_Quis tulerit Gracchos de seditione querentes?_[2]
There have been certain topics of reproach, liberally bestowed for some
years past, by the Whigs and Tories, upon each other. We charge the
former with a design of destroying the established Church, and
introducing fanaticism and freethinking in its stead. We accuse them as
enemies to monarchy; as endeavouring to undermine the present form of
government, and to build a commonwealth, or some new scheme of their own,
upon its ruins. On the other side, their clamours against us, may be
summed up in those three formidable words, Popery, Arbitrary Power, and
the Pretender. Our accusations against them we endeavour to make good by
certain overt acts; such as their perpetually abusing the whole body of
the clergy; their declared contempt for the very order of priesthood;
their aversion for episcopacy; the public encouragement and patronage
they gave to Tindall, Toland, and other atheistical writers; their
appearing as professed advocates, retained by the Dissenters, excusing
their separation, and laying the guilt of it to the obstinacy of the
Church; their frequent endeavours to repeal the test, and their setting
up the indulgence to scrupulous consciences, as a point of greater
importance than the established worship. The regard they bear to our
monarchy, hath appeared by their open ridiculing the martyrdom of King
Charles the First, in their Calves-head Clubs,[3] their common discourses
and their pamphlets: their denying the unnatural war raised against that
prince, to have been a rebellion; their justifying his murder in the
allowed papers of the week; their industry in publishing and spreading
seditious and republican tracts; such as Ludlow's "Memoirs," Sidney "Of
Government,"[4] and many others; their endless lopping of the
prerogative, and mincing into nothing her M[ajest]y's titles to the
crown.
What proofs they bring for our endeavouring to introduce Popery,
arbitrary power, and the Pretender, I cannot readily tell, and would be
glad to hear; however, those important words having by dexterous
management, been found of mighty service to their cause, though applied
with little colour, either of reason or justice; I have been considering
whether they may not be adapted to more proper objects.
As to Popery, which is the first of these, to deal plainly, I can hardly
think there is any set of men among us, except the professors of it, who
have any direct intention to introduce it among us: but the question is,
whether the principles and practices of us, or the Whigs, be most likely
to make way for it? It is allowed, on all hands, that among the methods
concerted at Rome, for bringing over England into the bosom of the
Catholic Church; one of the chief was, to send Jesuits and other
emissaries, in lay habits, who personating tradesmen and mechanics,
should mix with the people, and under the pretence of a further and purer
reformation, endeavour to divide us into as many sects as possible, which
would either put us under the necessity of returning to our old errors,
to preserve peace at home; or by our divisions make way for some powerful
neighbour, with the assistance of the Pope's permission, and a
consecrated banner, to convert and enslave us at once. If this hath been
reckoned good politics (and it was the best the Jesuit schools could
invent) I appeal to any man, whether the Whigs, for many years past, have
not been employed in the very same work? They professed on all occasions,
that they knew no reason why any one system of speculative opinions (as
they termed the doctrines of the Church) should be established by law
more than another; or why employments should be confined to the religion
of the magistrate, and that called the Church established. The grand
maxim they laid down was, That no man, for the sake of a few notions and
ceremonies, under the names of doctrine and discipline, should be denied
the liberty of serving his country: as if places would go a begging,
unless Brownists, Familists, Sweet-singers, Quakers, Anabaptists and
Muggletonians, would take them off our hands.
I have been sometimes imagining this scheme brought to perfection, and
how diverting it would look to see half a dozen Sweet-singers on the
bench in their ermines, and two or three Quakers with their white staves
at court. I can only say, this project is the very counterpart of the
late King James's design, which he took up as the best method for
introducing his own religion, under the pretext of an universal liberty
of conscience, and that no difference in religion, should make any in his
favour. Accordingly, to save appearances, he dealt some employments among
Dissenters of most denominations; and what he did was, no doubt, in
pursuance of the best advice he could get at home or abroad; and the
Church thought it the most dangerous step he could take for her
destruction. It is true, King James admitted Papists among the rest,
which the Whigs would not; but this is sufficiently made up by a material
circumstance, wherein they seem to have much outdone that prince, and to
have carried their liberty of conscience to a higher point, having
granted it to all the classes of Freethinkers, which the nice conscience
of a Popish prince would not give him leave to do; and was therein
mightily overseen; because it is agreed by the learned, that there is
but a very narrow step from atheism, to the other extreme, superstition.
So that upon the whole, whether the Whigs had any real design of bringing
in Popery or no, it is very plain, that they took the most effectual step
towards it; and if the Jesuits had been their immediate directors, they
could not have taught them better, nor have found apter scholars.
