done and to extenuate and sweeten all that we have Lost and Suffered This is the principal Plea which he bears himself upon for his own Vindication and by which all those seek to warrant themselves who either Invited or Attended him hither or who at first Received and Joyned him at his Landing and on his March to London or that came in afterwards to Cooperate unto Concur with and Approve of what hath been done This is that by which your Judges do decoy on the People tamely to pay their Taxes and trapan and wheedle them to persevere in their Rebellion in their Harangues at Assizes instead of entertaining them with those obsolete Things relative to Law Righteousness and Equity with which their Predecessors used at those times to furnish and adorn the Charges which they gave Witness Treby's Oration at Kingston the last Circuit which wholy consisted of Romantick Praises of the Prince of Orange for having so Christianly and Heroically Stept in to save our Religion when at the brink of being lost and of Satyr and Invective against King James for having designed to overthrow it whereof among other Things he had the Impudence and Insolency to accuse him without regard either to Truth or Decency This is likewise that by which your mercenary and sycophant Divines who have translated their Pulpets into Stages and transformed themselves into Merry Andrews and Buffoons would Legitimate the Rebellion and instead of a Sin bind it as a Duty upon our Consciences and cantingly blow us into â—â—iumphs of Thankfulness and Joy when we ly Groveling and Starving under Slavery and Poverty Witness instead of edifying Sermons to confirm our Faith in the great Articles of Religion and to promote our Christian Obedience the many luscious and fulsom Panegyricks which have been Preached and Printed within these Six last Years and which are at that distance from Decorum as well as from Truth that they would be the Scorn of the Theatre and hissed at by the Pit This they reckon so bright a Colour in their Limning and Drawing the Usurpers that the dull Man selected to divert the Company at the Interment of the late Princess of Orange and who could dispence with his Conscience in saying several Things of her above the Standard and Proportion of Truth but had not Wit nor elevation of Thought to say any Thing that was Raptorous Decorous and Fine could not omit the making it one of the main Strokes in her Picture and that which was to give the lovely and lively Air and the ornamental Beauty to the whole namely That she was a wise and a good Queen and an incomparable Wise and one that had all the Duty in the World for other Relations which after long and laborious Consideration she judged consistent with her Obligations to God and her Country Which is as much as if Dr. Tenison had said That if it had not been for the preserving the Protestant Religion and the Liberties of England which were in danger to have been subverted she would have been an obedient Daughter to the King and would not have usurped his Throne and drove him and the vertuous Queen with the Royal and Innocent Infant her Brother out of their Dominions to be as Vagabonds in the World had it not been for the Generosity of a Neighbouring Monarch who has Received Entertained and Succoured them in their Calamity with a Deference Respect and Nobleness becoming his own Greatness and which hath carried in it a Recognition of their Grandeur and Sovereign Quality So that I do grant unto you That the preserving our Religion hath been the great Pretence for all the Injuries have been done his Majesty and the alledged Motives to all the disloyal illegal and immoral Things which have been perpetrated to compass and effect the late Revolution And I add That it is still made the Topick and Plea whereby to justify all the Villanies Crimes and Barbarities which have been practised since and not only that whereby to palliate all our Losses and Misfortunes but to be accounted for more than an equivalent of all the Distresses Miseries and Mischiefs which have ensued as the Effects and Consequences of it But should it be admitted that this was not only a pretended but a real Motive to the Revolution and to all that hath resulted from and attended it yet it hath not been hitherto made appear that according to the Rules of Christianity the Fundamentals of our Government and the Statutes of the Realm it is likewise a Lawful and Justifiable one and all that have written either of Ethicks or Politicks do tell us and the Principles of Reason as well as the Discoveries vouchsafed us by Revelation do set it in the brightest Light That neither the Goodness of the Inducement nor the Piety of the End will serve to legitimate an Action unless there be both a proper Authority to License it and a Goodness either Positive or