosperity of that Nation but that it was done upon the Motives and in pursuance of foreign Councils Not that I do envy the Scots any Favour that is shewed them upon whatsoever Inducements it be done or that I blame the Parliament of Scotland for what they have done in this particular towards the raising of the Genius and encouraging the Industry of their People to the pursuit of Trade but what I would say is That as King William's Kindness to the Scots in this matter is to the apparent and visible Damage of the English so it is morally certain that both the first overture of such an Establishment sprung from Belgick Councils and that the Prince of Orange's Instructions which led that Parliament to such a Bill and the Royal Assent given thereunto by his Commissioner upon which it is become a Law and Statute is all in order to encrease the Trade and raise the Grandeur of the Dutch and to depress and lessen the Trade of England and thereby to weaken and impoverish the Kingdom For as the Author of a Paper called Some Considerations upon the late Act of the Parliament of Scotland for constituting an Indian Company has with Candor and Ingenuity told us Pag. 4. That the Original of that Design of settling a Company of Commerce for Strangers as well as for Scotch-men was not from Scotland nor from hence but altogether from foreign Parts which as he there tells us he had from good hands So we have reason upon his Testimony to receive what he says being so avowed a Patron of the Wisdom Justice and Equity of the said Act. However it will not be amiss to unfold a little more distinctly what he hath only obscurely and briefly insinuated In the doing whereof I must crave pardon for revealing a Secret committed to me in a private Conversation and the rather because I have always valued my self upon an inviolable Fidelity toward all that have trusted me and upon a tenacious Retentiveness and steddy Secrecy in reference to such Things as have been privately and under the Notion of friendship conveyed to me But where my Discretion has only been confided in but neither my Honour nor my Conscience have been engaged I do judg that I not only may but that in Duty I ought to disclose what hath been and is contrived and machinated in order to divide and separate these two Kingdoms and thereby to weaken if not ruin both of them namely That the Dutchâ— being afraid that either through the Prince of Orange's Death or through King James's Restauration these Nations may be awakened to consider how they have been first deluded and misled and then wronged and injured by the Hollanders and thereupon may be provoked to demand Reparation and grow enraged to persue Revenge they have therefore studied and concerted how to separate the Kingdoms of England and Scotland the one from the other And have proceeded so far therein as in either of the foregoing Cases to have allowance for it from Willam's Dutch Minions and Confidents which is equivalent to the having it from himself And accordingly they have treated with some of the Scotch Nation about it whom they have not only gratified with Mony to make them pliable but have given them assurance That there shall be Three or Four hundred thousand Pound ready to bribe and gain the chief and most leading Men of that Kingdom to comply with this Design at what time it may be needful for the Dutch to have it put in execution In pursuance whereof they have started the Project of a Scotch East India Company which that Nation had all the reason in the World to take hold of and they will be thought not only kind but just to themselves in gaining this Grant and Concession from the Crown for their coming into the Interest of this Man at a Season when their adhering to their Rightful King as was their Duty to have done would have made this Man's Title very uncertain and precarious and would have rendered his Abode in and Reign over these Kingdoms of a very short Duration and Continuance Nor will it escape the recommending the Wisdom of the Scots Nation to Posterity That whilst the English who have lavished away and wasted near 40 Millions sterl upon their Dutch King have not obtained one Beneficial National Act or Law in recompence of all that they have so foolishly and prodigally bestowed for the support of his Government the Scots by taking the Benefit of his foreign Inclinations and Affections have gained something that may be useful to them and their Off-spring It were high Presumption in me to undertake to declare how far the Scots Act is directly calculated and adapted to the Prejudice of England seeing that were to invade the Province and to break into the Rights of both Houses of the Parliament of England who being extreamly sensible of and having maturely weighed it have not only the Integrity and Fortitude to represent it
blue Ribbon owing to any other Motives than that he both understands and asserteth the Interest of his Country without Justifying of or conniving at Dutch Encroachments and that he has the Fortitude to avow himself the Advocate and Patron of the Established Ecclesiastical Constitution and who will not be brought to sacrifice at once both our Legal Worship and Discipline and the Commerce and Treasure of the Kingdom to the Pleasure and Appetite of our Outlandish Neighbours nor be gained to betray our Church and State to the lust and humour of those Court Minions who are gained by Bribes and Pensions to be Brokers and Factors for our Rivals and Underminers tho at present thro a Solecism in Speech as well as in Politicks they be stiled our assured and good Allies Nor need we any other evidence of the Commencement and Continuance of the Quarrel against the tacitly formentioned Nobleman than the Proposals that were made to him by a person of his own Order and Dignity about stifling the Enmity against him and that those who are his boldest Accusers and most passionate Antagonists should depart from and deposite their Accusations of him and not only enter into a Truce but into an united and firm Friendship with him provided he would abandon the defence of the Church and Joyn with them in promoting an Oath of Abjuration both which are the Contrivances of the Dutch and the Results of Councils given at the Hague partly to obviate the revenge they know themselves Justly obnoxious unto from King James should he at any time come to be reestablished and partly to kindle a Civil War amongst our selves by which we may be both diverted and disabled from inflicting those Punishments upon them hereafter which they so much deserve or at least to turn and enflame the King's wrath in case he return against his own Subjects in hopes thereby to prevent the effects of his Resentment against them And that the quarrel which I have intimated to be raised against this Honourable Person is the product of Foreign Councels appears not only from the Tools and Instruments embaâ—ked in pursuing of it who are all of them Favourites and Partizans of the Court but is made evident beyond all controul from hence That when the said Noble Peer told his Master for news at Burford the application that had been made to him and by whom and the tenor of it he found that he was antecedently acquainted with and possessed of the whole which well he might as being in the quality of Executioner of Belgick Advice and Measures both the Author and Fomenter of the 〈◊〉 and the Projector and Instigator of the Accomodation and the terms of it However we may easily disâ—rn from hence what the whole Nation aswell as single Individuals may Expect from a Dutch King influenced by Dutch Councils when the only Person in the Kingdom to whom He and They stand most indebted for Promoting the Revolution aswell as for former and subsequent Favours of the greatest Dimensions and Importance is thus singled out to be hunted and run down by Clamour and Obloquy and this not for his Crimes against the Crown or for his being the Principal Person in Abdicating of the King Altering the Succession and Subverting our Hereditary Monarchy but because that after He had brought us to the Altar he should now Demur as to the letting the Church annd Nation fall Victims to Dutch Malice and Avarice And if we had not been Infatuated by Bigotry and made Insolently Wanton by too much Prosperity And had our Intellectual Faculties Distorted by Disloyal Malice we might have easily Foreseen and Prognosticated what the Infidelity of the Dutch would be to the Kingdom by their more than Heathenish Treachery to the Late King in that notwithstanding the Alliance Solemnly Contracted and Ratified by Oath in which they stood Sacredly Engaged to observe all terms of Amity and Friendship with him yet whilst his Majesty relied upon the Assurance of that Compact and Stipulatior they did under the Cloak and Vail of being His Confederates Clandestinly contrive the Subversion of the Throne And tho they neither then could nor have had the 〈◊〉 Impudence to this day albeit not a People Accusable for unseasonable Modesty when they can either recurr to weak Pretences or probable Fictions for Justifying their Conduct to alledg any matter of Just Complaint he had given them and much less any cause of Hostile Quarrel Yet by a Treachery customary to Them but which neither Turks nor Pagans would have been guilty of They both gave Eencouragement to the Prince of Orange to Invade his Dominions and Commissioned and Authorized their Fleet and Troops to Support and Assist him in doing it Nor did they only Perpetrate this Treachery towards his Majesty in Defiance of Vengance from Heaven and in Contempt of every thing that has been held Sacred amongst Men as well as in Derision of all those Pacts and Agreements upon which the intercourse and Peace of Nations and the Tranquillity of Societies do depend But at the same Juncture of time in which they were Plotting his Ruin and had entered into Correspondency and Combination with his Disloyal Subjects for driving Him from his Kindoms they gave him all the assurance which any Prince could desire or expect from a Neighbouring State that they Prized his Friendship and did and would Persevere in Amity with him and that the Ships and Forces whch they had in a readiness to make a Descent into his Territories were Designed for and to be Employed in Affairs wherein he had no Concern and that he neither should nor could receive any Prejudice from them and therefore was not to be allarmed at those Preparations Which Barbarous as well as guileful Behaviour of theirs tho' we have hitherto overlook't and not received that Warning and Instruction from it that such a Procedure towards a Crowned Head and one to whom by Stipulation they were bound to be Friends and Allies and who then Actually was and still rightfully is the only Legal Monarch of these Kingdoms was Adapted and should have have had Efficacy in it to give Yet it is Now Hoped that the Lessons which Experience that is the School-Mistress of Fools hath refreshed our Memory with of their Inveterate Malice to these Kingdoms and of their Fraudulent Methods to render us Poor Impotent and Contemptible will at last awaken us if not to seek and persue revenge at least to lay aside our Confidence in them and to give over the Wasting our Men and Treasure in Defence of a Perfidious People who are endeavouring our Ruine as the Recompence of all the Services we have had the Simplicity Inadvertency and Folly to be rendering them and in the doing whereof we have made our selves Knaves to our Country as well as Persevered in Obstinate Rebellion against the King Nor is it to be doubted but that after they have seen us who are their chief and envied Rivals in Trade
