A Seasonable Warning and Caution against the Insinuations of Papists and Jacobites in favour of the Pretender Being a Letter from an Englishman at the Court of Hanover

To what purpose was the revolution? Why did you mock yourselves at so vast an expense? Why did you cry in your oppressions to God and the Prince of Orange to deliver you? Why did you rise as one man against King James and his popish adherents? Why was your fury so great, and your opposition so universal, that although he had a good army of veteran, disciplined troops, and a powerful assistance from France ready to fall in and join him, yet they durst not, when put all together, venture to look you in the face, but fled like darkness before the sun, like guilt before the sword of justice; or as a murderer from the avenger of blood? Was it all, that you might the better weaken yourselves by ages of war, and they might return again, and bind you like Samson, when your strength was departed?

When this was done, why did ye mock God with a thanksgiving,⁹ and banter the world with your pretended praises to heaven for your deliverance? Why, when you appeared by your representatives in convention and in parliament, did you make so many fast days,¹⁰ and days of prayer for the success of the arms you took up, and the war you carried on for the finishing and securing this great work, called the pulling down of popery? Was it all, that after having spent twenty years of war, and a sea of blood, ruined trade, exhausted your treasure, and entailed vast debts on your posterity; you should calmly open your doors to the fugitives you had found out, and let in again the popish tyranny you had driven away?

For what reason was it that you presented the crown to your benefactor, called him your deliverer, and made him your king; and having done so, maintained him upon the throne with so much vigour, fought under his banner in so many battles, and with so great animosity, and professed to stand by him against all his enemies at home and abroad? Why is he in so many addresses¹¹ styled the rescuer of this nation from popery and slavery? Why in so many acts of parliament¹² is he called the great deliver [Transcriber's Note: deliverer] of the nation? Why in so many sermons preached to men, and prayers put up to God, has he the title of "the instrument blessed by heaven to free these nations from popery and arbitrary government?" Was all this done, that your posterity being brought back into the bondage their fathers were delivered from, should with the same alacrity call him an invader, an usurper, a parricide, and their fathers, rebels and revolters?

Why was the crown entailed by so many provisoes, reserves, and limitations? Why the names of every person that should succeed, so expressly and particularly mentioned and set down?¹³ Why so many acts of parliament¹⁴ to secure that entail, and punish with death those who should reject or oppose it? Why was the settlement of the crown thought to be of so much consequence to the public good, that the two daughters of King James, the late blessed Queen Mary, and her present royal majesty, thought themselves bound to agree to the same for the safety and peace of their country, though it was in prejudice of the right and possession of their own father? Was it all, that the return of these things might be made upon the people with the greater weight, and that posterity might be prejudiced against the memory of the two royal sisters, as accessary to the ruin of their own father?

Why was King James and his popish posterity entirely excluded for ever from enjoying the imperial crown of these realms?¹⁵ Why were so many acts of parliament made to extinguish the hopes of his race, and of their party, and for farther security of her majesty's person and government? Why was the settlement of the succession in a protestant line made the principal reason of uniting the two kingdoms together? And why was that union so vigorously opposed by all those that adhered to the jacobite interest? Was this to illustrate the return of the abdicated line, and by the greatness of the nation's endeavour for keeping out the pretender, to justify his using them accordingly when he comes in?

Why was the union declared to be unalterable, and, as some say, the power thereby taken out of the hands of the British parliament to change the settlement of the crown, or to name any other persons than those of the illustrious house of Hanover to succeed; and, above all, why was that severest of all oaths, the abjuration, contrived; by which it is rendered impossible for this nation, upon any pretence whatsoever, to receive the pretender but with the black stigma of an abominable perjury? Was this that, with the greater reverence to laws, and the greater regard to the solemnity of a national oath, we might all turn tail upon our principles, and in defiance of God and the laws, bow our knees to an abjured pretender?

For God's sake, Britons, what are you doing? And whither are you going? To what dreadful precipices are ye hurrying yourselves? What! are you selling yourselves for slaves to the French, who you have conquered; to popery, which you have reformed from; and to the pretender, whom you have forsworn? Is this acting like Britons; like protestants, like lovers of liberty? Nay, is it acting like men of reasonable souls, and men who have the light of common sense to act by?

That we may move you, then, to consider a little the grossness and absurdity of what you are doing, dear countrymen, be prevailed upon to debate a little with yourselves the state of your own case, which I shall briefly and plainly lay before you, thus: —

The government having thought fit, for reasons of state which I have no room to speak of in this place, to separate from the confederates, as well in the field as in treating with the French, and unhappily, I doubt, to make a separate peace; among the several improvements made of this by the enemies of Britain, this is one, viz., to encourage and increase the friends and interest of the pretender, and this they do upon several foundations. 1. Upon a supposition, or suggestion rather, that the ministry, because they have not thought fit to carry on the war, are therefore coming so entirely into the interest of France, that they must of necessity comply with the French king's demand of restoring the pretender. 2. Upon a like ill-grounded suggestion that the people of England and Scotland are more inclined to receive the pretender than they were formerly; in both which suppositions they grossly impose upon you, and yet by both they subtly carry on their crafty designs to delude the more ignorant part of the people of this nation, and to prepare them, as they think, for the coming of the pretender: as appears thus: —