Natural in what is to be done when cloathed with all its Circumstances Otherwise Men might Lawfully rob Temples and plunder Banks and Exchequers upon the Motive and Design of discharging their Debts and of paying their Creditors what they owe them Nay they may vertuously murther their Parents deflower Maids and ravish their Sisters upon the Inducement and in order to the End of getting into possession of Estates which they may lavish away upon the Saviour of our Religion and Liberties and towards the maintaining the Sacred War in which he is embarqued and for raising up a new Generation of Soldiers to defend the Dutch Barier against France Nor are there any Villanies named or practised on the Earth which these late and now common Tâ—picks of Argumentation will not serve to sanctify and to render them Actions highly meritorious But neither our Statesmen Lawyers nor Divines have thought sit to meddle with this and much less to take upon them to demonstrate that by the Laws of God and by those of the Kingdom we are allowed to dethrone Princes drive Kings from their Palaces into Exile and to involve Nations into blood if our established Religion be in danger of being supplanted and overthrown Though without a clear and uncontrolable Proof of this all they have said or can say about his Majesty's Designs in prejudice of our Religion were there as much Truth in it as there is Rancour and Falshood makes not what we have done to be Lawful but only proclaims them to to be Sophisters in Logick Hypocrites in Religion Debauchers of the Consciences of Men Panders to Villany and the Flatterers of Criminals in their Rebellious Wickedness who have had the Irreligion and Impudence to plead it For though I can readily grant that most of the Scripture Expressions and Precepts concerning the Duty and Obedience of Subjects to their Rulers do no further concern us than as they were either delivered and prescribed unto thâ—sâ— that were under Civil Constitutions of the like Species and Form with our own or
then as they superadd the Divine Sanction to human Legislative Authority thereby to oblige and enforce us in Conscience to yield all that Reverence Loyalty and Obedience to our Sovereigns which the lawful and just Laws of the Kindom do impose upon and exact from us And therefore and thence it is That the same Texts of Scripture do bind and oblige some Nations to yield a more universal unlimitted and unreserved Obedience to their Rulers 〈◊〉 they can be construed and applied to require those of other Countries to perform For those Places of the Holy Bible are designed to influence and operate upon Conscience in proportion to the different degrees of Prerogative and Sovereignty vested in Princes and according to the respective measures of Liberty preserved unto Subjects by the Rules and Laws of their several and various Constitutions The Scripture was not given and designed to teach us Politicks or to prescribe the Forms of Government and the several Limitations of them farther than that all Governments were to be for God and the good of Mankind and of Societies But all Relative to Civil Government in Scripture is to require and oblige Subjects under the Penalty of eternal Wrath to yield Obedience in proportion to the respective Terms upon which the Government is founded under which they live and according to the several Laws by which it is to be upheld and exerted And the same Divine and Revealed Commands which oblige us in England to submit to Monarchy and be obedient to the King according to the Municipal and Statute Laws of the Kingdom bind them at Venice to acquiesce in Aristocracy and be in subjection to that Authority and Power and to pay obedience to all the Laws of the Republick if they be not inconsistent with and contradictory to the Laws of God No Man will say That the same Things were Lawful for the Persians or Babylonians to do against their Kings which the Lacedemonians under the Protection and Authority of the Ephori might have done against theirs or which those of Arragon were heretofore empowered to do at the Command and under the Jurisdiction of a certain Person chosen and appointed to be the Custos and Guardian of their Rights and Privileges and who had Power by the Law and Constitution to controul and resist their Kings in case of their invading and going about to overthrow them Whereupon it is no Sin in the King of France to take upon him and assume the whole Legislation without the assent and concurrence of the Three Estates whereas it would be otherwise in a King of England whilst he stands limitted as he doth by the Laws of the Constitution and Government and restrained by his Coronation Oath The French Monarch is guilty of no Offence in exacting Taxes of his Subjects without a previous Gift and Grant of them by