Impoverished and Weakned in the Management of this War into which in order to those Ends they have Wheedled and Invegled us under the Pretence of Humbling Curbing and Reducing France they will be the first both to abandon the Confederacy and to Unite their Forces with those of that Monarch for the Consummating of our Ruine by Power which they have begun and so far Promoted by Fraud And that I may not reflect too far backward nor put my 〈◊〉 upon Examining their Practices Forty or Fifty Years since their Behaviour about seventeen years ago towards the Emperour and the King of Spain but especially towards the King of Denmark and the laâ—e â—â—ector of Brandenburgh who had Embarked in their Assistance and come to their Succour when they were likely to be totally Subdued in that War which they had provoked the French King to enter into against them Anno. 1672. May teach all that help and relieve them under the firmest and most Sacred Confederacy and the highâ—st assurances of their Stedfastness and Fidelity in their Alliances what they are to expect from that faithless People who do always consult and prefer their Interest before all the Obligations they can be brought under to God or Men. The truth whereof tho' the Remonstrances of all those Princes do abundantly manifest which they made unto the States General and Published to the World upon the Separate Peace which the Dutch Concluded with the King of France at the Treaty of Nimeguen Anno. 1678. yet I shall in Confirmation of what I have suggested Transcribe and Exhibit some part of a Pathetick Letter written upon that Occasion to the said States by the Elector of Brandenburgh bearing date at Postdam July 11. 1679. Namely That in the Deplorable Condition his Countries were then in It is easie to Judge saith the Elector whether we have more reason to Complain of those who are Enemies and had fallen thus upon him or of those for whose sake all this happened to him who instead of giving him the assistance required by Treatie have neglected them and made a separate Peace thereby abandoning as well his as their own Affairs and laying upon him the whole burden of the War in which he should have had no part had it not been for his desire to help his friends in their Misfortunes as if it were a Consolation to their High and Mightinesses to see him who had endeavoured with all his Might to save them from Destruction as a Recompence totally Ruined Adding that he had expected an answer to his former Letters and to those Memorials given into them by his Ministers in which he had advized them of the dangers that threatned him and desired their Assistance that so at least he might have had the Comfort to see the Concern they had for his Misfortune which he had the more reason to expect for that it must be fresh in their Memories how in their greatest necessity he hazarded All for them and preferred their Friendship before all the advantageous conditions that were offered him And therefore that he writes to their High and Mightynesses this Letter That they may not think that he tamely Digested their Unjust Proceedings or quitted the Obligation which his Alliance with them laid upon them but that as on his part he had alwaies performed his Promises and Engagements so he requires the like from them or in default thereof Satisfaction for the same and reserveth to himself and his Posterity all the Right thereunto belonging And indeed such has been their Perfidiousness as to the Oâ—sevation of most of â—he Treaties wherein they have been Engaged That should the several Princes of Europe be provoked at last to resent their Infidelity according to the Demerit of it They would instead of choosing to be their Allies or Confederates associate and unite to be their revengefull and implacable Enemies Nor till they be Condignly Punished for the many repeated Violations of their most solemn Stipulations will it prove Wise or Safe to Trust them upon the most Sacred Security that they can give to Kings and Nations by concerted and sworn Contracts For until then it will be but a necessary Prudence in all those with whom they seek and endeavour to be in a Foederal Amity To ask them as Livy tells us the Roman Senator did the Carthaginian Ambassadors at the end of the second Punick War when they came to Supplicate for a Peace Per quos Deos Foe dus icturi essent cum eos per quos ante ictum esset fefellissent By what Gods they would confirm and ratifie their Stipulations seeing they had despised the Omniscience Power and Justice of those Deities by the Invocation of and Appeal to whom they stood obliged to the Observation of former Contracts But when they are once so sufficiently Chastised for their Treacheries and Infidelites of this kind That they can reply as Asdrubal at that time did namely Per eosdem qui tam Infesti sunt Faedera violantibus That they will swear their Leagues by the same God who hath taken Vengeance of them for their Perjury and their Fraudulent Violations of former Agreements Then and not before are they to be Trusted and Relied upon by reason and in the Vertue of any Compacts Covenants and Alliances how Solemnly soever Sworn and Ratified by them Nor will it be improper or unseasonable for me here considering the present Juncture and the Circumstances We of Great Brittain are now Reduced unto to put my Country Men in remembrance that among other of the Motives upon which the Dutch Contrived and Promoted the Revolution how that their Obviating and Preventing the Reckoning and Account which King James was about calling them unto for their Wresting Bantam by Fraud and Violence from the English East-India Company was not only One but that which most Influenced that Avarous and Rapacious Republick thereunâ—o For having during our Convulsions here and the many Jealousies and Misunderstandings which had arisen between the late King Charles and his People to the begetting and fomenting whereof they had contributed all they could Guilfuly and Hoâ—tilely wormed us out of and Drove us from thence where of a large and Beneficial Trade therefore to Anticipate their being forced to restore what they had unrighteously Usurped by Deceit and Power and to avoid making Satisfaction for the Dishonour they had therein done unto the Crown as well as to decline repairing the Injury they had done to the East India Company and to the whole Kingdom They came with Warmth and Readiness into the Design of Invading these Kingdoms and of Supplanting his Majestie 's Throne I suppose it needless to repeat how they had eluâ—ded all the Applications made unto them by King Charles his Ministers in reference to that Affair and how they delayed and evaded giving Satisfaction to the East India Company during the time that remained of his Reign after that Usurpation tho often required and demanded of them both by his
Majesty's Envoys and by the Deputies and Agents of the Company Nor will I so far Reflect upon the Memory of that Prince as to assign the Reasons why they came to Treat him with so much Superciliousness and Neglect in that and other Concerns as they did Seeing besides the too great Encouragement they had to it from somthing in his own Constitution and Temper they were Embold'ned thereunto by the mutinous Humour that was then Predominant in many of his Subjects and by the great and unaccountable Divisions which were arisen between those who were Stiled the Court and Country Factions But finding that his Royal Brother King James who on his Decease Rightfully Ascended the Throne was not a Prince that bore that careless respect to his own Honour to the Reputation of his Kingdoms and to the Prosperity of his Subjects as to digest the aforementioned Affront Injustice and Injury with the Tameness that King Charles had done and that he Carried not that Indifferency to his Peoples Welfare and to the Traffick of the Nation as for a private Gratuity either to Connive at or to Forgive a Wrong done to the Meanest of those under his Protection and Government And much less an Oâ—fence of so heinous a Nature Committed not only against the Chief Trading Society of the Kingdom but to the Obstruction and Loss of a Commerce by which all his People received considerable Profit and Advantage They thereupon by a Violation and Contempt of the Obligatoriness and Sacredness of Leagues both Encouraged all the Seditious and Disloyal here aswel to Rebel against and Revolâ— from the King as by Clamouâ—s and Ryots to Disturb the Tranquillity of his Reign And they took Hold of and Encouraged the Prince of Orange's Ambition whom Pride had disposed and prepared to despise and transgress all the Laws of God and to Trample upon all the Constitutions of Nations for the Gaining of a Crown whose aspiring Haughtiness they resolved in that Matter to Gratifie in order to the Supporting themselves in the quiet Enjoyment of what they had Treacherously Unjustly and Rapaciously Seised And accordingly they Lent unto and Furnished him with a great part of their Army and Navy to Enable him in Conjunction with the Traitors that were here at Home to drive the King both from his Throne and Dominions And had not the People of England been at that Time strangely Infatuated by Bigottry and made Uncapable by their Disloyalty of all just and rational Thinking and Arguing they might from the forementioned Depradation of the Dutch upon Us in the Business of Bantam have very easily Foreseen and have naturally Concluded how far they would Usurp upon Cheat and Rob us afterwards when they should come to obtain one of their own Complexion and Mould as well as of Belgick Birth Education Authority and Inheritance to be chosen and Advanced to Reign over us Nor is it unworthy of Remark how far in this very matter his being a Dutchman hath made him for these Seven Years last past live in a continual forgetfulness of the Justice he oweth to the Nation upon the Foot and Foundation of being Stiled our King For whereas both the Belgick East-Endia Companies and the States General had before the Revolution made and sent Overtures of giving Satisfaction and had offered a Vast Summ of Money in Expiation of that Crime and for repairation of the Injury they had done us in the Case so often mentioned we have not dared since to Pretend unto or Claim the least Compensation for that Wrong and much less to be so Presumptuous as to Require to be Re-established there again Tho according to the Modern Methods of Merit and the ways and means which recommended People most Distinctively to the New Monarch This Kingdom hath deserved as much of his Highness for Perjuring themselves in order to Serve and Oblige him as the Dutch have done by the Violation of their Treaties Nay whereas they broke their Alliances upon the Motives of Inâ—erest and have found their Advantage in their Perjurious Treacheries We by rendering our selves Forsworn in departing from our Allegiâ—â—â—â— have only gained the being wholy shut out from that which we had both so good a Right unto and were in so near and assured Prospect of recovering So that all which by Co-operating unto and Concurring in the Revolution falls to Our Share is the acquiring the Preheminence of a Double Character Namely that of Fools as much as that of Knaves whilst our Belgick Neighbours are content to acquiesce in the single one of being Villains and that chosen and submitted unto for their Gain and not for their Loss But the English being esteemed naturally a generous sort of People may possibly think it but Congruous to that Opinion which Men have commonly had of them that when they have so wilfully done all they can by their late Practices to forfeit Heaven to Part with Resign and Contemn the World also and not to be like the Avaritious Covetous Dutch who are indeed willing enough to Renounce and Disclaim their Portion in the former but then it is with a Proviso of Bartering it away for the later which they take to be a Cunning and Wise Exchange And all Men must Grant that more is to be said in their Favour and for the Extenuation of their Folly who would not choose Damnation but for the Obtaining of Wealth than can be reasonably said of those that not only give themselves over to Eternal Wrath gratis but who choose to Pay Dear for it and to be Robbed of their Liberties and Estates that they may Superarrogate for Hell and be the better Entitled and have the more deserving Right to future Vengeance Yet I ought not to omit mentioning one thing which falls to our Lot even in this World as the Reward of having Purchased the Name Guilt and Infamy of Rebells at the Expence of our Wealth and Traffick and of all we were happy for at Home and Reputable for Abroad namely That the Cap and Coat which were heretofore only the Enclosure and Peculiar of a few ought now and henceforward to be the common Badges Habit and Dress of most of the Kingdom and especially of our Westminster Senators To what I have already said I will add in the next Place that our Electing the Prince of Orange King hath not only Emboldned the Dutch both to Detain from us what they formerly Usurped and to make fresh Encroachments upon us in all parts of the World as well as in all things but they pleadâ—â— it as a ground Authorising them so to do and Improve it as a Mean to Facilitate Countenance and Promote the Depradations which they do since Commit upon us For not to look nearer home Asia and Africa can witness how they Triumph over and Insult us in those Remote parts of the Universe Representing us a Poor Feeble and Dastardly People over whom they have Constituted their Servant a Monarch and thereby reduced us unto