Their second accusation is, That we encourage and maintain arbitrary
power in princes, and promote enslaving doctrines among the people. This
they go about to prove by instances, producing the particular opinions of
certain divines in King Charles the Second's reign; a decree of Oxford
University,[5] and some few writers since the Revolution. What they mean,
is the principle of passive obedience and non-resistance, which those who
affirm, did, I believe, never intend should include arbitrary power.
However, though I am sensible that it is not reckoned prudent in a
dispute, to make any concessions without the last necessity; yet I do
agree, that in my own private opinion, some writers did carry that tenet
of passive obedience to a height, which seemed hardly consistent with the
liberties of a country, whose laws can be neither enacted nor repealed,
without the consent of the whole people. I mean not those who affirm it
due in general, as it certainly is to the Legislature, but such as fix it
entirely in the prince's person. This last has, I believe, been done by a
very few; but when the Whigs quote authors to prove it upon us, they
bring in all who mention it as a duty in general, without applying it to
princes, abstracted from their senate.
By thus freely declaring my own sentiments of passive obedience, it will
at least appear, that I do not write for a party: neither do I, upon any
occasion, pretend to speak their sentiments, but my own. The majority of
the two Houses, and the present ministry (if those be a party) seem to me
in all their proceedings, to pursue the real interest of Church and
State: and if I shall happen to differ from particular persons among
them, in a single notion about government, I suppose they will not, upon
that account, explode me and my paper. However, as an answer once for
all, to the tedious scurrilities of those idle people, who affirm, I am
hired and directed what to write;[6] I must here inform them, that their
censure is an effect of their principles: The present m[inistr]y are
under no necessity of employing prostitute pens; they have no dark
designs to promote, by advancing heterodox opinions.
But (to return) suppose two or three private divines, under King Charles
the Second, did a little overstrain the doctrine of passive obedience to
princes; some allowance might be given to the memory of that unnatural
rebellion against his father, and the dismal consequences of resistance.
It is plain, by the proceedings of the Churchmen before and at the
Revolution, that this doctrine was never designed to introduce arbitrary
power.[7]
I look upon the Whigs and Dissenters to be exactly of the same political
faith; let us, therefore, see what share each of them had in advancing
arbitrary power. It is manifest, that the fanatics made Cromwell the most
absolute tyrant in Christendom:[8] The Rump abolished the House of Lords;
the army abolished the Rump; and by this army of _saints_, he governed.
The Dissenters took liberty of conscience and employments from the late
King James, as an acknowledgment of his dispensing power; which makes a
King of England as absolute as the Turk. The Whigs, under the late king,
perpetually declared for keeping up a standing army, in times of peace;
which has in all ages been the first and great step to the ruin of
liberty. They were, besides, discovering every day their inclinations to
destroy the rights of the Church; and declared their opinion, in all
companies, against the bishops sitting in the House of Peers: which
was exactly copying after their predecessors of 'Forty-one. I need not
say their real intentions were to make the king absolute, but whatever be
the designs of innovating men, they usually end in a tyranny: as we may
see by an hundred examples in Greece, and in the later commonwealths of
Italy, mentioned by Machiavel.
In the third place, the Whigs accuse us of a design to bring in the
Pretender; and to give it a greater air of probability, they suppose the
Qu[een] to be a party in this design; which however, is no very
extraordinary supposition in those who have advanced such singular
paradoxes concerning Gregg and Guiscard. Upon this article, their charge
is general, without ever offering to produce an instance. But I verily
think, and believe it will appear no paradox, that if ever he be brought
in, the Whigs are his men. For, first, it is an undoubted truth, that a
year or two after the Revolution, several leaders of that party had their
pardons sent them by the late King James,[9] and had entered upon
measures to restore him, on account of some disobligations they received
from King William. Besides, I would ask, whether those who are under the
greatest ties of gratitude to King James, are not at this day become the
most zealous Whigs? And of what party those are now, who kept a long
correspondence with St. Germains?
It is likewise very observable of late, that the Whigs upon all
occasions, profess their belief of the Pretender's being no impostor, but
a real prince, born of the late Queen's body:[10] which whether it be
true or false, is very unseasonably advanced, considering the weight such
an opinion must have with the vulgar, if they once thoroughly believe it.
