The History and Remarkable Life of the Truly Honourable Colonel Jacque, Commonly Called Colonel JackDefoe, Daniel
General
The History and Remarkable Life of the Truly Honourable Colonel Jacque, Commonly Called Colonel Jack
Defoe, Daniel
Adventure stories, English; England -- Social life and customs -- 18th century -- Fiction; Picaresque fiction
And now they find their day is over, their power gone, and the throne
of this nation possessed by a royal, English, true, and ever-constant
member of, and friend to, the Church of England. Now they find that
they are in danger of the Church of England’s just resentments; now
they cry out peace, union, forbearance, and charity, as if the Church
had not too long harboured her enemies under her wing, and nourished
the viperous brood till they hiss and fly in the face of the mother
that cherished them.
No, gentlemen, the time of mercy is past, your day of grace is over;
you should have practised peace, and moderation, and charity, if you
expected any yourselves.
We have heard none of this lesson for fourteen years past. We have been
huffed and bullied with your Act of Toleration; you have told us that
you are the Church established by law, as well as others; have set up
your canting synagogues at our church doors, and the Church and members
have been loaded with reproaches, with oaths, associations,
abjurations, and what not. Where has been the mercy, the forbearance,
the charity, you have shown to tender consciences of the Church of
England, that could not take oaths as fast as you made them; that
having sworn allegiance to their lawful and rightful King, could not
dispense with that oath, their King being still alive, and swear to
your new hodge-podge of a Dutch Government? These have been turned out
of their livings, and they and their families left to starve; their
estates double taxed to carry on a war they had no hand in, and you got
nothing by. What account can you give of the multitudes you have forced
to comply, against their consciences, with your new sophistical
politics, who, like new converts in France, sin because they cannot
starve? And now the tables are turned upon you; you must not be
persecuted; it is not a Christian spirit.
You have butchered one king, deposed another king, and made a mock king
of a third,[24] and yet you could have the face to expect to be
employed and trusted by the fourth. Anybody that did not know the
temper of your party would stand amazed at the impudence, as well as
folly, to think of it.
Your management of your Dutch monarch, whom you reduced to a mere King
of Clouts, is enough to give any future princes such an idea of your
principles as to warn them sufficiently from coming into your clutches;
and God be thanked the Queen is out of your hands, knows you, and will
have a care of you.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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