the Condition of a Province Tributary unto and Depending on the Hollanders Now the Material part of this Harangue being too true tho not in all the formal Circumstances in which they relate it they thereupon not only themselves Hector us and Withdraw and Alienate the Natives of those Countries from Valuing us as they were formerly wont to do but having Diminished our Esteem and Reputation among them they do consequently Baffle and Worm us out of our Trade in all those Parts And as the taking one from among them to be our King who had no rightful Title to be so and his having been their and still being no more than an honourable a Servant and dignifi'd Minister of that Republick gives a Speciousness to what they say and alleâ—dg of this kind among illiterate and credulous People So his having made a Descent into this Kingdom with a war like Fleet and military Land Power of their Preparation and Supply and having since his Election to the Thrones of these Kingdoms assumed the confidence to Publish by his Mercenary Scriblers as well as to assert by severall others of his Sychophant Pensioners that his Title over us is founded and Established in Conquest and That he hath a Right to rule over us as so many subdued Vassals gives a kind of moral Certainty to Language of that Nature where the Methods Arts and Tricks of his coming to the Imperial Crown of these Kingdoms are not known and understood For tho under the Influence and Conduct of Madness Distraction and Folly We have Invited and Advanced a Dutch Prince to be our King Antecedently to our waiting the Time he might possibly in Right have come to have been so Yet it deserves our warmest and most angry Resentments to hear that the Hollanders boast and glory in their having Imposed such a one upon us Nor can we Vindicate our Selves from the Disgrace and Reproach until We have both Renounced Him and severely Chastised Them for the Insolency of pretending to have done it But alas Should we Overlook this Allegation which proceedeth merely from Boorish Pride And their being bred in Mosses and Quagmires there are many other Advantages accruing unto them by the Establishment of the Prince of Orange upon the English Throne that both Heartned them unto and Afforded them proper and natural Means of Encroaching upon Impoverishing and Supplanting us Which they neither do nor will ever fail Effectually to Improve according to those respective Tendencies that they lie in to our Damage and to their Profit Whereof the first that I shall name is this That Whereas the sole Power of Issuing out Edicts and Placâ—ats is intirely Lodged in the States General without their being either Obliged to Consult their Stadtholder or his being Vested with any Power to Controul them in what they Publish The only Authority of Ordaining and Emitting Declarations and Proclamations is placed in this Dutch Prince and Belgick Stadtholder by vertue of the Right made Inherent in him on the Foot of our having Elected him King For as all the Priveledg appertaining to our Privy Council is only to Advise him but not to Club with him in an Authoritative Power so it Appears by too many modern Presidents that few of those that are Members there have the Integrity and Fortitude to Contradict him in what he has a Mind to Publish and that his Pleasure is sufficient Reason with most of them to Concur and with others not to be so rude and unmanderly as to Oppose him but silently to Acquiesce And should some be so Bold as at any time to Express their Dissent the most Part have that Dependance upon him in respect of Pensions Offices and other gainful Places that he is alwaies sure to have the Majority of the Board to joyn with him in what he would have done So that whensoever the Dutch do emit what Edicts they please in Subserviency to the Interest of their Provinces Preclusive of any Consideration of these Kingdoms and to their sensible Prejudice Our Monarch by his Interest in and Oath and Obligation unto them as their Stadtholder must not only Approve as well as Connive at what is prejudicial to great Brittain Ireland and the Dominions thereunto belonging but must Concur and Coâ—operate in the Execution of what their High and Mightinesses have thought fit to Ordain To which should I under this Head subjoin how that while the States of the United Netherlands do Retain fully and wholy in themselves the Right of making Peace and War The Jurisdiction of Constituting Ministers to foreign Princes and States the Power of Repealing old and the enacting new Laws c. And this Exclusively of the Prince of Orange's having the least Authoritative Concernment in any of these Matters At the same time this Gentle man hath under the Notion and Quality of being our King not only a Negative upon all Parliamentary Bills but the sole Power of nominating and appointing Ambassadors and Envoys c. and the whole Right and Jurisdiction of making War or Peace On which respective Differences of his Power there and here should I insist and enlarge answerable to the Weight and Merit of those Particulars it might be made appear what vast Advantages the Dutch have of and over us upon all these Accounts and how they became thence furnished with means of Ruining as well as of Weakning and Supplanting us in all wherein we are Interested either at Home or Abroad Not that I would have the forementioned Prerogatives which by our Constitution and Laws stand Vested in our Monarchs withdrawn and pillaged from the Crown Seeing not only without them our Supream Rulers would immediatly cease to be Kings and be reduced to no better Condition than that of Doges of Venice but because it is necessary for the good and safety of the Subjects as well as for the Strength and Glory of the Government that they should remain inseparably Setled where they are But all that I would insinuate is that it is Inconsistent with the Prosperity of these Nations to have one and the same Person allow'd and continued to be our King and yet to remain at the same time Stadtholder of the Belgick Provinces Nor do I need to Enumerate much less to Demonstrate the many Prejudices and Mischiefs which must unavoidably attend our being thus postur'd and stated in that they not only lie obvious to Persons of the meanest Understandings who give themselves liberty to think but because we have already Felt and Experienceâ—d many of them in divers and repeated Instances And therefore I shall only make this Reflexion upon and Deduction from what hath been Suggested namely that the Dutch and We being so differently Circumstanced by reason of the discrepant Relations which the Prince of Orange stands in to us and to them there an absolute and indispensible Necessity that he Renounce being their Stadtholder or cease to be our King It being impossible for him with Justice and Equality to
Purchasing of it than She is believed to have done And therefore not being Contented with Lands of Theobalds which were bestowed upon him soon after the Prince of Orange was Advanced into a Condition and Capacity of making Grants and Alienations of that Kind and of which he has made large Improvements and Raised vast Summes from thence by Sales and otherwise to the wonderful Wrong and Damage of all those that had Leases of and Tenant Right in them from and under the late Duke of Albemarle to whose Father they were Judged a very Royal and Valuable Recompence for the Noble Service He did in Retrieving and Re-establishing the Government upon its Ancient Legal Bottom the Restoring the late King Charles to his Rightful and Hereditary Soveraignity and for Re-estating these Kingdoms in the peaceable Possession of their Laws and Liberties I say that not being Satisfied with this ample Donative and Gift He hath lately Begged of King William the other Lands I have Mentioned and hath had them Granted unto Him without the least Regard to the Right of the Crown the Property of the Prince of Wales the Laws of this Kingdom or to the Interest which some Hundreds of Persons have more or less in them Of which Acquisition on Benting's part and Alienation on William's it will not be amiss to inlarge a little that we may the better Discern and come the more Sensibly under the Impression both of the Despotical and Unlimimited Absoluteness which the Usurper and his Minions Challenge over us and of the Slavish State and Tenure we are Reduced unto of having our Estates wrested from us and given away to what Degree Measure and Proportion one Dutch Man shall have the Impudence to Demand and the other the Insolency and Tyranny to Grant For if we look into the Extent and Largeness of this Grant it is the Giving away no less than the Dominion and Property of Five Parts of Six of one Entire County which as it is too great a Power and Inheritance for any Foreign Subject to Possess and Inherit So it may hereafter prove Unsafe for the Government to have so Numerous a People made Subject unto and Dependant on Him Seeing it is of that vast Dimension and ample Jurisdiction that near Fifty Mean Lordships Hold of those Mannors and above Fifteen Hundred Freeholders are Tenants there to the King and thereby Obliged unto Him under a particular Allegiance besides that which they ow him in the Quality and on the Foot of their being his Subjects And it is so particular a Revenue Anciently Vested in the Prince of Wales that it cannot Legally and according to the Customs Constitution and Laws of England be Alienated from him And therefore upon the Creation of a Prince of Wales there are upon the Right of Tenure under him and of Tenancy unto him Mises of Eight Hundred Pounds payable to the said Prince Nor is it unworthy of Remark that in the Preamble of the Statute of the 21. Jac. Cap. 29 it was brought into Doubt and questioned whether Charles the First that was then Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwal whom the Statute Declares to have an Inheritance in both tho under special Limitation could Let or Rent Leases for Three Lives or any longer than his Own And it is there Declared that he could not unless such Leases were Confirmed in Parliament And the Reason is Because upon want of a Prince of Wales that Inheritance becomes immediatly Vested in the Crown So that if the Prince of Wales himself who has an Inheritance in that Revenue cannot Grant Estates out of it for any longer than his own Life without the Consent and Authority of Parliament it demonstratively Follows that the Prince of Orange who by the very Title that he possesseth the Crown hath at most only an Estate in it for his own Life cannot Grant away and Alienate it without the Consent of both Houses of Parliament Declared in and by a formal and express Statute To which I will presume to add that in Case of a Failure of a Prince of Wales it doth not settle in the Crown as a Propriety but as an Usufructuary till a Prince of Wales be Created to whose Creation that Revenue is Annexed by those words in our Law To him and his Heires who shall be Kings of England Nor was there ever a Disposal or Alienation of that Estate from the Crown save when Queen Elizabeth who was as much the Idol as she was called the Protectoress of her People ventured to grant it unto and bestow it upon the Earle of Leicester but that both occasioned such an Insurrection and Rebellion and was likely to raise and continue such a Civil War in the Kingdom that Leicester was glad both to depart from all Pretence of Claim that was made unto him by that Grant and quietly to Resign it and the Queen who wanted neither Spirit to Assert her legal Rights and Prerogatives nor Interest in the Affections of her Subjects for Support and Justification of them was joyful to put an End to those Intestine Divisions and Troubles bâ— Reassuming those Lands to the Crown where they have ever since continued Nor can a rightful and hereditaâ—y King of England even in the Case and on the Sâ—pposal that there were no Prince of Wales legally Alienate and Give away those Lands from the Crown seeing they are no otherwise Vested in it than in Trust to be Preserved forth coming to the Use Profit and Honour of such a Prince when there comes to be One and at what time he is Created and Declared And therefore in and by the very Statute of Charles II. which gave Power as well as Liberty for the Sale and Disposal of the Fee Farm Rents there is a particular and express Exception of the forementioned Welch Rents tho there was then no Prince of Wales nor any Prospect that there would be one of that King's Body which plainly Imported that the Parliament took the Welch Revenue nor to be Alienable Much less then can the Prince of Orange that hath no hereditary Right to the Crown but hath only Obtained it by the illegal and merely pretended Choice of the People which is in other Terms to have Usurped it and who by the very Act of Settlement has but an Estate for Life in the Possession of it Grant away the Inheritance and absolute Fee of the Principality of Wales For it is no less an Absurdity in Law to say that a Tenant for Life can Grant a Fee than to say that a Tenant in Fee can Grant no more than for a Life But it appears that that tho the Power of a lawful King and of a legitimate Prince of Wales be Limited and Restrained within the Precincts of Law yet that the Power of an Usurper is boundless and unconfined However it is no way incongruous that he who has violently Snatched his Father in Law and Uncle's Crown from his Head and Drove him from his
