men, at whose levees you may daily observe a score of the most forward faces, which every body is ashamed of, except those that wear them. But I conceive my pretensions will be upon a very different foot: Let me offer a parallel case. Suppose, King Charles the First had entirely subdued the rebels at Naseby, and reduced the kingdom to his obedience: whoever had gone about to reason, from the former conduct of those _saints_, that if the victory had fallen on their side, they would have murdered their prince, destroyed monarchy and the Church and made the king's party compound for their estates as delinquents; would have been called a false, uncharitable libeller, by those very persons who afterwards gloried in all this, and called it the "work of the Lord," when they happened to succeed. I remember there was a person fined and imprisoned for _scandalum magnatum_, because he said the Duke of York was a Papist; but when that prince came to be king, and made open profession of his religion, he had the justice immediately to release his prisoner, who in his opinion had put a compliment upon him, and not a reproach: and therefore Colonel Titus,[4] who had warmly asserted the same thing in Parliament, was made a privy-councillor. By this rule, if that which, for some politic reasons, is now called scandal upon the late m[inist]ry, proves one day to be only an abstract of such a character as they will assume and be proud of; I think I may fairly offer my pretensions, and hope for their favour. And I am the more confirmed in this notion by what I have observed in those papers, that come weekly out against the "Examiner." The authors are perpetually telling me of my ingratitude to my masters, that I blunder, and betray the cause; and write with more bitterness against those that hire me, than against the Whigs. Now I took all this at first only for so many strains of wit, and pretty paradoxes to divert the reader; but upon further thinking I find they are serious. I imagined I had complimented the present ministry for their dutiful behaviour to the Queen; for their love of the old constitution in Church and State; for their generosity and justice, and for their desire of a speedy, honourable peace: but it seems I am mistaken, and they reckon all this for satire, because it is directly contrary to the practice of all those whom they set up to defend, and utterly against all their notions of a good ministry. Therefore I cannot but think they have reason on their side: for suppose I should write the character of an honest, a religious, and a learned man; and send the first to Newgate, the second to the Grecian Coffee-house, and the last to White's;[5] would they not all pass for satires, and justly enough, among the companies to whom they were sent?