their Representatives But I cannot say that according to the present Form of our Government the King of Great Britain would be Innocent in the Sight and Esteem of the Supreme Sovereign should he Levy Mony of his People without their own antecedent Consent in Parliament So that I will affirm with the utmost Confidence as knowing I do it upon the greatest Certainty That every Declaration and Intimation in the Bible relative to the Subjection and Fealty we should pay to Sovereign Rulers are intended to bind and oblige us in Conscience and out of Fear of Divine Wrath to be obedient to them actively as far as is enacted and required by the Laws of our Country if those Laws do command nothing inconsistent with and repugnant to the Laws of God and to be passive in all Cases save in those in which the Rules of the Constitution and the Statutes of the Realms where we live give us Liberty Right and Authority to withstand and oppose them And I will presume to add with the fullest Assurance that Law and Reason can give me That in no Circumstances of Danger into which our Religion and Civil Liberties could be brought nor under any Hazards we could fall into of losing and having them supprest were we either permitted or empowered by the Fundamentals of our Government the Rules of our Constitution or by the Common or Statute Law of the Kingdom to rebel against the King or to dethrone or drive him away Nor did the having the Protestant Religion established and secured unto us by Law nor its being incorporated among our Franchises and made a part of our Birth-right to possess it peaceably and practise it openly authorize us to take Arms against the King divest him of his Sovereignty and banish him from his Dominions though we had been furnished with the most clear and indisputable Evidence that he was fully resolved to extirpate it For though the Laws give us a Title to it as our Heritage and a Right to claim the Exercise of it as our chiefest Blessing and most valuable Privilege yet no Law or Contract existent in the King's time had provided that we might fly to Arms to prevent its being supprest or for the securing the Continuance of it to us and our Posterity Yea instead of that there were divers express Statutes then in being by which it was made and declared to be Treason to take up Arms against him upon any Pretence whatsoever So that had the preserving the Protestant Religion been the real Motive and End of our raising War and of dethroning the King yet it was not a Lawful nor a Justifiable Inducement and Design for doing it Nor can it be thought so by any who seriously consider and look upon the Laws of the Land as the Standard and Measure of the Peoples Subjection and Obedience and that whatsoever the Municipal and Statute Laws of our Country restrain us from or confine us unto provided it interfere not with that which either the Laws of Nature or those of Revelation do indispensably require and exact that thereunto we stand bound limitted and obliged by the Laws of God and the Doctrines both of the Old and New Testaments and this upon no less penalty than Damnation Which let no Man upon the Testimony of a Flattering or Mercenary Priest or the Authority and Verdict of a Prophane and Atheistical Statesman think he will or can escape without unfeigned Repentance evidenced in sincere and hearty Endeavours to restore the King Nor are you to be surprised to hear this kind of Theology and Politicks from me seing that according to Dr. Sherlock's Phrase as no Man is forbid to grow wiser than he was so I blush not but glory to confess and have deeply bewailed it That I have been heretofore misled by false Notions and have entertained Hypotheses about Government neither reconcilable to our Laws nor to the Peace of Communities but errando discimus non errare And as the preserving the Protestant Religion could be no Lawful and Justifiable Motive to the late Revolution so there were no just and sufficient Grounds administered by the
more especially out of all Capacity to revenge it Ill Thoughts and Intentions in a Prince to his People though they abide so artificially and industriously concâ—â—led that none have detected them do yet not only continually haunt the Projector as Informers that his Designs are discovered and understood but are ever councelling him to close with all Methods which may obviate and prevent a Retaliation But the King thought his Protestant Subjects had been as free from Rebellious Designs against his Person Crown and Dignity which indeed most of them were as he was from any usurping and tyranous ones against their Legal Rights Liberties and Religion and that withheld and restrained him from accepting an Assistance in his Defence when there was a plotted formed and maturated Conjunction between the Prince of Orange