Dominions should also take upon himself to Grant away and Alienate the Inheritance of his Cousin and to Disinherit him of it But why doth he not as well make Benting Prince of Wales as to give him the Revenue of that Principality Seeing he may as lawfully and by the same Measures of Justice do the First as he has done the Last And no doubt but that as he hath Inclination to it we may also live to see it done if he can but once Emerge out of the present War and thereupon bring over from the Continent a numerous and triumphant Outlandish Army to support and protect him in his Usurpation and Tyranny and make us with Tameness and Decency wear our Chains In the mean time considering the Depopulaation and Poverty which thro a long and costly War the Nation is already reduced unto we may make this Reflection upon and this Inference from the Prodigality of our Belgick King to his Dutch Minion and to his Outlandish Janizaries viz. that it can be done upon upon no other Design than to gratifie the Commo-nwealth of Holland and to raise them to an Ascendency of Wealth and Power over us For had he the least Regaâ—d to the Welfare of England he would blush to ask such immense Summs of the Parliament when he is alienating and disposing away the standing Revenues of the Crown to his Whores and Burdaâ—â—â—â— For how can we imagin that any thing should be held needful to be Levied of the People if it were not in Subseâ—viency to an Outlandish Interest when we see not only those Lands that are pretended to be forfeited but those Ancient Inheritances that the Sovereign and Royal Family should Subsist upon squander'd away upon little Foreigners which were bred and heretofore accustomed to live upon the Fragments of their Master's Table Surely we may expect from the Justice and Wisdom of this Parliament That before they Empty the Purses of those they Represent they will enquire how the Revenues vested in the Crown are bestowed and applyed For whatsoever Usurpers may dare to do in wasting the Treasure and Inheritance of the Throne by Buildng Palaces and furnishing them splendidly at Loo and for making Indorsements on the posteriour Parchments of those I have mentioned Our Natural and Lawful Kings never used to demand Succours of their Subjects till they had Exhausted themselves and Disbursed their whole Revenue in the Service and for the Protection of their People Nor is there any thing more frequently met with and better known in our Law than that there have been Acts of Resumption of former Grants and Donations from the Crown whensoever the Nation has been Engaged in an expensive War and the People have Groaned under large Taxes And as this is the first Original of the Kind that ever we had Experience of in this Kingdom and for which we are indebted to Holland so I hope that after our Deliverance from a Belgick Prince we shall have no Copy of it or that any King hereafter will make Alienations of Lands from the Crown when he is under Necessities of demanding Aids of his People for his Support and Assistance in Wars wherein he may come to be engaged To which I will only add that under all those lavish and squandring Wasts and Consumptions of our Prince upon Dutch for Closet and Chamber Services he hath not only been Narrow and Parcimonious enough but Niggardly and highly Ungrateful to the English because it could not benefit Holland Whereof among others Talmash that is Dead and old Danby who is Alive are known Instances tho they Served him both in Policy and War and Contributed farther to his Exaltation to the Throne and to the keeping him in it than Thousands of his Country-men were capable of doing and especially beyond what the Chocolate and Carpet Gentleman I have been speaking of had either Courage or Brain to Attempt In recompence whereof instead of any Lands and much less those of the Crown the one was sent and abandoned to be Killed by the French but Murthered by the English abroad and the other is Forsaken Given up and Sacrificed at â—â—me to the old Envy and bigotted Rage of his Enemies But whereas what I have now Represented may seem to Issue only in the Enriching a few Hollanders at our Loss and Expence and not to amount to the Benefit and Advantage either of the Community of that People or of those States unless Secondarily and after several Removes I shall therefore advance to the laying open and displaying wherein to our Vast and infinite Damage we are Bubbled out of our Money and Treasure and made a Prey to that Republick thro the large Sums daily Allotted and Paid them out of our Exchequer Nor is the way wherein it is done such a Mistery as needs Accuracy of Parts and great Penetration to Comprehend it seeing it cannot escape Proving Demonstratively Obvious to every One who will give himselfe leave to Consider how many of the Dutch Troops and of those that Constitute their Particular Quota are upon the English Establishment and Paid with English Mony For as if it had not been enough to have been Guilty both of that Prodigal Folly and that Treasonable Crime of giving them at one time Six Hundred Thousand Pounds as a pretended Re-imbursment of the Charge and Expence they Alleadged they had been at in sending their Fleet and Army hither upon the Motives as they had the Hypocrisy and Impudence to say and We the Simplicity and Lunatism to believe of Rescuing Us from Popery and Slavery but as appears by the Event for Introducing Atheism Thraldom and Poverty We did not only over and above that Maintain and Pay their Whole Army here for a Considerable time but have had ever since Six or Seven Holland Regiments upon English Establishment and both Maintained with good English Mony and at the Proportion of our Pay which is larger then they allow to those Troops which remain under their own Establishment Sure it might have been thought sufficient and would be so by any Prince save this Dutch one who inwardly hates Us and by all the Methods of his Administration seeketh and Pursueth our Ruine that besides the Raising and Maintaining the largest Body of Brittish Troops that has for many Ages been Imployed upon the Continent and over and above the Charges we are at in Assisting and Relieving the Duke of Savoy and on those particular Forces which are on English Pay in Piedmont We should be at the Expence of Purchasing Subsisting and Paying all the Danes most of the Hess many of the Lunenburgh and divers of the Swiss and some of the Brandenburgh Forces that are now in the Confederate Army in Flanders but that after all this Prodigal Expence which tho it may possibly give us the Reputation of a Rich yet will not even with our Allies themselves acquire us the Credit of a Wise Nation We should be so Ridiculously silly as to Beare and
Defray the whole charge of so many Regiments belonging directly to the Dutch and who being entirely under the Authority and Command of the States General and of the Belgick Provinces will in Reward of our Indiscreet and Wastful Liberality to them be ready to Invade Us and to Cut our Throats whensoever their Masters the High and Mighty Lords and their Dutch Stadtholder shall require them to do it And tho it may seem a Paradox to Soft-headed Unthinking People yet it is a Measured and Certain Truth that as all the Confederates give not one Moyety of what is both necessary and applyed to the upholding and carrying on of this War so scarcely a Moyety of that which is granted and raised as the Share and Quota of England is disbursed and laid out upon our Troops But it is either bestowed in the Hireing Foreign Princes to continue in this united and conjunct Alliance or in the paying Outlandish Forces who being ready to Starve in their own Countries will serve the Devil or the Mogull for Mony or it is lavished away in reproachful Gratuities upon Minions under the Notion of being expended for private Service as indeed it is tho for a Criminal and Villainous one or it is disposed in the bribing Members of Parliament to betray the Trust reposed in them by those that have Chosen them and to Sell their Country or it is consumed in the making and keeping up of Sham Plots and upon Scoundrels and Varleâ—s to Swear peaceable Men falsly out of their Lives and Estates And least it should remain any longer a Mistery why William is so fond of Foreign Soldiers as to receive them in those vast Numbers he doth into English Pay when the Natives of these three Kingdoms do not only equal those of all Nations in Valour and Bravery and without being thought a Disparagement to those of other Countries are acknowledged to excel those of most and who have at all times been forward and ready to take Arms when the Cause has been just and honourable and where their Treatment has been humane compassionate and good I shall therefore resolve this Riddle and detect both upon what Motives and Prospects he doth so which accordingly in brief are these namely That having formed Designs both of Enslaving us to Himself and of making us Vassals and Tributaries to his beloved Dutch whensoever he can Emerge out of the War And being apprehensive that Native and Brittish Subjects will be so far from being his Tooles to Enthrall themselves and their Off spring as well as their Country-men and their Posterity That they will both abandon and withstand Him in the Attempt and be provoked to revenge the Affront and Injustice which shall be offered of this Kind to these Kingdoms and the People of them And theâ—eupon that he may be in a Condition to Execute hereafter without hazard what his Soul thro Pride and Malice is now in Travail with he both secretly Lists and Armeth the French Hugonots here and draws what Outlandish Troops he can into his immediate Pay and Service from Abroad Nay in subserviency to this Projection he not only puts Foreigners into the supream Command over all the English and Scotch Forces tho contrary to an Address of Parliament but there is not one Brittish Regiment in the whole Army in the Low Countries into which he hath not by his despotick Power and absolute Authority introduced Aliens both as Commission Officers and Subalterns Which being done in Contempt as well as Neglect of an Address of the House of Peers that I have formerly mentioned their Lordships do now seem sensible of the Affront put upon themselves as they are not only the Consiliarii nati of our Princes but as they are the chiefest and noblest part of the Great Council of the Kingdom And therefore like unto what the Peers of England used to be and as becomes the Patriots of their Country they have demanded a List of all the Officers that Command our Brittish Troops and of what Country they individually are Which if King William cause to be Presented to them with that Truth and Sincerity which ought to be the inseparable Qualities of a Prince both their Lordships and all the World will have Reason to be Astonished at the Wrong and Dishonour done to these Nations in the setting so many Foreigners over our Forces to Command them Whereof we have already seen and felt the fatal Effects in the late Count Solme's Abandoning so many of our Men to be Butcher'd at the Battle of Steinkerk when instead of supporting them as he ought and as they expected he lay at distance Covered and never Advanced towards their Relief And where our Men behaving themselves with that wonderful Bravour that is natural to them it is Commonly believed even by our Enemies as well as by others that a Defeat might have been given the French if those Brittish Troops which were so shamefully Deserted and treacherously Sacrificed had been reinforced and succoured as they should have been But as to the List which the House of Peers have demanded it is too probable that King William will with the same Regardlesness both to Truth and to his Honour endeavour to Sham them off with a false and imperfect Account of those Officers as he hath ventured to do the House of Commons in the State of the War he hath caused lay before them of the Quota's of the several Confederates for the Year 1696. if their Lordships will have the Tameness to sit down with and acquiesce in it without farther Examination and Enquiry But to proceed It may not be amiss to observe how that in order that none of those whom he hath already Mustered in order to this future Design or of whose Service he thinks himself sure when the time arrives of Accomplishing it may in the Interim languish and decay in their Zeal towards the Enterprize he loseth no opportuniâ—y of placing Marks of his Favour and Kindness upon them tho it be sometimes to the Forfeiture of his Discretion and prove the giving too early an Alarm to England of the lurking and malicious Intentions which he entertains for us So that when he Addressed his Parliament on Nov. 23. last he could not omit Recommending his Muster'd and Regimented Hugonots to their Care and Supply tho he did not think those many Thousands of Starving Widows and Orphans whose Husbands and Fathers perished in his Service worth the being mentioned to them for Relief And much less had he the Justice and Goodness to desire their Aids and Supplies in behalf of those many once Wealthy and Trading Families that are since the Revolution reduced to extream Poverty by his pursuing his concerted Measures with Holland for the ruining of our Trade and thro the Treachery as well as Neglect of the Commissioners of the Admiralty who Act by his Order and Instructions and rather choose to Sacrifice the Kingdom than in any thing to Controul his pleasure
Of whom if the Parliament requireth not an exact and severe Account of all our Losses by Sea and make both their Lives and Estates responsible for their Sloth and Infidelity in protecting our Commerce and Traffick we shall have reason to think both the Houses as well as the Gentlemen of that Commission engaged equally to hasten and see the Ruin of the Kingdom Nor can any other Reason be given save that which I have assigned why King William should Address his Parliament with that Concernedness he did for a Benevolence to be granted to the Hugonots at a time when the other Supplies he demanded will arise to mâ—re in case they be Granted than all the Circulating and very probably more than all the Real Mony in the Kingdom will amount unto Moreover the Condition of the French Refugees is not only infinitely better here than ever it was in their own Country but exceedeth as well as equalleth the State of our own People of Rank and Quality with them For instead of Canvas and Sabotts which used to be the Habit and Dress of many of them in France they are now both Shod and Clad as decently and richly as the best of the English are upon as well as among whom they do Subsist And in the place of feeding commonly upon Herbs and only now and then upon Flesh and that the Refuse of Markets which was their Custom nothing will now content them but the choisest Provisions that Butchers and Poulterers can Furnish them with and that in large Proportions also Which also shews that while our Purses are almost emptied theirs are become well filled since their Arrival hither that they can be able to bear the Charges of living so splendidly as they are now known to do But it shews the Mean and Contemptible Opinion this Dutch Prince has of the Understanding and Wisdom of an English Parliament otherwise he would not in the forementioned Particular have Treat-them as so many Fops that are to be Bubbled and Cullyed out of their Own and the Nations Mony And indeed he hath had Just cause given him to account the Generality of the People of England to be no less Fools than in Subserviency to his Ambition they have