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
3. By suggesting that the common people of Great Britain are more
inclined to the pretender than they were formerly, they think they
bring them really to be so, and encourage all the endeavours of those
who labour indefatigably all over the nation to have it so.
To undeceive the good people of Britain, therefore, in these things,
dear countrymen, I beseech you to consider,
1. That whatever we may dislike of the proceedings of the ministry,
and of the government, of which this is not the place to speak, there
is no greater cheat can be put upon you than this is; for, whatever
the jacobite party may promise themselves from the ministry, the
ministry do not yet own their measures to tend that way; they do not
act avowedly for the pretender; they do all things yet upon the
supposition of the protestant succession, and carry it as in the
interest of the house of Hanover; and to say they are for the
pretender, is to charge them with the greatest treachery and
hypocrisy, and is such an insolence in the jacobites, as the ministry
ought to show their resentment at them for, and we hope they will do
so; besides, there is a manifest difference between the fears of
honest men, as that the measures of the ministry may encourage the
friends of the pretenders and on the other hand, the insolent way of
the jacobites claiming the ministry to be acting in their behalf;
while therefore the ministry appear to act under the scheme of the
Hanover succession, whether they are sincere or no, it is a good
answer to a jacobite, whatever it is to another, to say, it is an
unjustifiable assurance, and an affront to the government, to boast of
the ministry being in the interest of the pretender.
It is also well worthy the consideration of the good people of
Britain, that at the same time these men would have you believe that
the ministers of state are bringing in the pretender, they would also
have the ministers of state made believe, that the generality of the
people are inclined to receive the pretender; by which double-faced
fraud they endeavour to restrain you, the people of Britain, from
appearing against the pretender, for fear of offending the government;
and to restrain the said government in the same case, for fear of the
people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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