and States of Holland abroad and too many of several Perswasions Communions and Factions at home to drive him out of his Kingdoms if not to murther him Which he stood not far out of the danger of when the Sunday Night before the Prince of Orange came to London it was proposed and debated at Windsor to make him a Prisoner But that being opposed by some Persons whom it was not then thought convenient and safe to contradict and disoblige It was thereupon resolved the Night following at Sion-house to require him immediately and at a very unseasonable Hour to abandon and withdraw from his Royal Palace Which was so ordered upon prospect and hope that he would not have complied and that thereby a Pretence would have been administred of sending him to the Tower from whence his next Stage would have been to the Neighbouring Hill there being but a few Steps between a King's Prison and his Grave Nor would he in any likelihood have escaped the Snare that was thus artificially laid for him nor have avoided the Danger that was lurking behind it but that some of those entrusted with the Conveyance of the Message delivered it with such Accent Tone and accompanying Circumstances as both awakened him to apprehensions of his Peril and guided him to submit to what was so inhumanly and barbarously prescribed unto him But to return to the Enforcement of the Argument I am upon for proving that the King could have no secret Intentions nor have been carrying on any concealed Designs in order to overthrow our Religion in that he refused French Forces at a Season when they were both Generously offered and he extreamly needed them and when by all the Laws of God and the Kingdom he might have received and employed them for the withstanding a Foreign Army commanded by an ambitious and unnatural Prince which came to divest him of his Sovereign and Legal Rights For if the States of Holland might send and the Prince of Orange bring Troops into England let the Pretence be what it will and the Brittish Subjects that Invited and gave Encouragement unto it be never so many and of what Quality any think fit to have them the King might with much more Justice and Right have desired and received Turks and Tartars as well as French to oppose and beat them out Seeing both the Power of War and the lawful Authority of defending the Kingdom being lodged Sovereignly and Solely in his Majesty and the ways of managing the one and the other being entirely entrusted with his Wisdom save as he pleased to call for Advice he might without any Violation of the Rules of the Constitution have furnished himself with necessary Forces from whence he thought fit for the defence of his Person and the Government whereas none of his Subjects could raise Forces at home or invite them from abroad without rendering themselves guilty of the highest Disloyalty and Treason Nor could the States of the Seven Provinces being in League and declared Terms of Amity with his Majesty send or authorise their Troops to come hither without becoming obnoxious to the Crime and Charge of contemning and violating Publick Treaties of breaking through all that is Sacred and of trampling upon every Thing on which the Peace of Nations doth depend And as for the Prince of Orange himself he being no Sovereign Prince but the Servant of a late though wealthy Republick he possibly might have the Right as Statholder into which he wound himself by Perjury and Murther to exercise some Authority in his own Country or he might have the Privilege to set up for a Knight Errant to combat Wind-mills and kill Dragons but he had no Authority by the Laws of God or Nations to invade and attack a Rightful King in the quiet and peaceable Possessions of his own Dominions And by assuming the Insolence and taking upon him the Injustice to do it he stands proclaimed by all the Revelations relative to Societies in the Bible and by the whole Civil Law which is the Law of Nations to be a Robber and an Usurper and to have all the Blood that hath been shed in Europe by reason of and as an effect and consequence of his Invasion to be charged upon him and laid at his Door and for which he will be made accountable at the great Tribunal Nor can his Majesty's Authority and Right to have received and called French Troops be questioned by our Revolutioners and Abdicators themselves seeing we allow and suffer the like and much worse in that Pageant King we have dressed up and erected For notwithstanding of that vast Army of Brittish and Irish Troops with which to the impoverishment of the Nation we continue to furnish him and notwithstanding he is fulsomly represented in Pulpits and with a flattering as well as a mean Cringingness addressed unto by Corporations as the Saviour of our Liberties and Religion yet he challengeth a Right and we