discovered themselves to be Knaves And it is but Just that upon his finding them to be People of so little Conscience towards King James he should in Reference to his own Concernments Esteem and Treat them as People both of as little Wit and Honesty And this I dare Avouch as having had it from those that are Conversant with his Privadoes and with such as are upon his Secrets Namely that he looks upon most of the English as no better than Rogues and Traytors and as he knows no difference in this Point betwixt Whig and Tory so he Resolveth to Treat them all equally and alike if he can but once put an end to this Present War And what we may then Expect from him answerable to those fine Characters he is pleased to give Us may be easily guessed by the Murder of Glenco and so many other Innocents as were there Massacred by his Express Order and Command after having had all Assurances given them by those in Commission under him of their Protection Nor can we after that Treacherous and Bloody President question the Entertainment we are to meet with from this Dutch Prince's Cruelty and Malice as soon as he hath his Hugonots here and his Outlandish Janizaries from Abroad in a readiness and all Mustered together upon the Spot to Execute his Commands And as his Outlandish Troops Abroad have such Officers Commanding them who will as readily put in Execution all his Barbarous and Inhumane Orders as well as those Degenenerate Natives Hill Hamilton and Glenlion c. Did that which was sent down to Require and Authorise the Massacre in Scotland Anno 1691. So We have little reason to believe otherwise than that the French and pretended Hugonot Schombergh whom in derision of the Nation and in Contempt of the House of Peers he hath Advanced to be General over all the Forces in England will be forward enough both to employ such of them as he can Debauch to Perpetrate a Cruelty and to Instigate and to make use of his Refugee Country-men to Concur and Assist in Inslaving Us and to Cut our Throats if we will not Tamely Submit whensoever the time comes that such a Work is Seasonable to be put in Execution And the late Insolence as well as Illegality Committed by the Hugonots who live within the Precincts of Westminster in the not only daring to pretend to have a Vote in the Election of Members and Burgesses for that place to serve in Parliament and in having the Impudence to come Four or Five several Persons out of one House upon that Errand where they live crowded together or rather as Soldiers disposed in Baracks and quartered upon the Kingdom than as Tenants or Inmates but their Hectoring Insulting and â—rudely Attacking those English who were disposed to give their Votes for others than they had received their Cue from Whitehall and Kensington may teach us what they are capable of attempting for the Subversion of our Laws and Liberties and what we may justly look for at their hands when they have an opportunity and the Word is given them For it is an Affront to our Laws and a Banter put upon our Understandings to say that Aliens who remain under the Character and Quality of such and who neither can Purchase nor Inherit Lands should have the Right and Priveledg to Vote in the Choice of Members of Parliament And we shall deserve that all Mischiefs should Oveâ—take â—us which he Designs to bring upon us if the De-Witting in Holland the Gaffnying in Ireland the Glencoing in Scotland do not Warn us to provide for our Safety which we can never have Assurance of if this Man continue in the Authority and Power he has and much less can we â—ope for it if he Arrive at more But to advance a Step farther in an Enquiry after and into the Spoils and Depradations as well as the Gains and Advantages which the Dutch have made and continue to make of these Nations since the Revolution and that their Belgick Sâ—adtholder became Seated in the Throne of England Besides the Obtâ—ining so many of their own Troops to be brought upon an English Establishment and to be paid with our Mony as hath been already declared have also made a vast and unconceivable Profit by the Mony that hath been Allowed and Transmitted for the Payment of our own Troops For as in order thereunto much of the ready Cash of the Nation hath been Exported from hence so most of that Mony hath come to Circulate in Holland and a great part of it to Centre there And surely it must be a great Damage to us and an answerable Gain to them to have Two Hundred Thousand Poundâ— or at least Fifteen Hundred Thousand Pounds Carried yearly
Mony either Conveyed from us or from any of the Confederates to the Army in Flanders and that is by Furnishing most if not all the Stores and Provisions upon which the Army doth Live and Subsist And the Manner as well as the Reason is obvious to any one that can think two Thoughts Coherently Namely that all of one kind or another which they need is Conveyed to them by the Dutch and carried out of the Seven Provinces into the Spanish Netherlands where all things are put off and disposed to the respective Troops and to Ours especially at their own Rates So that they carry back into their own Country all or most of the Mony which is laid out in favour of and upon our own Troops as well as that which is Expended upon the several Materials which are Necessary to the Support and Maintenance of the War which Circulating backward and forward every Week as well as every Month and Centring at last in Holland they are rendred Rich by the War which makes us so Poor and has reduced us to the Indigent and Depâ—orable Estate that we are now in Yea the burning and bombing Cities and Towns by the French and their Seising and Destroying the Forage and the Magazines upon which the Confederate Army should Subsist turneth all to the profit and account of the Dutch and is improved by them to their Gain and Advantage Because both the Materials for the rebuilding ruined Cities and the Stores required to supply and fill wasted and destroyed Magazinâ—s do in a manner come all from Holland and from other of the Belgick Provinces whither they carry back the value in Current Mony to the enriching of their Bank the encreasing of their Stock and the enlarging of their Trade And as they make a large gain by the Spoils Losses and Devaâ—tations which their Confederates suffer and undergo so they make no less Profit by their Victories and Successes even to the preclusion of their Allies and especially the English from all advantage and benefit by them For as Namur is the only Conquest since the Commencement of this War in Flanders that has been obtained over the French so it is but a recovery of what the Confederates had lost during the present War and not a new Acquisition And as it has cost infinitely more in Men and Treasure than it and all the dependencies upon it are worth so these three Kingdoms who contributed most to the taking of it and had more of the Blood of their Men spilt and more of their Treasure and Ammunition expended and wasted in the Winning of that City than any one of all the Confederates have Reapt nothing by it but the enlarging the Barrier of the Dutch and the putting a strong and well fortified City into their power and possession to make them more Insolent unto and Encroaching upon their Allies And when I Consider the Customs of the Spartans who had an Order that when any of their Generals compassed his Designs by Policy and Treaty he should Sacrifice an Ox but when by Force and Bloodshed only a Cock I think that our many late Bonfires and Illuminations and especially our prodigal and foolish Expences in St. James's Square were ridiculous as well as wastful Consumptions For as the distinct Values of those Oblations of the Lacedemonians do shew us according to the Judgment of Plutarch how much they preferred the Successes of calm and sober Councils before those of Force and Strength so there was more cause for Lamentations for the many and brave Men that had been lost before the Town and Castle of Namur e'er they fell into our hands and which in all probability will with less Cost be speedily Snatch'd from us again than of vain childish and expensive Triumphs for the gaining them But to omit this that which I am to represent and display is that the City Castle which were gained at the Price and Cost of so much English Blood and Treasure are now Consigned over to the Dutch and stand Mortgaged to them for the Repayment of what they have laid out and disbursed in this War which seeing there is no likelihood that â—ver the Spaniards will be in a condition to Reimburse them that Town is consequently become a part as well as an enlargement of their Territories and is the Addition of an Eighth Province to the former Seven Yea out of Kindness to the Dutch and Disaffection to us our Belgick Prince is so frugal of their Treasure and so prodigal of that of this Kingdom that much of the Charges necessary for Repairing the Fortifications of Namur is born by us and our Mony remitted and transported to Defray them Which is such a bubbling of this Kingdom that those most engaged in King William's Interest cannot avoid Resenting it with Indignation And as this new Acquisition which our Dutch King hath gained them at the price of our blood and bones as well as of our Mony gives them a stronger Barrier than they had and a new and large Jurisdiction so it not only opens a Traffick to them with France in time of War as well as of Peace but delivers the Hollanders from a Necessity of depending upon Brussels or upon any Spanish Towns for the Management of their Trade Seeing by being possessed of Namur they can supply both Flanders and France and carry home what they want from thence without being under the necessity of allowing the Intervention of others in the management of their Trade or of suffering others either to intercept them in it or to make profit by it thro Exchange So that while the English and others Fight they do only Win and the Lives of our Men are no farther valuable with our Belgick King than as they serve to purchase Power and Opulency to the Dutch For tho we be made use of as the Jackall to hunt the Prey yet we are not permitted to have the least Share in it And therefore whosoever have cause to be weary of the War and to groan under the Consumptions and Desolations that attend it they have not and thence it is that in kindness to them but in hatred to us our Belgick King labours all he can both by persuasions and by Authority to foment and keep it up and resolves to do so untill he hath render'd them so opulent and powerful and us so necessitous despicable and weak that we must be contented because we will not remain in a Condition to hinder it to be Slaves to him and Tributaries to the Hollanders And the tyrannous Projects and Designs which K. W. hath contrived and harboureth in relation to these Kingdoms as well as our own Madness and Folly in concurring and co-operating to promote them are equally manifest and both of them apparently evident by this namely That even upon the Supposition that it was needful and just to begin continue and uphold this War Yet much of that Mony which hath been sent abroad from hence to
subsist and pay our Troops might through a very small Care and friendly Conduct of the Prince of Orange in our behalf and through the least measure of Discretion Wisdom Justice Equity and Compassion of those Assemblies stiled our Parliaments to the Kingdom have been preserved in the Nation and have remained to circulate among our selves for the support and increase of our Manufacture and for the protection and enlargement of our Trade and Navigation And the Ways Means and Methods in and by which it might have been done are both so various and plain That had there not been a Conjunction of Malice in King William and of Treachery in our Senators towards England it would not have escaped the being undertaken persued and effected long ago For why might not we with as much Ease and with more Justice have carried all the Provisions from hence for the subsisting the Confederate Army or at least our own Troops and those of other Nations under our pay as that the Dutch should have the Privilege of furnishing it and to be encouraged as well as suffered to go away with the Gain Nor can any other Reason be assigned of the Conduct we have been under in this matter but that William intends to bring us first to Beggary and then into Thraldom and that too many among our selves are through Folly and Knavery willing both to assist and justify him in the effecting of it Had we not Ships enough as I am sure we had before we lost so many Thousands of them as we have done since the Revolution and the Commencement of this War which was the unhappy Off-spring of it to have carried over to Flanders our Grain Butter and Cheese Iron Bread and all things else that are necessary unto or consumable by an Army but that the buying of all those here and the transporting them thither should in a manner be given up and entirely consigned into the hands of the Dutch Whence we are justly become the Derision and Contempt of the World that being stored and furnished without purchasing of other Nations with all the Productions either of Art or Nature that an Army can need or use and the Dutch having scarce any thing of their own Growth and little of their own Manufactures to answer the Occasions and Exigences of so vast a military Body yet that they should engross to themselves the supplying them with all they want and we not only tamely connive at it but like People who have lost their Senses and forfeited their