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they have studied those execrable times, for cedents of undermining the lawful authority of their sovereigns. Our English are not generally commended for invention; but these were merchants of small wares, very pedlars in policy; they must, like our taylors, have all their fashions from the French, and study the French League for every alteration, as our snippers go over once a year into France, to bring back the newest mode, and to learn to cut and shape it.

For example: the first Estates convened at Blois by Henry the Third, (the League being then on foot, and most of the three orders dipped in it,) demanded of that King, that the articles which should be approved by the three orders should pass for inviolable laws, without leaving to the King the power of changing any thing in them. That the same was designed here by the leading men of their faction, is obvious to every one; for they had it commonly in their mouths, in ordinary discourse; and it was offered in print by Plato Redivivus, as a good expedient for the nation, in case his majesty would have consented to it.

Both in the first and last Estates at Blois, the

6 PLATO REDIVIVUS, or Dialogues on Government, &c. was first published in 8vo. in 1680. It was written by Henry Neville, who is supposed to have assisted Harrington in writing his OCEANA. Two Answers to this book were published, one in 1681, entitled ANTIDOTUM BRITANNICUM, &c.; another in 1684, entitled PLATO's DEMON, &c. written by Thomas Goddard, Esq.

bill of exclusion against the King of Navarre was pressed; and in the last carried by all the three orders, though the King would never pass it. The end of that bill was very evident; it was to have introduced the Duke of Guise into the throne, after the King's decease, to which he had no manner of title, or at least a very cracked one, of which his own party were ashamed. Our bill of exclusion was copied from hence, but thrown out by the House of Peers, before it came to the King's turn to have wholly quashed it.

After the Duke of Guise had forced the King to fly from Paris by the barricades, the Queenmother being then in the traitor's interests, when he had outwitted her so far as to persuade her to join in the banishment of the Duke of Espernon, his enemy, and to make her believe that if the King of Navarre, whom she hated, were excluded, he would assist her in bringing her beloved grandchild of Lorraine to the possession of the crown, it was proposed by him, for the Parisians, that the lieutenancy of the city might be wholly put into their hands; that the new provost of merchants, and present sheriffs of the faction, might be confirmed by the King; and for the future, they should not only elect their sheriffs, but the colonels and captains of the several wards.

How nearly this was copied in the tumultuous meetings of the city for their sheriffs, both we and they have cause to remember; and Mr. Hunt's book concerning their rights in the city

charter, mingled with infamous aspersions of the government, confirms the notions to have been the same. And I could produce some very probable instances out of another libel, (considering the time at which it was written, which was just before the detection of the conspiracy,) that the author of it, as well as the supervisor, was engaged in it, or at least privy to it; but let villany and ingratitude be safe and flourish.

By the way, an observation of Philip de Comines comes into my mind ;-that when the Dukes of Burgundy, who were Lords of Ghent, had the choice of the Sheriffs of that city, in that year all was quiet and well governed; but when they were elected by the people, nothing but tumults and seditions followed.

I might carry this resemblance a little farther; for in the heat of the plot, when the Spanish pilgrims were coming over, nay more, were reported to be landed, when the representatives of the Commons were either mortally afraid, or pretended to be so, of this airy invasion, a request was actually made to the King, that he would put the militia into their hands; which, how prudently he refused, the example of his father has informed the nation.

To shew how the heads of their party had conned over their lesson of the barricades of Paris, -in the midst of Oates his Popish Plot, when they had fermented the city with the leaven of their sedition, and they were all prepared for a

rising against the government, let it be remem→ bered, that as the Duke of Guise and the Council of Sixteen forged a list of names, which they pretended to be of such as the King had set down for destruction, so a certain Earl of blessed memory caused a false report to be spread of his own danger, and some of his accomplices, who were to be murdered by the papists and the royal party; which was a design to endear themselves to the multitude, as the martyrs of their cause, and at the same time, to cast an odious reflection on the King and ministers, as if they sought their blood with unchristian cruelty, without the ordinary forms of justice. To which may be added, as an appendix, their pretended fear when they went to the parliament at Oxford, before which some of them made their wills, and shewed them publickly; others sent to search about the places where the two Houses were to sit, as if another Gunpowder Plot was contriving against them; and almost every man of them, according to his quality, went attended with his guard of janizaries, like Titus; so that what with their followers, and the seditious townsmen of that city, they made the

8

Lord Shaftesbury.

8 By Titus, I suppose Titus Oates is meant. He was lodged in Whitehall, was protected by guards, and rewarded with a pension of £.1000 a year.

The principal leaders of the popular party, when they attended the parliament that met at Oxford in March, 1681-2, were accompanied by such a numerous train of

formidable appearance of an army, at least sufficient to have swallowed up the guards, and to have seized the person of the King, in case he had not prevented it by a speedy removal, as soon as he had dissolved that parliament.

I begin already to be tired with drawing after their deformities, as a painter would be, who had nothing before him in his table but lazars, cripples, and hideous faces, which he was obliged to represent; yet I must not omit some few of their most notorious copyings. Take, for example, their Council of Six,' which was an imitation of the League, who set up their famous Council, commonly called of the Sixteen; and take notice, that on both sides they picked out the most heady and violent men of the whole party; nay, they considered not so much as their natural parts, but heavy blockheads were thrown in for lumber, to make up the weight; their zeal for the party, and their ambition, atoned for their want of judgment, especially if they were thought to have any interest in the people. Loud roarers of Ay and No in the parliament, without common sense in ordi

servants and partisans, all armed, that the assembly had almost the appearance of a Polish Diet.-Shaftesbury alone went in a borrowed coach, with two footmen, belonging to another person, on the back of the carriage.

9 The Council of six was formed immediately after the death of Shaftesbury, and consisted of the Duke of Monmouth, Lord Russel, Lord Essex, Lord Howard of Escrick, Algernon Sydney, and John Hampden.