like a tame slavish People both connive at and approve it not only of keeping among us contrary to his solemn Promise given in his Declaration dated at the Hague several Dutch Forces Horse as well as Foot whom he claps and fasteneth upon the Nation as a Badg that he esteems us no better than conquered Vassals but if we may believe the Prints which come from abroad he hath sent for Ten thousand more outlandish Souldiers to insult and triumph over us as his subdued Slaves While in the mean time he sends our native Forces into Flanders to perish by Famine and Sword as Sacrifices to his Ambition and to have the Infamy which he calls Glory of dying in a Dutch Quarrel Nor do I wonder that he will not trust the defence of the Kingdom to our own Troops seeing he cannot but be sensible with what Arbitrariness he hath Ruled over us and how he hath Cheated Impoverished and Ruined us and that if we had but as much Sense Reason and Courage left us as we have Provocation and Cause of Anger and Indignation given unto us we would Revenge our selves upon him for the Wrongs he hath done the Kingdom as well as for those he hath done the King Whereas that
for Bread would have the Impudence to justify themselves in when they write to purchase the Applauses of the gaping Mob and much less when they purpose to gain the Clappings of those in the Pit and Boxes But after I have borrowed for a while these Gentlemens Pencils and only dipt them in Colours more natural and better adapted to the Figure and Complexion of the Prince of Orange I will challenge all Mankind who have not abjured Truth and common Honesty to believe any longer or continue to avouch That his coming into England was out of any other Respect to our Religion save making it the Cloak and stalking Horse to his towring and ambitious Designs I need not tell you with what alienation from Gratitude contempt of Justice scornful regardlesness of a Deity as well as disgrace of all Religion he first came abroad and set up in the World when he thrust himself into the Statholdership of his own Country by Perjury and Murther of Two of the best Patriots of the Dutch Republick of one of which namely John de Witt the late Pensionary Fagel was heard and known to say after he had examined all his Papers and searched into the whole of his Conduct during his Ministry That the great if not only Fault he was guilty of was his ardent Love unto and his steady and unshaken Service of his Country Nor shall I do more than briefly refresh your Memory how being of no Religion he can personate any when it lies in a Subserviency to his Interest and that he would with the same Readiness and exteriour Shews of Zeal have acted the part of a Roman Catholick to have obtained a Sovereignty over any Kingdom of the Papal Communion as he hath done that of a Protestant to get into the Throne of Great Brittain and to be admitted unto a Domination over these Nations For his having been oftener than once at Mass and that not as a Spectator out of Curiosity but as communicating in that Worship and Devotion is known to so many Persons of several Qualities as well as of different Religions that it will not be gainsaid by any who are acquainted with Passages and Transactions some Years ago in Flanders And should any be so ignorant of matters of Fact at a distance from their own Doors or live in enmity to all Truths disagreable to their Humours and Interests so as to deny it there are those both at Brussels and Antwerp who can testify it and have not been heretofore shy to do it It was K. Charles's having no Children and the Duke of York's having no Male ones that lived and his own Marriage with the said Duke's Eldest Daughter and therefore coming into some probable and nearer Prospects of arriving sooner or later at the Sovereignty over these Kingdoms that made him put on the Vizard and Mask of a Zealot for the Reformed Religion having before lived in all the Coldness and Indifferency in that matter that was consistent with his keeping the Posts he held in Holland I am loath to subjoyn how impossible it is that that Man should be of any Religion and much less act upon real and sincere Motives for the good of the Protestant who can and doth indulge himself in the Practice of such Abominations as are repugnant to the Light of Nature and to the Ethicks of Pagans as well as to the Doctrines and Precepts of the Bible and which are made Capital by the Laws of all Nations Nor can I do it unless I would offend the Eyes and Ears of modest Persons and give occasion to the infecting and defiling the Imaginations of Men and Women by mentioning such Crimes in Paper For as they are such heinous and provoking Abominations as have brought Fire from Heaven upon whole Citys and Societies so they are of that strangeness to our Climate and