Understandings as well as abandoned the Care of their Country do approve it With what facility might it have been stipulated and provided for at our first entrance into the Confederacy or retrieved and recovered to us since upon renewing of Alliances with those whom we are become engaged to assist in this War that all those Supplies necessary for Troops which England could afford should be applied to that end and that as they should be transported by none but our selves so they should be expended and laid out not only upon our own Troops towards the saving the Remission of Money but taken off from us and accepted by our Allies in lieu of those vast Sums we have disbursed upon them Nor will ever England vindicate it self from the Dishonour and Ignominy brought upon it in that during all this time wherein we have been wasting our Men and Treasure to defend the Dutch Barrier and protect the Provinces of others and to make Conquests for them we should never have contracted for a Port where we might unload what we pleased towards the premised Uses and Ends without being liable to the Payment of Customs or any other Duties of that kind which use to be exacted Which the present House of Commons seems to be sensible of though it is now too late and have therefore declared in their Vote of Decemb 10. That it is the Opinion of that House that all Commodities and Provisions that shall be transported from England for the use of the Forces in his Majesties pay abroad be exempted from any Duty and Excise throughout the Spanish and United Netherlands But though this Vote doth sufficiently intimate their Sense of King William's Infidelity as to the trust reposed in him under the Quality and Stile of King of England and of his Treachery to this Nation in not having contracted and stipulated with those Allies for the forementioned Privilege and Immunity Yet the Treaties between him and these Confederates being already concerted and ratified without the mention or specification of any such Freedom and Advantage to be allowed us all the Effect and Operation which this Vote of the House of Commons can have is to proclaim them to be pragmatical weak and insolent in assuming a Power and Authority over the Rights of foreign Princes and States and that contrary unto as well as without regard to Articles adjusted between King William and those States in the fresh Alliances which have been lately renewed made and ratified Nor can any thing now after the aforesaid Vote preserve the House of Commons from the Derision Scorn and Contempt of Mankind but their declaring those Alliances to have been contracted and confirmed to the prejudice of England and therefore not to be supported by any Taxes to be levied upon the Subjects of this Kingdom And that the said House will grant no Money towards the Confederacy till such other Agreements are made and entered into between this Crown and those neighbouring States which may correspond with and come up to the Opinion of the said House as they have declared it in the foresaid Vote and by the Printing whereof they have published it to the World as the unanimous Opinion and Judgment of the Representative Body of the whole Commons of England And may not this Treachery in the present Administration so openly reflected upon by the foresaid Vote cause us remember both the Memory of Queen Elizabeth and of Oliver Cromwel with Commendations and Praises of their Conduct while in the mean time we must convey down to our Off-spring the Name of the Prince of Orange loaded with all the Obloquies Imprecations and Curses that a People impoverished and ruined by his contrived and chosen ill Conduct towards these Kingdoms can entail upon it For as that great Heroine Queen Elizabeth did upon her assisting the Dutch with a very few Troops in comparison of what we now do covenant with and obtain of them the Brill Flushing and Ramekins to be put into her hands as Cautionary Towns not only that she might thereby oblige them to a more firm dependency upon her and tie them to the better observation of their Alliances and secure unto herself the Reimbursment of some part of the Treasure which she expended in protecting them but that she might always be in a Condition and have it in her own Power to reinforce relieve succour and supply those Troops that she sent them for their aid and defence according
Uses then those of Commerce and in much greater Quantities than Traffick could have ever required its being carried abroad for Though all the Misery and Mischief that do by these means befal and overtake us are all chargeable upon and to be laid at the Door of our Dutch King Seeing that of transporting it has been the natural and unavoidable effect of his ascent to the Throne and of the War that thereupon he engaged us in and especially of those ways which he has designedly chosen and persued in support of it And then as to the Clipping and Embasing our Mony none can be reasonably accused either of causing or conniving at it but the Prince of Orange who has occasioned and encouraged it by his weak and improvident Administration For both these Practices which do eventually and in the Effects of them prove so ruinous to the Kingdom having obtained in no other Reigns in any proportion and degree to what they have done in his as it is commonly stiled they must consequently be resolved into some Neglect Weakness or Treachery in his Adminâ—stration whereof no other Reigns were guilty or accusable Nor will it excuse him to have it alledged That more have been executed for those Crimes since his usurping of the Throne than were in an Age before Seeing though some of the little and indigent Creatures whom necessity tempted to it and which necessity he brought upon them have been condemned and executed yet your Goldsmiths and Refiners who both bought the Clippings and who at mighty Gain furnished them with broad Mony for continuing the Crime have not only escaped Prosecutions which by Law they deserved but divers of them have been the special Favourites and Confidents of the Government And to mention but one of many I will be bold to say the hanging of Evans the Goldsmith who infinitely more deserves it for melting down and carrying abroad our Coin to satisfy his Covetousness and make Profit by what was our milled Mony than any of the Clippers and false Minters have done would have given greater check unto and have been a more effectual Remedy even of the Crimes of these later than all the Convictions and Executions for Offences of that kind since the Revolution which we have seen but have found no benefit by But instead of that he hath been honoured and preferred by our Dutch Bestower of Titles and Disposer of Places to be both a Knight and a Commissioner of the Excise though a Fellow void of all Merit and destitute of good Sense and whom only Knavery Impudence and the Emptying the Kingdom of our Silver by carrying it to Holland to enrich the Dutch have entitled to his Master's Favour And I crave Liberty to say en passant though it may seem alien to the subject That I have often wondered why our Kings and Parliaments should fall upon so ineffectual a Remedy of those Crimes as the making them Capital will continue to prove in a Nation where Men are sunk into so much Irreligion and Atheism and which the many Villanes attending and wrapt up in the Revolution have encreased and strengthned as to dread Death less than Poverty and to chuse Damnation as well as Hanging and Quartering rather than want Supplies for the Feeding and for the Maintenance of their Lasciviousness and Luxury Seeing when our Mony was both Pure and Sterling and of full Weight as it was generally at the Revolution the bare imposing and exacting of a Mulct of Five or Ten Pounds upon every one that should have been found offering either Clipt or False Mony to another would have deterred all Men from venturing upon it and obviated both the forementioned Crimes and likewise the woful Effects of them And possibly it would be no ill Policy to do in this Case as the Lacedemonians did in that of Theft which when they thought not fit to prevent and hinder by punishing the Thieves they effectually suppressed it by rendering those liable to a considerable Penalty that should have any Thing stolen from them So may be the inflicting of a Mulct upon every one that should take either light or base Mony would soon cause that there would be no Offerers of it by reason there would be none found so unkind and unjust to themselves as to receive it But to return from this Digression I do say that the Dutch besides all the Injuries they have done us and the Spoils they have committed upon us with respect to our Trade in the forementioned Methods which I have been displaying they have also in divers other Ways and in several Instances either craftily supplanted or directly invaded and forceably assaulted us in our Commerce and Traffick since the late Revolution which I shall presume now to lay open as far as the brevity of this Discourse will allow and shall discover how and wherein they have done so And I shall begin with the Advantage they have had of protecting their own Trade and of exposing and leaving ours open to be ruined by reason of that small and unequal Quota and Proportion of Ships of War that in respect of our much greater Number of Ships of that kind they supply and furnish to the forming and constituting the Confederate and United Fleet of both Nations which is the more remarkable in that their Number of Land Forces is not much encreased towards the support of the present War above what it use to be in time of Peace Yea it is hardly so great now as then if we consider that all the Contributions raised in the Province of Namur and on the French Conquests go for the Ease of their Establishment and that the vast Sums spent in Flanders by the whole Confederate Army becomeâ— theirs and Centerâ— in Holland However it bears no proportion with ours according to the State of the War for the Year 1696. which as the Earl of Renelagh by King William's Order gave it into the House of Commons Decemb. 3. amounts to 87440 Men whereas if it were not to defend the Provinces of these stiled our Allies a very few Forces would be sufficient for our Occasions at home if it should not be found needless to have any at all Whereas they in the times of the profoundest Peace are seldom without Fifty thousand Men to which their supernumerary Addition now is but inconsiderable if what I have said be well considered and provided that we also observe that divers of those Troops reckoned into their Quota are upon English Establishment and paid with our Mony Indeed if we had charged our selves with furnishing the whole marine Power both for us and them and stood thereby excused for affording any Land Forces to be employed in Flanders or elsewhere upon any part of the Continent I should not have blamed the Conduct of requiring a few Men of War from them yea should not have much complained if they had been acquitted from the yielding any Seeing such a Stipulation and Agreement between us
exposed to be seised by French Privateers But this being so warmly and judiciously represented by the ingenious Author of a Letter to a Gentleman elected a Knight of the Shire to serve in the present Parliament I shall not farther enlarge upon it especially seeing Admiral Russel who is now a Member of the House of Commons is able to give an ample and particular Account of it and who for resenting it as became him when lately Admiral in the Mediterranean has been coldly received by his Master since his return But to advance a step further on the Point and Head whereon I am discoursing Can there be a greater Invasion upon our Trade or any thing committed more to the Diminution and Ruin of it than the Dutch assuming the Boldness and King William countenancing them in it to despise and violate both our Act of Navigation of the 12 Car. 2. and divers other Statutes made during his Reign all which were providently and wisely enacted for the Encouragement of the Encrease of Shipping and Navigation and for the Promotion and Enlargement of our home Manufactures For as few can be ignorant especially of Gentlemen and Merchants both of the Occasion and Design of these several Laws so the whole Nation hath abundantly experienced all along since the making of them what Profit and Advantage have thereby accrued first to Trade and then to the Kingdom â—ut now by the Insolency of the Dutch and the Treachery of King William to this Nation all those Laws have been slighted and violated by them and the Care of having them observed and put in execution to us been neglected by him which both on his part and theirs is in direct subserviency to make them powerful in Shipping and opulent in Wealth and to render us Poor Feeble and Weak And as there is not one Branch of all these Laws the transgression of which has not been practised by them and connived at by their Country man on the English Throne so they are through his Encouragement and Protection grown at last to that Impudence and arose to that Defiance of English Laws and common Justice That Coffee house Tables have been furnished with printed and publick Advertisements of such and such Dutch Productions and Manufactures that were to be vended at Places there named in and about the City of London notwithstanding of their being expresly prohibited by those Laws to be either imported into or sold in this Kingdom But whereas neither of the Two Houses of Parliament upon the present Inspection they are making into the