his ministers. Give us leave to enjoy the government and the benefit of laws under which we were born, and which we desire to transmit to our posterity. You are not the trustees of the public liberty; and if you have not right to petition in a crowd, much less have you to intermeddle in the management of affairs, or to arraign what you do not like, which in effect is every thing that is done by the king and council. Can you imagine that any reasonable man will believe you respect the person of his majesty, when 'tis apparent that your seditious pamphlets are stuffed with particular reflections on him? If you have the confidence to deny this, 'tis easy to be evinced from a thousand passages, which I only forbear to quote, because I desire they should die, and be forgotten. I have perused many of your papers, and to show you that I have, the third part of your No-protestant Plot is much of it stolen from your dead author's pamphlet, called the Growth of Popery; as manifestly as Milton's Defence of the English People is from Buchanan De jure regni apud Scotos; or your first Covenant and new Association from the holy league of the French Guisards. Any one who reads Davila may trace your practices all along. There were the same pretences for reformation and loyalty, the same aspersions of the king, and the same grounds of a rebellion. I know not whether you will take the historian's word, who says it was reported, that Poltrot, a Hugonot, murdered Francis, Duke of Guise, by the in * The third part, printed in quarto, was supposed to be written by Ferguson, under my lord's eye. It reflects on the proceedings against him in the points of high treason, whereof he stood accused; and strives to depreciate the characters of the witnesses, by painting them in the most odious colours. The Growth of Popery was written by Mr. Marvel, who published it a little before his death, which happened in 1678. A second part of it was written by Mr. Ferguson above mentioned; for which, and other seditious practices, his body was demanded of the states of Holland, he being then at Brill, but refused; though Sir Thomas Armstrong had been given up by them a little before. This is the same man who was concerned in the Ryehouse Plot; and it is remarkable, that when the secretary of state was giving out orders for the seizing the rest of the conspirators, he privately bade the messenger to let Ferguson escape. D. stigations of Theodore Beza, or that it was a Hugonot minister, otherwise called a Presbyterian, (for our church abhors so devilish a tenet,) who first writ a treatise of the lawfulness of deposing and murdering kings of a different persuasion in religion: but I am able to prove, from the doctrine of Calvin, and principles of Buchanan, that they set the people above the magistrate; which, if I mistake not, is your own fundamental, and which carries your loyalty no farther than your liking. When a vote of the House of Commons goes on your side, you are as ready to observe it as if it were passed into a law; but when you are pinched with any former, and yet unrepealed act of parliament, you declare that in some cases you will not be obliged by it. The passage is in the same third part of the No-protestant Plot, and is too plain to be denied. The late copy of your intended association, you neither wholly justify nor condemn; but as the papists, when they are unopposed, fly out into all the pageantries of worship; but in times of war, when they are hard pressed by arguments, lie close intrenched behind the council of Trent: so now, when your affairs are in a low condition, you dare not pretend that to be a legal combination, but whensoever you are afloat, I doubt not but it will be maintained and justified to purpose. For indeed there is nothing to defend it but the sword; 'tis the proper time to say any thing when men have all things in their power. In the mean time, you would fain be nibbling at a parallel betwixt this association,* and that in the time of Queen Elizabeth. But there is this small difference betwixt them, that the ends of the one are directly opposite to the other: one with the Queen's approbation and conjunction, as head of it, the other without cither the consent or knowledge of the King, against whose authority it is manifestly designed. Therefore * When England, in the sixteenth century, was supposed in danger from the designs of Spain, the principal people, with the Queen at their head, entered into an association for the defence of their country, and of the Protestant religion, against popery, invasion, and in novation. D. you do well to have recourse to your last evasion, that it was contrived by your enemies, and shuffled into the papers that were seized; which yet you see the nation is not so easy to believe as your own jury; but the matter is not difficult, to find twelve men in Newgate who would acquit a malefactor. I have one only favour to desire of you at parting, that when you think of answering this poem, you would employ the same pens against it, who have combated with so much success against Absalom and Achitophel; for then you may assure yourselves of a clear victory, without the least reply. Rail at me abundantly; and, not to break a custom, do it without wit: by this method you will gain a considerable point, which is, wholly to waive the answer of my arguments. Never own the bottom of your principles, for fear they should be treason. Fall severely on the miscarriages of government; for if scandal be not allowed, you are no free-born subjects. If God has not blessed you with the talent of rhyming, make use of my poor stock and welcome: let your verses run upon my feet: and for the utmost refuge of notorious blockheads, reduced to the last extremity of sense, turn my own lines upon me, and in utter despair of your own satire, make me satirize myself. Some of you have been driven to this bay already; but, above all the rest, commend me to the nonconformist parson, who writ the Whip and Key. I am afraid it is not read so much as the piece deserves, because the bookseller is every week crying help at the end of his Gazette, to get it off. You see I am charitable enough to do him a kindness, that it may be published as well as printed; and that so much skill in Hebrew derivations may not lie for waste paper in the shop. Yet I half suspect he went no further for his learning, than the index of Hebrew names and etymologies, which is printed at the end of some English Bibles. if Achitophel signify the brother of a fool, the author of that poem The friends of the Earl of Shaftesbury insinuated everywhere, that the draught of that association, which was said to be found among his papers, was put there by the person who seized them, to advance the credit of the Tories, and give greater weight to the court charge. D. And perhaps Whatever the will pass with his readers for the next of kin. it is the relation that makes the kindness. verses are, buy them up, I beseech you, out of pity; for I hear the conventicle is shut up, and the brother of Achitophel out of service. Now footmen, you know, have the generosity to make a purse for a member of their society, who has had his livery pulled over his ears; and even Protestant socks are bought up among you, out of veneration to the name. A dissenter in poetry from sense and English will make as good a Protestant rhymer, as a dissenter from the Church of England a Protestant parson. Besides, if you encourage a young beginner, who knows but he may elevate his style a little above the vulgar epithets of profane and saucy Jack, and atheistical scribbler, with which he treats me, when the fit of enthusiasm is strong upon him; by which well mannered and charitable expressions I was certain of his sect before I knew his name. What would you have more of a man? He has damned me in your cause from Genesis to the Revelations; and has half the texts of both the Testaments against me, if you will be so civil to yourselves as to take him for your interpreter, and not to take them for Irish witnesses. After all, perhaps you will tell me, that you retained him only for the opening of your cause, and that your main lawyer is yet behind. Now if it so happen he meet with no more reply than his predecessors, you may either conclude that I trust to the goodness of my cause, or fear my adversary, or disdain him, or what you please, for the short on 't is, 'tis indifferent to your humble servant, whatever your party says or thinks of him. THE MEDAL. Of all our antic sights and pageantry, So like the man; so golden to the sight, 10 15 The day, month, year, to the great act are join'd: Five days he sat for every cast and look; 20 |