so little heard of and much less practiced under our Meridian that our Law took no knowledge of them till the 25 of Hen. 8. when they were made Felony without benefit of Clergy They are Ultramontane Crimes lately transplanted into our Soyl and in which to the Credit of our Country they have not much throve nor grown But I do reckon it unbecoming both you and my self to enlarge upon this nor is it necessary to descend to proofs of it in a City and about a Court where your Kapples are known and where it is sprung up into a Proverb In hunc modum fiunt Comites Anglicani It is enough to tell you That it is the Entertainment of Societies of People of the best Fashion where the rallying upon it has a thousand times made the modest fair and tender Sex to Blush and hath filled the masculine and virile with Contempt and Hatred of themselves for enduring a Catamite to rule over them Only I would have those that are the great Theological Artists in painting Blackâ—moors white to try their Skill whether they can make a beautiful and religious Stroak of this in the Pictures they draw of their Prince And whether by all the Chimistry of modern Priesthood they can extract out of it an Apodictical and Convincing Argument of their Master's Zeal for preserving the Protestant Religion or Distil from it a Plea in Law to justify his driving his Father in Law from his Throne and Kingdoms But it may be nothing is impossible to those Gentlemen save to speak and act consistently with their own Principles and to practise conformably to the Doctrines they have taught their People and pretended themselves to believe and undoubtedly they may do this I have named with the same Ease and by the same Rules of Philosophy that they have inferred Rebellion against the King from the Article of Non-resistance and their Deposing their Rightful and Lawful Sovereign from their celebrated Tenet of Passive Obedience To which it may not be amiss to add the Antipathy which that Man must unavoidably live in to all Religion who after his Declaration prepared and printed at the Hague for wheedling the credulous People of England into a Belief that he came to save them from Popery and Tyranny and in which he makes the Supposititiousness of the Prince of Wales or at least the Questionableness of his Legitimacy one of the mighty Grounds of his Quarrel with the King and the chiefest Provocation upon which he was about to invade his Kingdoms yet that even then and until a few days before he actually Embarked on that Design he had the Royal Babe prayed for in his own Chapel by that Distinguishing and Princely Title And as I will never henceforth think it strange that he should allow himself to hoodwink impose upon and mislead Nations who durst with that open Boldness mock and deride the Omniscient Almighty and Righteous God both to his Face and in his own instituted Worship and Service so it satisfied me and may do all others that one who could be guilty of so much publick Atheism as well as Hypocrisy as
Condition to evade Has he proved true to any one Friend that trusted and served him save as they have been Slaves to his Will and Tools of his Arbitrariness Hath he from the time he came in to this day been known to discern or reward Merit All his Policy is Trick and his pretended Kindness Fraud and Deceit Instead of encreasing our Wealth he hath utterly Impoverished us and that not so much through Necessity as Choice resulting from Hatred In the Place of making us more Opulent than we were he hath brought us into contemptible Poverty Whereas we hoped he would have protected us from the Enemies he created us he hath upon Design as well as from Laziness given us up to them as a Sacrifice And whereas it would have become him had he either been a good Man or a just King to have discouraged and prevented Bribes especially when Persons only sought and sued for their Right The Privy Purse hath been the Receptacle of most of the scandalous Bribes that have been given for it is thither that what we call our House of Commons has traced them But that which is Base and Criminal beyond what any Language can express unless it be Dutch is his purchasing so many Members of both Houses to sell their Country This being a direct Subversion of the Constitution if any Thing could make a Lawful King forfeit his Right this would stand fairest to do it For the Sovereign having no other Ground of claim to any Power or Prerogative save what he hath from the Constitution which hath settled and vested them in him That Prince who goes about to overthrow this does all he can to cancel his own Right and to cut the Bough on which he stands And yet we who have had the Folly and Madness to abdicate a Legal King for some few little Mistakes in the Administration have not the Wisdom and Courage to call an