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
But what has all this been for? And to what intent and purpose was all
this zeal, if you will sink under the ruin of the very fabric ye have
pulled down? If ye will give up the cause after ye have gained the
advantage, and yield yourselves up after you have been delivered; to
what purpose then has all this been done? Why all the money expended?
Why all this blood spilt? To what end is France said to be reduced,
and peace now concluded, if the same popery, the same tyranny, the
same arbitrary methods of government shall be received among you
again? Sure your posterity will stand amazed to consider how lavish
this age has been of their money, and their blood, and to how little
purpose; since no age since the creation of the world can show us a
time when ever any nation spent so much blood and treasure to end just
where they begun: as, if the hearts of our enemies prevail, we are
like to do.
Let us reason a little together on these things, and let us inquire a
little, why, and for what reason Britain, so lately the glory of
Europe; so lately the terror of France, the bulwark of religion, and
the destroyer of popery, should be brought to be the gazing-stock of
the world? And why is it that her neighbours expect every hour to hear
that she is going back to Egypt, and having given up her liberty, has
made it her own choice to submit to the stripes of her taskmasters,
and make bricks without straw.
We that are Englishmen, and live from home among the protestants of
other nations, cannot but be sensible of this alteration, and we bear
the reproaches of those who speak freely of the unhappy change which
appears in the temper of our countrymen at home. It is astonishing to
all the world to hear that the common people of England should be
turned from the most rivetted aversions, to a coldness and
indifferency in matters of popery and the pretender: that they, who
with so unanimous a resolution deposed the late King James, as well
for his invasions of their liberty as of their religion; and who with
such marks of contempt drove him and his pretended progeny out of the
nation, should without any visible alteration of circumstances, be
drawn in to favour the return of that race with all the certain
additions of popish principles in religion; French principles in
government; revenge for family injuries; restoration of abdicated and
impoverished votaries; and the certain support of a party at home,
whose fortunes and losses must be restored and repaired out of the
ruins of their country's liberties.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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