versal monarchy of France, and the danger of I know not how many popish successors to Britain. His political reflections are as good as his facts. "We must observe," says he, "that the person who seems to be the most favoured by the French king in the late treaties, is the duke of Savoy." Extremely right for, whatever that prince got by the peace, he owes entirely to her majesty, as a just reward for his having been so firm and useful an ally; neither was France brought with more difficulty to yield any one point, than that of allowing the duke such a barrier as the queen insisted on. "He is become the most powerful prince in Italy." I had rather see him so than the emperor. "He is supposed to have entered into a secret and strict alliance with the house of Bourbon." This is one of those facts wherein I am most inclined to believe the author, because it is what he must needs be utterly ignorant of, and therefore may possibly be true. I thought indeed we should be safe from all popish successors as far as Italy, because of the prodigious clutter about sending the pretender thither. But they will never agree where to fix their longitude. The duke of Savoy is the more dangerous for removing to Sicily: he adds to our fears for being too near. So, whether France conquer Germany, or be in peace and good understanding with it, either event will put us and Holland at the mercy of France, which has a quiver full of pretenders at its back, whenever the chevalier shall die. This was just the logick of poor prince Butler, a splenetick madman, whom every body may remem ber ber about the town. Prince Pamphilio in Italy, employed emissaries to torment prince Butler here. But what if prince Pamphilio die? Why then he had left in his will, that his heirs and executors torment prince Butler for ever. I cannot think it a misfortune, what Mr. Steele affirms, "that treasonable books lately dispersed among us, striking apparently at the Hanover succession, have passed almost without observation from the generality of the people;" because it seems a certain sign, that the generality of the people are well disposed to that illustrious family: but I look upon it as a great evil, to see seditious books dispersed among us, apparently striking at the queen and her administration, at the constitution in church and state, and at all religion; yet passing without observation from the generality of those in power: but whether this remissness may be imputed to Whitehall, or Westminsterhall, is other men's business to inquire. Mr. Steele knows in his conscience, that the Queries concerning the Pretender, issued from one of his own party. And as for the poor nonjuring clergyman, who was trusted with committing to the press a late book on the subject of hereditary right, by a strain of a summum jus, he is now, as I am told, with half a score children, starving and rotting among thieves and pickpockets, in the common room of a stinking jail. I have This should be- I cannot think it a misfortune, as Mr. Steele affirms,' &c. not, what Mr. Steele affirms;' which is not grammar. + Upon his conviction he was committed to the Marshalsea; and at his sentence, to the Queen's Bench for three years. never ever, never seen either the book or the publisher; howI would fain ask one single person* in the world a question; why he has so often drank the abdicated king's health upon his knees?-But the transition is natural and frequent, and I shall not trouble him for an answer. It is the hardest case in the world, that Mr. Steele should take up the artificial reports of his own faction, and then put them off upon the world, as additional fears of a popish successor. I can assure him, that no good subject of the queen's is under the least concern, whether the pretender be converted or not, farther than their wishes that all men would embrace the true religion. But reporting backward and forward upon this point, helps to keep up the noise, and is a topick for Mr. Steele to enlarge himself upon, by showing how little we can depend upon such conversions, by collecting a list of popish cruelties, and repeating after himself and the bishop of Sarum, the dismal effects likely to follow upon the return of that superstition among us. But, as this writer is reported by those who know him, to be what the French call journalier, his fear and courage operating according to the weather in our uncertain climate; I am apt to believe the two last pages of his Crisis, were written on a sunshiny day. This I guess from the general tenour of them, and particularly from an unwary assertion, which, if he believes as firmly as I do, will at once overthrow all his foreign and domestick fears of a popish "As divided a people as we are, those successor. VOL. III. * Parker, afterward lord chancellor. who who stand for the house of Hanover, are infinitely superiour in number, wealth, courage, and all arts military and civil, to those in the contrary interest; beside which, we have laws, I say, the laws on our side. The laws, I say, the laws." This elegant repetition is, I think, a little out of place; for the stress might better have been laid upon so great a majority of the nation; without which, I doubt the laws would be of little weight, although they be very good additional securities. And if what he here asserts be true, as it certainly is, although he assert it (for I allow even the majority of his own party to be against the pretender) there can be no danger of a popish successor, except from the unreasonable jealousies of the best among that party, and from the malice, the avarice, or ambition of the worst; without which, Britain would be able to defend her succession, against all her enemies, both at home and abroad. Most of the dangers from abroad, which he enumerates as the consequences of this bad peace very made by the queen, and approved by parliament, must have subsisted under any peace at all; unless, among other projects equally feasible, we could have stipulated to cut the throats of every popish relation to the royal family. Well, by this author's own confession, a number infinitely superiour, and the best circumstantiated imaginable, are for the succession in the house of Hanover. This succession is established, confirmed, and secured by several laws; her majesty's repeated declarations, and the oaths of all her subjects, engage both her and them to preserve what those laws have settled. This is a security indeed, a security adequate at least to the importance of the thing; and and yet, according to the whig scheme, as delivered to us by Mr. Steele and his coadjutors, is altogether insufficient; and the succession will be defeated, the pretender brought in, and popery established among us, without the farther assistance of this writer and his faction. And what securities have our adversaries substituted in the place of these? A club of politicians, where Jenny Man presides; a Crisis written by Mr. Steele; a confederacy of knavish stockjobbers to ruin credit; a report of the queen's death; an effigies of the pretender run twice through the body by a valiant peer; a speech by the author of the Crisis; and, to sum up all, an unlimited freedom of reviling her majesty, and those she employs. I have now finished the most disgustful task that ever I undertook. I could with more ease have written three dull pamphlets, than remarked upon the falsehoods and absurdities of one. But I was quite confounded last Wednesday, when the printer came with another pamphlet in his hand, written by the same author, and entitled, "The Englishman, being the Close of the Paper so called," &c. He desired I would read it over, and consider it in a paper by itself; which last I absolutely refused. Upon perusal, I found it chiefly an invective against Toby, the ministry, the Examiner, the clergy, the queen, and the Post-boy; yet, at the same time, with great justice exclaiming against those, who presumed to offer the least word against the heads of that faction, whom her majesty discarded. The author likewise proposes an equal division of favour and employments, between the whigs and tories; for, if the former "can have no part or por |