Usurper to account for trampling upon all the Fundamentals of the English Government The King's Closetting some Peers and Gentlemen which was only to address their Reason and Understanding to consent to a Matter which the Crown had in all Ages been in possession of until about Twenty Years ago and which was never thought hurtful unto and much less inconsistent with the Safety of our Religion till of late filled the whole Nation with Complaints and Clamours of his Majesty's Designing to alter the Government and run the People into that brutal Fury which produced the woful Effects that soon after followed Whereas we sit still and with a stupid Tameness endure the Prince of Orange to steal away all our Rights from us by his Bribing those to betray and give them up who were chosen by their Country to be the Guardians of them And he who dares not in a way of Fortitude and Bravery fight us out of them is endeavouring to strip us of them by an Assassination Surely if he that poysons an individual Person be out of the purlâ—ews of Mercy and from under the Protection of the Laws there can be no Severity great enough to be exercised against him that hath not only endeavoured but in a manner effected the poysoning of the whole Kingdom And if the Murtherer of the meanest Subject be obnoxious to capital Punishment what should he be made liable unto that murthereth a Parliament Who that he may the better Rob and Plunder the Nation gives others a Share in the Spoil For the Jackcalls that hunt and run down the Prey are allowed to eat the Remains of the Flesh and to gnaw the Bones when the Creature which they have cloathed with a Lion's Skin hath suckt our Blood and fed himself upon us He had soon learned and as soon practiced the pouring a little Water into a dry Pump to make it suck below and give forth above whatsoever Quantity he needed or was pleased to call for Witness his parting with the Chimney Tax from the Crown for which he hath made Reprizal on the Kingdom in divers methods of raising Money that have been more dishonourable as well as more grievous to the Nation than that was He hath more debauched the Kingdom from all Principles of Vertue Honour and Justice in a few Years than all the Kings either could do or attempted from the first William till his coming by Usurpation to be stiled the third of the same Name Sardanapalus never more neglected the Grandees of Persia out of Effeminacy and that he might Spin and Card with his Ladies than the Prince of Orange despiseth the greatest Peers of England out of Haughtiness and sullen Pride And it is but lately that he hath treated those of the Nobility and Gentry that came up from Scotland to attend him about the Affairs of their Nation with so unparalelled Contempt and Scorn as no Monarch in Europe would have used the like to his Pages and Grooms For while he was conversant not only Hours but whole Days together with his Bentings and â—â—pâ—ls they could hardly in two Months obtain access to him nor were they then allowed the Favour of a few Minutes for representing unto him what they came about but were dismissed with all scorn imaginable and are commanded home under all the conceivable Marks of reproach and disgrace For he published with an Openness that they all became acquainted with it That he was more troubled with the Beggarly Scots than he was with all Mankind besides Nor is to be questioned but that after he has impoverished the English which through squeezing Five or Six millions yearly out of them as he is in a fair way of doing he will have the same Compliment in reserve for them with the addition of Sots and Fools to the bargain Only I cannot avoid saying That if the Scots have not Honour and Courage to resent it and to make him feel the Effects of his haughty Folly and of their just Indignation all the World will think that they deserve a worse Character than that of Beggarly Scots and will account them a Rascally and Dastardly People I am sure their Ancestors would not have borne the like from the greatest Monarchs that ever sat upon the Throne nor were any of their Kings so ill bred as to treat Persons of Quality and some of them of as ancient Families as the House of Nassau it self with so much Rudeness and Disdain But a Dutch Education authorizeth many Things only let the Scots remember that much Patience emboldens Oppressors Et nihil profici patientia nisi ut graviora tanquam ex facili tolerantibus imperentur as Tacitus says If they have the Spirit and Bravery of their Predecessors they will chuse War or Death rather than submit to this Slavery and will say Esse sibi ferrum Juventutâ—m promptum Libertati aut ad mortem animum that I may use another Expression of the same Tacitus Now unless these Things and more of that kind which it were easy to mention are to