decay of Trade and their calling Merchants before them to instruct them therein can want information from those they examin of the truth of what I have suggested and in what Particulars and Branches all those Laws are violated by the Dutch and suffered to grow obsolete and to remain unexecuted by the Prince of Orange I shall supercede the saying more on this Head because I cannot enlarge upon it as I ought and as it deserves without writing a Volume instead of a few Sheets of Paper And therefore the next Attempt I charge them with is still more hainous and done infinitely more to our disgrace being not only an Invasion upon our Trade but upon the Liberty of our Persons For by an unpresidented and unparalelled Inâ—olency the like whereof no Nation did ever pretend to exercise towards and over the Subjects of this Kingdom they demand and exact a Tenth Man out of every Ship of ours that goes into their Ports for and towards the manning of their Fleet and to justify themselves in the doing hereof they pretend to be authorised by King William's Order This they have practised for these Two Years past only they are grown more rampant tyrannous and oppressive this last than they were the former For whereas in the Year 1694. they were contented with One Man out of Ten or 15 Guilders in lieu thereof and for his Ransom they have in the Year 1695. required and taken a Man out of every Ship of ours that went into their Ports though the Sailors were never so few or else they have exacted 25 Guilders for the excusing and redeeming him from their Service So that if it be but a Hoy which is sailed with a Master one Man and two Boys yet they demand One and upon its being replied that the Vessel cannot be sailed if One be taken out they pretend it a Condescention and Favour to compound at 25 Guilders for his being excused which is Fifty Shillings of English Mony Nor do any Ships escape without doing the one or the other and for which they alledg their having King William's Authority And these Things they are so far from concealing or seeking to extenuate the Injustice and Criminalness of by the necessity of their Condition That they glory in it both in their Trackschuytes and in all Places of Society and Concourse as the Badg of their Exaltation and Triumph over us and of our Subjection to them The Method in which this Force and Hostility over us is practised is this namely before any Ship can be cleared at their Custom-house the Master must go to the Lords of the Admiralty and bring from thence a Certificate to the Custom-house of having given a Man out of the Vessels Crew to their Service or of having compounded at the Value I have mentioned for his Redemption Surely it will not be unseasonable now to ask whether we be in terms of Hostility with the Dutch or of Alliance Seeing we are not treated by them in this as Friends but as Enemies Nay it will be needful tâ—at we consult both our Understandings and Memories whether England be not Tributary to Holland and when and how it came to be so For as much as they deal not with us as with a free and independent Nation but as with a Province which they have subdued and brought into Vassalage And if we be not Slaves but remain yet a free People this Hostility in them ought to be hostily repelled by us And in the Place of accounting them any longer our Confederates we ought to esteem and take them for our Enemies and every where to assault them accordingly And for our Belgick King to authorise the Dutch to do what I have mentioned is to assume a Power over the Liberties and Persons of the People of England which no Rightful King did ever pretend unto For our Persons and Liberties being under the Custody of the Laws no King can claim a larger Jurisdiction over them than what the Laws give him unless he will renounce to govern by Law and take upon him to rule Despotically And the Prince of Orange may with as good Right transplant all the People of England to the Deserts of Arabia or send them to work in the Mines of Peru and Mexico as to authorise the Dutch to seise upon one Man that is either a native Subject here or under the Protection of English Laws to navigate either
by a solemn Address to King William but who in their profound Wisdom are considering both how to obviate the Evils which that Law threatneth to the Traffick of the Kingdom and how to settle the Trade of the Nation upon such a Foot and Bottom as may give Encouragements to it and make it revive and flourish I do know that all which the two Houses are to expect from their Belgick King in answer to their Address is That he was surprised into the passing of the Scotch Act which I hope all Men will believe he as truly was as he pretends to have been into the Massacre of Glenco for the perpetration whereof he gave several positive and reiterated Orders For Fides Belgica and Fides Punica are equivalent and the Word of a Carthagenian Senator or General and that of a Dutch Prince are of the same alloy and stamp But as the Scots are a wiser Nation having obtained the passing of such a Law than upon any Consideration whatsoever to be prevailed upon to repeal or to part with it either to gratify King William or to humour and accommodate this Kingdom so no Man in the present Circumstances in which England is will judge it the Interest of this Nation to quarrel with Scotland or too much to rally and vex the Scots upon this Account Not but that there are many ways and means within the Circle and under the Power of the Parliament of England by which they may not only vent their Anger against those English that have subscribed to the Scots East India Stock but make Scotland it self first uneasy and then enraged But as this were to spend their Resentment and Anger where they ought not seeing all their Indignation ought in Justice and Equity to fall no where but upon Kensington and Holland so it were to make themselves Tools in promoting the Design of separating these two Kingdoms which the Dutch contrived this Act for the Establishment of the forementioned Company as a Foundation of and a Path unto For should they at Westminster as they easily may make all those English that have put in their Shares into the Scots Stock pay quadruple Taxes to the War which they are upon Ways and Means to support this would but make many wealthy and industrious Merchants to forsake England and retreat to Scotland where they will be heartily welcomed and effectually protected against all the Operation of such a stingy Law Or should the Parliament of England enjoyn these English that have subscribed to the Scots Stock to abandon and renounce their Membership in that Company this would not only entitle the Scots to so much Mony as was the Quota of theiâ— first Payment which having already received they are not so silly as to refund but it would also occasion those that have ventured so much in that Bottom rather to carry their whole Capital after it than to be both shut out from the Benefit of such a Proportion of their own Estates and likewise to forfeit so much of their very Principal Nor would the Parliament of England act with less imprudence and in greater inconsistency with their own Interest should they suffer themselves to be provoked to turn the Payment of all the Scots Regiments in Flanders off from the English Establishment and cast it upon the Scots as the equivalent of the Customs which they are excused from by the forementioned Statute but which they would be obliged to pay to the Government were they to trade to Africa and the East Indies upon the like bottom and terms which the English do But as this were to enfeeble the Confederate Army by robbing it of Seventeen thousand as good Men as any it is constituted of or else to necessitate England to hire and pay so many Foreigners in their room which they cannot in that Method of acting avoid doing towards the compleating of the Eighty seven thousand four hundred and forty Men which the House of Commons by their Vote of December the 14th have declared necessary for the Year 1696. So such a Procedure of this Kingdom towards Scotland would enforce the Scots both to call home their Troops and to employ them where England will not find any Advantage in giving them Provocation as well as Occasion to do it So that in a Word all the Anger that boileth in English Breasts upon the Account of this Scots Act ought to vent it self upon the Dutch who gave the Advice and upon our Belgick King who gave it the legislative Stamp and ratified it into an Act by what he calls his Royal Authority And to shew that all his little Excuses and particularly what he gave in answer to the Address of the Two Houses when presented to him Octob. 17. viz. That he had been ill served in Scotland is all Cheat pure Grimace in that he has not in Evidence of his being imposed upon and misled turned out or laid aside one of those Ministers of State whom he would have this credulous Nation believe to have deluded him to it Which were it true as it no wise is it ought not to vindicate him from being accountable for the wrong he hath therein done to the Kingdom of England seeing he who drove away King James by a President of his own making meerly for the Offences of that King's Ministers and which Ministers he has not only taken into his Friendship and Confidence but made some of them the chief Superintendants of all his Affairs must not think to Sham the World off with Pretences that the Ministers are only guilty whilst he is to be looked upon as one as innocent as the Child unborn Yea I will presume to add That whereas K. James was not by any Laws of the Kingdom responsable for the Transgressions of his Councillors and Offâ—cers but his Person and Royal Dignity were in all Cases to remain Sacred and Safe K. W. is justly and legally Arraignable for all the Crimes of his Ministers as well as for his own and that both by his authorising that unjust and barbarous Fact of abdicating his Uncle and Father in Law and also by virtue of the Stipulation Contract and Term upon which he accepted the Crown But if nothing else will serve and content the Parliament of England save the making Reprisals and taking Revenge upon the Scots for their establishing an East India Company with so many ample Privileges and Immunities the way of doing it is open and easy without their committing any thing that the Scots can call unjust or which they themselves may either repent or be ashamed of namely To grant unto their own trading Company especially to those of Africa and the East Indies such an Establishment by Law with ease from Custom and Impositions at least with such an Abatement and Moderation of them as caeteris paribus may be an Equivalent to all the Privileges and Immunities in the Scots Act and thereby discourage and cripple if not stifle and smother their
to have Satisfactorily answered The first is That they would tell us what the meaning of a King de facto is and how such a One differs from a King de jure For I find that many both of the Lawyers Gentry as well as of the Clergy who do wholy disbelieve and in their Minds disclaim the Prince of Orange's Right to the Sovereignty do yet allow themselves to swear Allegiance to him and do pay him the Duty of Subjects meerly because he is got into Possession of the Throne and Royal Title and de facto hath assumed the exercise of the Kingly Power Nor am I ignorant that the pedant Writers of Politicks do speak of a King de facto as well as of a King de jure but so far as I am capable of understanding Reason or good Sense no Man can be called a King de facto who is not either antecedently or concomitantly a King also de jure Seeiâ—g he that is stiled a King but who is not rightfully so is by all the Laws of God and Man a Robber and an Usurper but a King he is not nor can he be A Thief may as well be called a legal Proprietor of what he hath stolen from his Neighbour and he that Pads upon the Road may have as just a Claim to the Purse he hath forcibly taken from a Traveller though the Law makes both the one and the other obnoxious to be hanged and that very justly too as he can have either Right or Pretence to the Regal Title and Power who attains not to them by the Methods Rules and Measures and in the Virtue Force and Efficacy of the Constitution And as the Names of Intruder Usurper and Robber and not those of Prince Sovereign and King are which such a one ought only to be called by so instead of Allegiance due unto him or of our being under the Obligation eitheâ— of divine or human Laws to render unto that Person the Duties of Subjects we are bound boâ—h in Law and Conscience to raise Hue and Cry after him and to persue him and make him accountable for the Crimes which have entitled him to the Names of Robber of his Neighbours Crown and Intruder into and Usurper of another Man's Throne Things are stubborn and inflexible and will not change their Natures because of the complemental soft Words that are fastned upon them Theft Robbery and Usurpation will not cease to be the same evil and abominable Crimes which God hath denounced Curses against and which Men in all Ages have annexed Punishments unto notwithstanding the smooth Whitehall and Kensington Language with which we varnish them over And whereas the Word and Name King hath been hitherto taken for a fair honest and honourable Word and Name and held no ways reproachful for a vertuous Man to have it ascribed unto him and to be denominated by it I will venture to say that it is one of the worst and most scandalous Words in the World and the most disgraceful and injurious