=Source.=--_Lord-Deputy's Speech to Both Houses of Parliament, July
15, 1634._ Knowler, _Strafford's Letters and Despatches_. London,
1739. Vol. i., pp. 289-290.
Chiefly beware of divisions in your counsels. For division confines
always upon ruin, leads ever to some fatal precipice or other. Divide
not between Protestant and Papist, for this meeting is merely civil,
religion not at all concerned one way or another. In this I have
endeavoured to give you satisfaction both privately and publicly, and
now I assure you again there is nothing of religion to be stirred in
this Parliament, being only assembled to settle the temporal state,
which you may now safely confide upon. For, believe me, I have a more
hallowed regard to my master's honour, than to profane his chair with
untruths, so as if, after all this, any shall again spring this doubt
amongst you, it is not to be judged to arise from hardness of belief,
but much rather from a perverse and malevolent spirit, desirous to
embroil your peaceable proceedings with party and faction. And I
trust your wisdom and temper will quickly conjure all such forth from
amongst you.
Divide not nationally, betwixt English and Irish. The King makes no
distinction between you, reputes you all without prejudice, and that
upon safe and sure grounds, I assure myself, his good and faithful
subjects. And madness it were in you then to raise that wall of
separation amongst yourselves. If you should, you know who the old
proverb deems likest to go to the wall, and believe me England will
not prove the weakest.
But above all, divide not between the interests of the king and
his people as if there were one being of the king and another being
of his people. This is the most mischievous principle that can be
laid in reason of state, in that which, if you watch not very well,
may the easiest mislead you. For you might as well tell me a head
might live without a body, or a body without a head, as that it is
possible for a king to be rich and happy without his people be so
likewise, or that a people can be rich and happy without the king be
so also. Most certain it is, that their well-being is individually
one and the same, their interests woven up together with so tender
and close threads, as cannot be pulled asunder without a rent in the
commonwealth.