A gunsmith makes ten thousand firelocks in the Minories, the honest man may be a Whig, he designs to sell them to the government to lay up in the tower, or to kill Spaniards, or any of the rest of the king’s enemies; a merchant comes and buys some of them, and says they are for the West Indies, or to sell into France. But upon inquiry, it appears they are bought for rebellion; the undesigning gunsmith comes into trouble, of course, and it will be very hard for him to prove the negative, that when he has furnished the rebels with arms, he had no share in the rebellion. To bring this home to the case in view, who were the men who, in the late hurry of an expected invasion, sunk the price of stock fourteen or fifteen per cent.? Who were the men that made a run upon the Bank of England, and pushed at them with some particular pique, too, if possible, to have run them down, and brought ’em to a stop of payment? And what was the consequences of these things? Will they tell us that running upon the bank, and lowering the stocks, was no treason? We know that, literally speaking, those things are no treason. But is there not a plain constructive treason in the consequences of it? Is not a wilful running down the public credit, at a time when the nation is threatened with an invasion from abroad, and rebellion at home? Is not this adding to the terror of the people? Is not this disabling the government, discouraging the king’s friends, and a visible encouragement of the king’s enemies? Is not all that is taken from the credit of the public, in such an occasion, added to the credit of the invasion? Does not every thing that weakens the government strengthen its enemies? And is not every step that is taken in prejudice of the king’s interest a step taken in aid of the designed rebellion? The kindest thing that can be said of a certain triumvirate of jobbers, whose hands have been deepest in this part of the work, and who, indeed, had more obligations upon them than any other men in the town, to have assisted the public interest and advanced the credit of the nation, is, that they did not think what they did, and that this excuse may not serve them another time, I may soon furnish them with an anatomy of some of the conduct of that little body of Number Three, that when they see their mistakes with the eyes that other men see them, they may at their leisure give a better turn to the measures of unbounded avarice.