Title that a Person is capable of having given him if it be allowed to express an Usurper by and used of one that has no Right to a Crown but meerly the Possession of it But whereas there are some who through want of Sense and others who through Ignorance of the Law may take the Prince of Orange to be a King de jure and may thereby hope both to save their Consciences and their Credits and think to justify themselves from Treason and Disloyalty in their swearing Allegiance to him and yielding him the Fealty due from Subjects I desire therefore in the second Place to ask our Senators of Wisdom and our Gentlemen of the Gowns how this Right to be King accrues to the Prince of Orange and from what Sources of Law and Justice the Royal Stile and Authority come to be derived unto and vested in him and by what Tenure he bears the Royal Name and exerciseth the Sovereign Power For as there are but Three ways in any Nation of arriving lawfully at the Supream Authority and of coming legitimately and honestly to be a King namely either by the Right of hereditary Succession or by the Right of just and lawful Conquest or by the Right of Election where through the known Laws and the fundamental Provisions of the Constitution there is upon every Vacancy of the Throne a Privilege vested in the People or in their Representatives or in some select Number of the most honourable and qualified Persons to chuse one to fill it And as none can have the Impudence to say either that the Prince of Orange is King of England by the Right of hereditary Succession seeing there are divers Persons who have an hereditary Right of inheriting the Crown antecedently to him Or that he attained to be King by a lawful Conquest in a just War seeing that is not only disclaimed by himself and reprâ—bated by the Parliament but because the offering to establish his Title upon that Foundation and to justify it by that Plea were to put us into the State of Slaves instead of Subjects and to make us enjoy all we are and have by his Pleasure and Will and not to have any Property in them by our antient Laws So in the third Place none who have the least Acquaintance with the Nature of our Constitution the Frame of our Government or the many Laws of the Land relative to the Right and Manner of Succession in the Sovereignty will dare to pretend that upon a Demise of the Crown the People or any certain Number of Persons whatsoever stand legally vested with a Power of chusing who shall succeed And the reason is obvious because our Monarch is and has been always an hereditary Monarch and not an elective Wherefore though there have been sometimes Interruptions in the Rightful Succession and Translations of the Crown from one Family to another yet save in the Cases of direct Usurpation such as Oliver Cromwel's it was never attempted on the Foot and Principle of the Peoples having a Power resident in them by Law to elect their King but it was always on the Motive and Foundation of doubtful and controverted Titles Which Claim though in some it was very weak yet it was always insisted upon and what their Title wanted in legal Goodness they endeavoured to make out by military Power I might add That there was no Demise here neither by Death nor by Resignation and much less were there any vested with a Regal Power of abdicating deposing and driving away King James So that upon the whole the Prince of Orange can upon â—o Foundation whatsoever nor in any Sense received among Men of coming Lawfully to a Crown be King of England de jure and by consequence he must be contented to be held for no other than an Usurper and as such ought all Men to account him who according to the Laws of Revelation and of the Kingdom would either approve themselves to God
or have peace in their own Minds But then thirdly admitting the Prince of Orange to be King of England whether de Jure or de Facto I further enquire not I desire to ask the Two Houses of Parliament as well as our Lawyers and Divines of what Signification and Importance in their Judgments and Opinions the Word King is that the People may the better know the Nature Extent and Bounds of their Allegiance that being on their part Reciprocal and Corrolate to Kingship on the Sovereigns And this Question is the more necessary to be resolved in that the Notion and Idea of King is much different in the present Estimate of the Generality of Men as well within the Houses of Parliament as without them from what it is represented and found to be in our Laws and from what it has been always heretofore taken and acknowledged to be That therefore which with reference to my self as well as to many Thousands besides I would earnestly beg to know is Whether by King they mean a Sovereign Prince whose Person by virtue of the Authority lodged in him and by reason that the Peace and Welfare of the whole Society depends upon his Safety is Sacred and Inviolable who cannot legally be resisted opposed or withstood and much less be judged deposed and abdicated by any Power on Earth on any Pretence whatsoever and one without whose Call and Authority all Meetings Assemblies and Consultations about Matters of Government and State are Treason and Rebellion Or whether by King they do intend only a Person that is meerly in the Quality of a Trustee entrusted by and accountable to the People as his Principals and who being only vested with a delegated Power may therefore be resisted arraigned judged abdicated and drove away if he offend those over whom he is advanced to rule and act dissonantly from and contrary to the Laws of all which his Subjects are to be Judges For if King be taken in the first Sense to signify one that is unaccusable irresistable and unabdicable than we of this Nation neither have nor lawfully can have any other King than King James while he liveth and hath not renounced and disclaimed his Right And by consequence the Prince of Orange is no other than an Usurper And we out of our own Mouths and by our own Sentence no better than Rebels in abdicating the former and in submitting unto and owning the later And indeed the Principles upon which the Salisbury Dictator of Measures of Obedience Dr. Burnet who out of disloyal Malice to us endeavoured to subvert our antient Government and to battle all our Laws by his modern and treasonable Politicks striveth to justify the Abdication in a Book he hath lately published called Reflections on a Pamphlet entitled Some Discourses upon Dr. Burnet and Dr. Tillotson occasioned by the Funeral Sermon of the former upon the later plainly shew both how self condemned the Author is and what Rebellion he and the Nation are according to the Laws of God and Men become guilty by that Transaction For whereas he owns That illegal Acts and Acts of Tyranny and the remote Consequences of them do not justify the resisting of Princes and that they can be then only lawfully withstood when their going about to subvert totally the Constitution shall be plainly apparent P. 32 33 34 35 36 37. there is no more needful to be said for the loading of him and for the branding the Nation with the just Imputation of the highest and most detestable Treason committed in the Abdication of the King and in the Choise and Exaltation of the Prince of Orange to his Throne Seeing whatsoever illegal Acts which were not many nor of any menacing Importance to the Kingdom the King might be misled and hurried into by treacherous Councillors yet it is so far from being plainly apparent that he designed to subvert the Constitution that the contrary is demonstratively evident and that no Prince ever bore greater regard to the Laws Liberties and Prosperity of England than he did And as his Majesties sending an Ambassador to Rome his appointing Popish Bishops and his claiming a dispensing Power in reference to penal Laws about Religion are all the Instances which that traiterous Doctor gives of the King 's being embarqued in such an Attempt so they are such weak and impertinent Proofs of such a Design that it is to banter Mankind to raise a Suspition of it upon them and much more to stile them plain and apparent Evidences of it Nor needs there any more to shew that the Constitution was in no danger of being totally subverted by those Means and Overt Acts of Government than that neither the noble Person that went to Rome nor those that were constituted Popish Bishops nor any of them that gave Advice for the dispensing Power have been so much as arraigned and much less capitally punished as they would and deserved to have been if those Things had been of a direct and immediate Tendency to destroy totally the Constitution Nor would any Man have betrayed at once the Weakness and the Impudence as to have assigned those Acts of Administration and no other as convictive Proofs of an apparent Design in King James to subvert totally the Constitution but this noisy treacherous and disloyal Doctor who like to him that fired Diana's Temple to protect himself from Oblivion has been studying to raise himself a Monument upon the Banishment of his Sovereign the Ruin of our Antient Government and the Involving of these Kingdoms in a bloody and destructive War But then on the other had if King be taken in the second Sense for one that may be resisted arraigned deposed and drove away from his Throne and Kingdom then as the Prince of Orange hath but a flippery Seat of it and a thorny Crown so no Man can be lawfully required to take an Oath of Allegiance to him and much less justly punished by double Taxes or otherwise for refusing it Seeing if that be the Signification and Importance of King it may be every Man's Duty to assist in deposing and dethroning him And upon what I have said of his Miscarriages in Government and the Designs he is carrying on to the Ruin as well as Impoverishment of the Kingdom there is nothing remains to be added or adviced But to your Tents O Israel for this Man ought no longer to be suffer'd to pretend to reign over us For as he hath in many Instances apparently attempted the total Subversion of the Constitution which even by our Salisbury Doctor 's Principles of Politicks justifieth the deposing him and particularly both in the commanding a whole Tribe of Men that were under the Protection of the Laws to be massacred without any previous Tryal or Conviction and in his taking the Earl of Bredalbin by meer arbitrary Power not only out of the hands of Justice when he stood impeached by Parliament which whether he was justly or unjustly makes no Change in the Nature of what the Prince of Orange hath therein done but in putting him into the Administration of the Government as a Privy Councellor So he hath likewise in effect destroyed the very Kingdom and hath brought us into those Circumstances of Confusion Misery and Want out of which it is impossible to recover and deliver us while he is permitted to sit at the Helm And which if we be so sortish and so much Enemies to our selves and to our Posterity as to connive at any longer it will be out of the reach and power both of our Rightful King and of a well constituted Parliament ever to redeem us or either to retrieve the Nation from final Ruin or to save us from being Conquered by any potent Neighbour that may have a mind to invade us Nor will I enlarge this Discourse any further save to tell those who out of rebellious Enmity to a Rightful King and Idolatry of an Usurper may complain of the Acrfmony of some Expressions which will be found to occur in the foregoing Leaves That all the Language I have used is either consecrated by the Tongues or Pens of your Williamite Divines in their Pulpit Invectives against King James and the King of France or else it is all authorised by the Licenced Pamphlets published in way of Elogâ—e upon the present Government and Satyr upon the last And whosoever will waste so much time as to peruse a Paper stiled A Dialogue between the King of France and the late King James occasioned by the Death of the Queen will justify me in the Reprisals and Retaliations I have made Only whereas little is to be met with in these Sermons and Pamphlets but ridiculous Fiction and impudent Slander as well as dull Malice there will nothing be found in these Sheets but weighed and measured Truth though sometimes a little piquantly expressed Decemb. 20. 1695. ERRATA Page 2 line 30. before other read of ibid. l. 38. for staâ—e r. state p. 4. l. ult for stuff r. strife p. 5. l. 25. dele same p. 6. l. 36. for Redress r. Readers p. 9. l. 1. r. where we had for a great while been in the quiet and peaceable Possession p. 11. l. 37. r. plead p. 12. l. 15. dele a before Servant p. 13. l. 8. r. Placat's ibid. l. 20. r. Rude ibid. l. ult for their r. these p. 14. l. 8. r. become ibid. l. 20. for th r. to p. 15. l. 7. before it r. as ibid. l. 13. for were r. we p. 16. l. 3 4. r. putting ibid. l. 6. r. Guet p. 20. l. 21. r. executed ibid. l. 27. for yet r. yea p. 22. l. 35. after with r. the p. 23. l. 8. r. Donative p. 25. l. 38. r. Bordacho's p. 32. l. 33. before Mischiefs r. the p. 33. l. 6. before have r. they ibid. l. 12. two Millions p. 34. l. 7. after transported put p. 35. l. 33. for mark r. mask p. 36. l. 12. r. thither ibid. l. 19. for so r. for ibid. l. 20. for more r. were ibid. l. 33. r. they thus p. 37. l. ult dele they p. 38. l. 8. after unto put ibid. l. 21. r. become p. 43. l. 14. r. whereof p. 47. l. 28. r. Villanies p. 48. l. 28. r. become ibid. l. 29. r. Center p. 50. l. 25. r. Officers ibid. l. 30. r. the p. 51. l. 3. r. Plebi ibid. l. 11. dele to ibid. l. 22. before the r. that p. 55. l. 32. r. no.