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

1. By persuading the common people that the ministry are for the pretender, they, as far as in them lies, make a breach, a misunderstanding, and lay a foundation of jealousy and distrust between the people and the government, enraging all those who are zealous for the Hanover succession, against the ministers of state, and so increasing the dangerous divisions that are among us, the closing and healing whereof is so much the duty and interest of all faithful subjects, that they may the more unanimously and sincerely join together against the pretender and all his adherents.

2. They intimidate those great numbers of people who, not so much acting by principle as example, are unwilling to show themselves in any cause which they have reason to fear is declining, and therefore act with the less zeal for the true interest, by how much they see, or think they see, the great ones of the nation fall off from it.

3. By suggesting that the common people of Great Britain are more inclined to the pretender than they were formerly, they think they bring them really to be so, and encourage all the endeavours of those who labour indefatigably all over the nation to have it so.

To undeceive the good people of Britain, therefore, in these things, dear countrymen, I beseech you to consider:

1. That whatever we may dislike of the proceedings of the ministry, and of the government, of which this is not the place to speak, there is no greater cheat can be put upon you than this is; for, whatever the jacobite party may promise themselves from the ministry, the ministry do not yet own their measures to tend that way; they do not act avowedly for the pretender; they do all things yet upon the supposition of the protestant succession, and carry it as in the interest of the house of Hanover; and to say they are for the pretender, is to charge them with the greatest treachery and hypocrisy, and is such an insolence in the jacobites, as the ministry ought to show their resentment at them for, and we hope they will do so; besides, there is a manifest difference between the fears of honest men, as that the measures of the ministry may encourage the friends of the pretenders and on the other hand, the insolent way of the jacobites claiming the ministry to be acting in their behalf; while therefore the ministry appear to act under the scheme of the Hanover succession, whether they are sincere or no, it is a good answer to a jacobite, whatever it is to another, to say, it is an unjustifiable assurance, and an affront to the government, to boast of the ministry being in the interest of the pretender.

It is also well worthy the consideration of the good people of Britain, that at the same time these men would have you believe that the ministers of state are bringing in the pretender, they would also have the ministers of state made believe, that the generality of the people are inclined to receive the pretender; by which double-faced fraud they endeavour to restrain you, the people of Britain, from appearing against the pretender, for fear of offending the government; and to restrain the said government in the same case, for fear of the people.

As they go on in these things with too much success, it is a very sad consideration to all true British protestants to find that a party of men among us, who yet call themselves protestants, fall in with them in many things, fomenting the divisions and breaches that are among us, weakening the constitution, and pursuing such principles as tend to destroy our liberties; by whose arts, and by the subtle management of which party, the revolution wears every day more and more out of date; the principles of liberty decay; the memory of King William sinks in our esteem; the heroic actions of that prince, which were once the just admiration of all the honest people of Great Britain, begin to be lost upon us, and forgotten among us, and to become as a mark of infamy to the nation!

Every considering protestant cannot but observe with horror, what swarms of popish priests from abroad, and jacobite emissaries at home, are spread about among us, and busily employed to carry on these wicked designs; how in disguise they run up and down the countries, mingling themselves in all companies, and in coffee-houses, and private conversation, endeavouring to insinuate with all possible subtlety, favourable notions of the pretender into the minds of the people, thereby to pave the way, and to prepare you for receiving him; such as, that he is the lawful son of King James; that he is a protestant in his heart; that he will abjure the errors of popery as soon as he has an opportunity; that the late King William promised to prove him a bastard, but never could do it; that it is hard to reject him for what was none of his own fault, and the like.

Although thinking men can and do see through these things, yet, as they are calculated and prepared to deceive the ignorant people in the country, it is earnestly desired of those who have their eyes open to the said popish delusions, that they would endeavour to undeceive their brethren and neighbours, and earnestly persuade them not to be imposed upon by the jesuitical insinuations of the popish faction, furnishing the poor honest people with just reasons for their adhering to the protestant settlement, and full answers to those who go about to deceive them: which answers are such as follow: —

1. It seems absolutely necessary to remind them of the reason of the late revolution; how King James II., by his popish counsellors, priests, and jesuits, had laid the foundation of overwhelming all our liberties, in an arbitrary, tyrannical government, ruling us without a parliament to redress our grievances, and, by a standing army, to execute forcibly his absolute commands; how he had engaged in the overthrow of our religion, by undermining the constitution of the Church of England, erecting an arbitrary ecclesiastical commission to dispossess our universities, and displace our ministers in every parish, and then to establish popery throughout the whole nation.