Page:The Danger of Mercenary Parliaments - Toland (1698).djvu/10

 breath in their own element when they usurp the name. These are the men who have endeavoured to render our condition hopeless even beyond the power of the King himself to relieve us: For tho his Majesty be deservedly lov'd and honour'd by his People for his readiness to do them justice, and ease their oppressions, yet can we not expect it from him whilst he is thus beset and surrounded, and his Palaces invested by these Conspirators against his own honor and the welfare of his Kingdoms. The only remedy therefore that remains is, to chuse such a Parliament who he under no temptations, and are acted by no other motives but the real and true Interest of his Majesty and his Dominions; a Parliament that will fall unanimously upon publick Business, and be free from those petty Factions and personal Piques which in the late Session so shamefully obstructed and delay'd the most important Service of the Commonwealth.

9. If it should be pretended, That the Nation is yet unsettled, and the fear of King JAMES has forc'd them upon these extraordinary Methods for their own preservation; I answer, That no cause whatsoever can be justly alledg'd in vindication of such vile arts and pernicious practices. But I would farther ask them, what necessity there is upon that account for their gaining such prodigious Estates to themselves in so short a time, and in so merciless a way, when the Nation was rack'd to the utmost by Taxes in a long and expensive War? Is it the fear of King JAMES that has brought such a reproach upon our Revolution, as if it needed to be supported by such mean and unjustifiable Practices? Is it the fear of King JAMES that makes us content he should live so near us, or that he should be maintain'd at our own charge of 50000 l. per annum? Or has not rather King JAMES been made the pretence for the unwarrantable Proceedings of our Conspirators during the War, and since the conclusion of the Peace? It is very strange that King JAMES, who is but their Jest in private, should be thus made their publick Bugbear to frighten us out of our senses like Children; so that King JAMES must be at last our ruin abroad, who could not compass it by all his power and interest at home. And in this sense I am of their opinion, That we are not yet quite delivered from the fear of King JAMES, who must be made the instrument of our Slavery by those very Persons who pretend their greatest merit to consist in delivering us from him. But what is this but making the old abdicated Tyrant a footstool to ascend the Throne of absolute Power, and a Scaffold for erecting that proud and stately Edifice from whence we have so justly tumbled him down headlong? But 'tis to be hop'd the Nation will be no longer impos'd on by such stale pretences as these, and that a well-chosen Parliament will not fail to pass their severest Censures upon those who would thus jest us out of all that is dear and valuable amongst us: That they will no longer resemble a flock of Sheep (as CATO said of the Romans in his time) that follow the Belweather, and are contented when all together to be led by the noses by such whose Counsels not a man of them would make use of in a private cause of his own: That they will at last vindicate the honor of England, and imitate their wise Ancestors in hunting down these Beasts of prey, these noxious Vermin to the Commonwealth, rather than suffer themselves to be led in collars and couples by one mighty NIMROD, who upon the turning up of his Nose shall expect a full cry of sequacious Animals, who must either join voices or be turn'd out of the pack.

10. Notwithstanding what I have said, I would not have any of them either really imagine themselves, or falsly suggest to others, that I envy them their Places and Preferments, which I am so far from doing, that I wish they rather had them for the term of their lives; I desire only they may be subject to the laws, and to some Power on Earth that may call them to account for their Misbehaviours, that they may not be their own Judges, that our soveraign Remedy may not prove our chief Disease, and that the Kid may be seeth'd in something else than its Mother's milk. Nor would I by any means deny them their Seats in Parliament, ed