For God's sake, Britons, what are you doing? And whither are you going? To what dreadful precipices are ye hurrying yourselves? What! are you selling yourselves for slaves to the French, who you have conquered; to popery, which you have reformed from; and to the pretender, whom you have forsworn? Is this acting like Britons; like protestants, like lovers of liberty? Nay, is it acting like men of reasonable souls, and men who have the light of common sense to act by? That we may move you, then, to consider a little the grossness and absurdity of what you are doing, dear countrymen, be prevailed upon to debate a little with yourselves the state of your own case, which I shall briefly and plainly lay before you, thus:-- The government having thought fit, for reasons of state which I have no room to speak of in this place, to separate from the confederates, as well in the field as in treating with the French, and unhappily, I doubt, to make a separate peace; among the several improvements made of this by the enemies of Britain, this is one, viz., to encourage and increase the friends and interest of the pretender, and this they do upon several foundations. 1. Upon a supposition, or suggestion rather, that the ministry, because they have not thought fit to carry on the war, are therefore coming so entirely into the interest of France, that they must of necessity comply with the French king's demand of restoring the pretender. 2. Upon a like ill-grounded suggestion that the people of England and Scotland are more inclined to receive the pretender than they were formerly; in both which suppositions they grossly impose upon you, and yet by both they subtly carry on their crafty designs to delude the more ignorant part of the people of this nation, and to prepare them, as they think, for the coming of the pretender: as appears thus:-- 1. By persuading the common people that the ministry are for the pretender, they, as far as in them lies, make a breach, a misunderstanding, and lay a foundation of jealousy and distrust between the people and the government, enraging all those who are zealous for the Hanover succession, against the ministers of state, and so increasing the dangerous divisions that are among us, the closing and healing whereof is so much the duty and interest of all faithful subjects, that they may the more unanimously and sincerely join together against the pretender and all his adherents. 2. They intimidate those great numbers of people who, not so much acting by principle as example, are unwilling to show themselves in any cause which they have reason to fear is declining, and therefore act with the less zeal for the true interest, by how much they see, or think they see, the great ones of the nation fall off from it.