Some of your lordship's screens I hear advise you to shew great humility
and contrition for what's past, as the only means to appease the just
indignation all sorts of men have conceived against you.----Were I well
secured you will not recommend this letter to the next grand jury to be
presented, I could give you more _seasonable advice_, but happen as it
may I will venture to give you a little.
Fawning and cajoling will have but little effect on those who have had
the honour of your acquaintance these ten years past, for Caligula who
used to hide his head if he heard the thunder, would piss upon the
statues of the gods when he thought the danger over--A better expedient
is this,----
Tell men the Drapier is a Tory and a Jacobite.--That he writ "The
Conduct of the Allies."--That he writ not his letters with a design to
keep out Wood's halfpence, but to bring in the Pretender; persuade them
if you can, the dispute is no longer about the power of judges over
juries, nor how much the liberty of the subject is endangered by
dissolving them at pleasure, but that it is now become mere Whig and
Tory, a dispute between His Majesty's friends and the Jacobites, and
'twere better to see a thousand grand juries discharged than the Tories
carry a question though in the right.--_Haec vulnera pro libertate
publica excepi, hunc oculum pro vobis impendi._ Try this cant, pin a
cloth over your eyes, look very dismal, and cry, "I was turned out of
employment, when the Drapier was rewarded with a Deanery," I say, my
lord, if you can once bring matters thus to bear, I have not the least
doubt you may escape without censure.
To your lordship's zeal and industry without doubt is owing, that the
Papists and the Tories have not delivered this kingdom over to the
Pretender, so Caesar conquered Pompey that _Legum auctor et eversor,_
and 'twas but just the liberty and laws of Rome should afterwards depend
upon his will and pleasure.----The Drapier in his letter to Lord
Molesworth has made a fair offer, "Secure his country from Wood's
coinage," then condemn all he has writ and said as false and scandalous,
when your lordship does as much I must confess it will be somewhat
difficult to discover the impostor.
Thus to keep my word with your lordship, I have much against my
inclinations writ this, which shall be my last upon the ungrateful
subject.--If I have leisure, and find a safe opportunity of giving it to
the printer, my next shall explain what has long duped the true Whigs of
this kingdom. I mean _honesty in the "worst of times."_
Though your lordship object to my last, that what I writ was taken out
of Lord Coke, Lord Somers, Sir Will. Jones, or the writings of some
other great men, yet I will venture to end this with the sentiments of
Philip de Comines upon some thorough-going courtiers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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