--_Longa est injuria, longae Ambages, sed summa sequar fastigia rerum_.[2] It is a practice I have generally followed, to converse in equal freedom with the deserving men of both parties; and it was never without some contempt, that I have observed persons wholly out of employment, affect to do otherwise: I doubted whether any man could owe so much to the side he was of, though he were retained by it; but without some great point of interest, either in possession or prospect, I thought it was the mark of a low and narrow spirit. It is hard, that, for some weeks past, I have been forced in my own defence, to follow a proceeding that I have so much condemned in others. But several of my acquaintance among the declining party, are grown so insufferably peevish and splenetic, profess such violent apprehensions for the public, and represent the state of things in such formidable ideas, that I find myself disposed to share in their afflictions, though I know them to be groundless and imaginary, or, which is worse, purely affected. To offer them comfort one by one, would be not only an endless, but a disobliging task. Some of them, I am convinced would be less melancholy, if there were more occasion. I shall therefore, instead of hearkening to further complaints, employ some part of this paper for the future, in letting such men see, that their natural or acquired fears are ill-grounded, and their artificial ones as ill-intended. That all our present inconveniencies,[3] are the consequence of the very counsels they so much admire, which would still have increased, if those had continued: and that neither our constitution in Church or State, could probably have been long preserved, without such methods as have been lately taken.