From religious matters, come we next to consider civil interest, liberties, privileges, properties; the great article that in the late revolution went always coupled in the nation's negative with that of religion, as if they were woven together, and was always cried upon by the mob in one breath, viz., No popery, no slavery. The first of these concerns our civil interest; such as the public credit, by the occasions of a long and expensive war, and to prevent levying severe taxes for the carrying on the war, such as would be grievous to trade, oppressive to the poor, and difficult to be paid. The parliament, for the ease of the subjects, thought fit, rather to lay funds of interest to raise money upon, by way of loan, establishing those interests, payable as annuities and annual payments, for the benefit of those who advanced their money for the public service. And to make these things current, that the public credit might be sacred, and the people be made free to advance their money, all possible assurances of parliament have been given, that the payments of interests and annuities shall be kept punctually, and exactly according to the acts of parliament, that no misapplications of the money shall be made, or converting the money received upon one to make good the deficiency of the other; and hitherto the injunctions of that kind have been exactly observed, and the payments punctually made, which we call the credit of the nation. At the first of the late change, when the new ministry began to act, the fright the people were put in upon the suggestion of some, that all the parliamentary funds should be wiped off with a sponge, was very considerable; and the credit of those funds sunk exceedingly with but the bare apprehension of such a blow, the sums being infinitely great, and the number of indigent families being incredibly many, whose whole substance lay in those securities, and whose bread depended upon those interests being punctually paid; but wiser men saw quickly there was no ground for those fears; that the new ministry stood upon a foot that could no more be supported without the public credit than those that went before them; that especially while they were under a necessity of borrowing farther sums, they behoved to secure the punctual paying of the old; and by making the people entirely easy, not only take from them the apprehensions they were under of losing what they lent already, but make them forward and willing to advance more to this purpose, they not only endeavoured to give the people all satisfaction that their money was safe, and that the funds laid by the parliament in the former ministry should be kept sacred, and the payments punctually made, but took care to obtain parliamentary securities, by real funds to be settled for the payment of those debts contracted by the former ministry, and for which no provision was made before. This was the establishment of a fund for