Neither is it at all improbable, that the Pretender himself puts his
chief hopes in the friendship he expects from the Dissenters and Whigs,
by his choice to invade the kingdom when the latter were most in credit:
and he had reason to count upon the former, from the gracious treatment
they received from his supposed father, and their joyful acceptance
of it. But further, what could be more consistent with the Whiggish
notion of a revolution-principle, than to bring in the Pretender? A
revolution-principle, as their writings and discourses have taught us to
define it, is a principle perpetually disposing men to revolutions: and
this is suitable to the famous saying of a great Whig, "That the more
revolutions the better"; which how odd a maxim soever in appearance, I
take to be the true characteristic of the party.
A dog loves to turn round often; yet after certain revolutions, he lies
down to rest: but heads, under the dominion of the moon, are for
perpetual changes, and perpetual revolutions: besides, the Whigs owe all
their wealth to wars and revolutions; like the girl at Bartholomew-fair,
who gets a penny by turning round a hundred times, with swords in her
hands.[11]
To conclude, the Whigs have a natural faculty of bringing in pretenders,
and will therefore probably endeavour to bring in the great one at last:
How many _pretenders_ to wit, honour, nobility, politics, have they
brought in these last twenty years? In short, they have been sometimes
able to procure a majority of pretenders in Parliament; and wanted
nothing to render the work complete, except a Pretender at their head.
[Footnote 1: No. 39 in the reprint. [T.S.]]
[Footnote 2: Juvenal, "Satires," ii. 24.
"Who his spleen could rein,
And hear the Gracchi of the mob complain?"--W. GIFFORD.
[T.S.]]
[Footnote 3: The Calves-Head Club "was erected by an impudent set of
people, who have their feast of calves-heads in several parts of the
town, on the 30th of January; in derision of the day, and defiance of
monarchy" ("Secret History of the Calves-Head Club," 1703). [T.S.]]
[Footnote 4: These works can hardly be called "tracts." Algernon Sidney's
"Discourses concerning Government" (1698), is a portly folio of 467
pages, and Ludlow's "Memoirs" (1698-9) occupy three stout octavo volumes.
[T.S.]]
[Footnote 5: On July 21st, 1683, the University of Oxford passed a decree
condemning as "false, seditious, and impious," a series of twenty-seven
propositions, among which were the following:
"All civil authority is derived originally from the people."
"The King has but a co-ordinate power, and may be over-ruled by the Lords
and Commons."
"Wicked kings and tyrants ought to be put to death."
"King Charles the First was lawfully put to death."
The decree was reprinted in 1709/10 with the title, "An Entire
Confutation of Mr. Hoadley's Book, of the Original of Government." It was
burnt by the order of the House of Lords, dated March 23rd, 1709/10.
[T.S.]]
[Footnote 6: In a letter to Dr. Chenevix, Bishop of Waterford (dated May
23rd, 1758), Lord Chesterfield, speaking of Swift's "Last Four Years,"
says that it "is a party pamphlet, founded on the lie of the day,
which, as Lord Bolingbroke who had read it often assured me, _was
coined and delivered out to him, to write 'Examiners' and other
political papers upon_" (Chesterfield's "Works," ii. 498, edit. 1777).
[T.S.]]
[Footnote 7: From this and many previous passages it is obvious, that, in
joining the Tories, Swift reserved to himself the right of putting his
own interpretation upon the speculative points of their political creed.
[S.]]
[Footnote 8: See Swift's "Presbyterians' Plea of Merit," and note, vol.
iv., p. 36, of present edition. [T.S.]]
[Footnote 9: James II. sent a Declaration to England, dated April 20th,
1692, in which he promised to pardon all those who should return to their
duty. He made a few exceptions, and among these were Ormonde, Sunderland,
Nottingham, Churchill, etc. It is said that of Churchill James remarked
that he never could forgive him until he should efface the memory of his
ingratitude by some eminent service. [T.S.]]
[Footnote 10: "The Pretended Prince of Wales," as he is styled in several
Acts of Parliament, was first called "the Pretender" in Queen Anne's
speech to Parliament on March 11th, 1707/8. She then said: "The French
fleet sailed from Dunkirk, Tuesday, at three in the morning, northward,
with the Pretender on board." The same epithet is employed in the
Addresses by the two Houses in reply to this speech.
It was currently reported that he was not a son of James II. and Queen
Mary. Several pamphlets were written by "W. Fuller," to prove that he was
the son of a gentlewoman named Grey, who was brought to England from
Ireland in 1688 by the Countess of Tyrconnel. See also note on p. 409 of
vol. v. of present edition. [T.S.]]
[Footnote 11: An exhibition described at length in Ward's "London Spy."
The wonder and dexterity of the feat consisted in the damsel sustaining a
number of drawn swords upright upon her hands, shoulders, and neck, and
turning round so nimbly as to make the spectators giddy. [S.]]