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Reasons against the Succession of the House of Hanover with an Enquiry How far the Abdication of King James, supposing it to be Legal, ought to affect the Person of the Pretender By: Daniel Defoe (1661?-1731) |
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REASONS AGAINST THE SUCCESSION OF THE HOUSE of HANOVER , WITH AN ENQUIRY How far the Abdication of King James , supposing it to be Legal,
ought to affect the Person of the PRETENDER.
Si Populus vult Decipi, Decipiatur.
LONDON: Printed for J. Baker , at the Black Boy in Pater Noster Row ,
1713. [ Price 6d. ]
REASONS AGAINST THE SUCCESSION, &c.
What strife is here among you all? And what a noise about who shall or
shall not be king, the Lord knows when? Is it not a strange thing we
cannot be quiet with the queen we have, but we must all fall into
confusion and combustions about who shall come after? Why, pray folks,
how old is the queen, and when is she to die? that here is this pother
made about it. I have heard wise people say the queen is not fifty
years old, that she has no distemper but the gout, that that is a
long life disease, which generally holds people out twenty, or thirty,
or forty years; and let it go how it will, the queen may well enough
linger out twenty or thirty years, and not be a huge old wife neither.
Now, what say the people, must we think of living twenty or thirty
years in this wrangling condition we are now in? This would be a
torment worse than some of the Egyptian plagues, and would be
intolerable to bear, though for fewer years than that. The animosities
of this nation, should they go on, as it seems they go on now, would
by time become to such a height, that all charity, society, and mutual
agreement among us, will be destroyed. Christians shall we be called!
No; nothing of the people called Christians will be to be found among
us. Nothing of Christianity, or the substance of Christianity, viz.,
charity, will be found among us! The name Christian may be assumed,
but it will be all hypocrisy and delusion; the being of Christianity
must be lost in the fog, and smoke, and stink, and noise, and rage,
and cruelty, of our quarrel about a king. Is this rational? Is it
agreeable to the true interest of the nation? What must become of
trade, of religion, of society, of relation, of families, of people?
Why, hark ye, you folk that call yourselves rational, and talk of
having souls, is this a token of your having such things about you, or
of thinking rationally; if you have, pray what is it likely will
become of you all? Why, the strife is gotten into your kitchens, your
parlours, your shops, your counting houses, nay, into your very beds.
You gentlefolks, if you please to listen to your cookmaids and footmen
in your kitchens, you shall hear them scolding, and swearing, and
scratching, and fighting among themselves; and when you think the
noise is about the beef and the pudding, the dishwater, or the
kitchen stuff, alas, you are mistaken; the feud is about the more
mighty affairs of the government, and who is for the protestant
succession, and who for the pretender. Here the poor despicable
scullions learn to cry, High Church, No Dutch Kings, No Hanover, that
they may do it dexterously when they come into the next mob. Here
their antagonists of the dripping pan practise the other side clamour,
No French Peace, No Pretender, No Popery. The thing is the very same
up one pair of stairs: in the shops and warehouses the apprentices
stand some on one side of the shop, and some on the other, (having
trade little enough), and there they throw high church and low church
at one another's heads like battledore and shuttlecock; instead of
posting their books, they are fighting and railing at the pretender
and the house of Hanover; it were better for us certainly that these
things had never been heard of. If we go from the shop one story
higher into our family, the ladies, instead of their innocent sports
and diversions, they are all falling out one among another; the
daughters and the mother, the mothers and the daughters; the children
and the servants; nay, the very little sisters one among another... Continue reading book >>
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