Truth is, you might have spared one side of your medal: the head would
be seen to more advantage, if it were placed on a spike of the tower; a
little nearer to the sun; which would then break out to better purpose.
You tell us, in your preface to the _No-Protestant Plot_, that you
shall be forced hereafter to leave off your modesty. I suppose you mean
that little, which is left you: for it was worn to rags when you put
out this medal. Never was there practised such a piece of notorious
impudence in the face of an established Government. I believe, when he
is dead, you will wear him in thumb-rings, as the Turks did Scanderbeg;
as if there were virtue in his bones to preserve you against monarchy.
Yet all this while, you pretend not only zeal for the public good, but
a due veneration for the person of the king. But all men, who can see
an inch before them, may easily detect those gross fallacies. That it
is necessary for men in your circumstances to pretend both, is granted
you; for without them there could be no ground to raise a faction. But
I would ask you one civil question: What right has any man among you,
or any association of men (to come nearer to you) who, out of
Parliament cannot be consider'd in a public capacity, to meet, as you
daily do, in factious clubs, to vilify the Government in your
discourses, and to libel it in all your writings? Who made you judges
in Israel? Or how is it consistent with your zeal for the public
welfare, to promote sedition? Does your definition of _loyal_, which is
to serve the King according to the laws, allow you the licence of
traducing the executive power, with which you own he is invested? You
complain, that his Majesty has lost the love and confidence of his
people; and, by your very urging it, you endeavour, what in you lies,
to make him lose them.
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