A Seasonable Warning and Caution against the Insinuations of Papists and Jacobites in favour of the Pretender: Being a Letter from an Englishman at the Court of HanoverDefoe, Daniel
Religion
A Seasonable Warning and Caution against the Insinuations of Papists and Jacobites in favour of the Pretender: Being a Letter from an Englishman at the Court of Hanover
Defoe, Daniel
James, Prince of Wales, 1688-1766 -- Early works to 1800
If King James would have expected he should be received as his son,
and succeed to his crowns, he should have suffered his birth to have
been legally determined by the English and Scotch parliament at that
time, and have left him in good protestant hands to have been educated
in the protestant religion, and in the knowledge of the laws and
constitutions of his country; in which case it was more than probable,
had his birth appeared clear, and his hereditary right just, the
parliament might have set the crown upon his head, and declared him
king under the protection of their deliverer, the Prince of Orange:
but to talk of it now, when his birth has never been examined or
cleared up, and while he has been bred up to man's estate in popery,
and that the worst sort, viz., French popery; and after the parliament
of the respective kingdoms uniting in one, have by an unalterable,
indissolvable union, settled and entailed the crown upon another head,
viz., the present queen, and entailed it after her majesty in the most
illustrious house of Hanover, the next of blood in a protestant line:
to talk now of proving the birth of the pretender, and of his abjuring
his errors and turning protestant, this is a fraud so absurd and
ridiculous, that we hope the people of Great Britain can never be
blinded with it.
Especially considering the party who talk of these things to us: and
this ought to move the good people of Britain to receive the proposals
of the pretender with indignation; for who are they, dear
fellow-protestants! that persuade you to these things? Are they not
the friends of France and Rome? Do not all the papists join with them?
Do not all those who hated the revolution, and who long to restore
arbitrary government, join with them?
Why, if he will abjure the Romish errors and turn protestant, why, I
say, do the papists speak in his favour? Do any sect of religion love
apostates! Those who forsake them and abjure them as heretical and
erroneous! If they were not well assured that whatever appearing
change he may make, he will still retain a secret affection to popery,
they could not be rationally supposed to speak in his behalf.
But if that is not sufficient, what do they say to you as to his love
of the liberty of his country? Has he been bred up in a tyrannical
absolute court for nothing? Can he have any notion of government there
but what is cruel, oppressive, absolute, and despotic? What principles
of government will he come over with? and as he has sucked in tyranny
with his milk, and knows no government but that of the most absolute
monarch in the world, is this the man they would bring in to preserve
the liberties and constitution of Britain?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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