A CONFUTATION Of a late PAMPHLET ENTITLED, A LETTER Balancing the Necessity of keeping a LAND-FORCE in time of PEACE, with the Dangers that may follow on it.  
The Second Edition Corrected.  
LONDON, Printed for A. Baldwin, MDCXCVIII.   

THE PREFACE.  
THis whole Controversy about a Standing Army, which is a dispute betwixt Legions and Laws, has been cautiously managed on both sides, for no one Author has set his Name to his Book: The Author I write against has suppressed his, for which reason I have forborn mine merely to be conformable. I am very certain, so as to be able to make it out to any Man, that what I have here written, is the best and truest Service I was capable of rendering to the King, which I am bound to do: and to my Country especially, for whose sake it is that we have a King at all, and for whose good and benefit that Office was instituted. For an English King is Made and Ordained for the defence of the Law of his Subjects and of their bodies and goods, whereunto he receiveth a Power derived from his People, so that he cannot govern his People by any other Power. As Fortescue says, p. 32. Ad tutelam legis Subditorum Rex Erectus est, etc. Potestatem habet a Populo effluxam, etc.  
On the other hand, they who are for a Standing Army, endeavour to alter the Government all at once, and make it absolute and arbitrary, whether the King will or no, and though he have no mind to it. For if he have a Standing Army, he can enslave the Nation if he will, and then they are Slaves already. For to depend upon W● and Pleasure is the lowest degree of Slavery. And that he will not use them like Slaves, when he can every Moment, is more than a Nation can possibly know, or even he himself. The greatest Slaves we know are but dragoonable; they are not always actually dragooned, that is time enough when it comes.  
And therefore they that go about to arm the King against the Constitution, and to make him the Ricketty Head of a weak and languishing Body, are common Enemies both to him and the Realm. For though the Genius of a Hero, and personal Endowments make a great Man, yet it is a great and considerable People alone, which makes a great King: and a greatness built upon their Ruins is a false and ruinous Greatness, and such Power is always Weakness.  
This following Discourse was written some while ago, whereby some few Expressions in it may seem less seasonable, and to have lapsed their time; but if it be worth Reading, it comes out time enough: if not; too soon.   

A CONFUTATION OF THE Balancing Letter.  
EVery body must needs be glad to see the Balancing Letter, because Weight and Measure go through the World, and there can be no Deceit in them. And therefore omitting the Author's Preface, and our Fleet, which is allowed to be necessary, and is given us by the Lump, I come to that which he makes the Question, p. 2. in these words. The only Point in which our Opinions may perhaps differ, is, whether we ought to maintain so considerable a Force at Land, as will be sufficient to make a stand against an Invasion; or whether the Militia can be made so considerable, that we may trust to it at home, as well as to our Fleets abroad, and be safe in this.  
Now he ought to have put this first preliminary Question thus, whether the Militia as it is at present, and the whole Strength of England beside, is sufficient to oppose an Invasion, without a Standing Army? This is a plain Question, and thereupon it would soon be determined whether a Standing Army were necessary or needless. For than it would cut off that trifling Dispute, what a deal of time it would take up to train and model the Militia, and make it serviceable; what Slips and Uncertainties that Work is liable to, etc. p. 7, 8. The true State of the Question would likewise have shrunk a Standing Army to nothing, as to the purpose of defending the Nation. For the Militia as it is at present, and the whole Strength of England besides, includes not only the Barons of England, who are styled Robur Belli, and the Gentlemen of England who are no Cowards, as also the Auxiliaries, and innumerable Volunteers, such as were at Purbeck; but likewise this whole Veteran Army itself, which tho disbanded will be always within Call, and ready to be raised again upon an Invasion, and perhaps may in great part come sooner to the place of Landing, than a peculiar standing Land Force itself, which may chance to be far out of the way. And if this supposed Invasion come in any reasonable time, it cannot be imagined that the Skill, Valour, and Conduct of our disbanded Troops, nor none of their Military Attainments will so soon depart from them; and consequently that this Strength will still continue in the Nation, and would likewise certainly be at the Service of the Nation, if it were not for one Objection, That if you disband Soldiers in time of Peace, and when you have no need of them, they will not help you in time of War, and when you have need of them.  
I do not believe a word of this, That any true Englishmen will be unwilling to help us and themselves too when an Enemy comes; especially if there be no distinction made, and if they do not see others kept in idle pay, and themselves discharged who have done the same Service: for this will breed Emulation amongst Brother-Soldiers, which is not so well: Provided also that they be dismissed with an honourable Gratuity, which I look upon to be a due Debt. The Nation being in this posture, there is no more need for twenty thousand of the Army to be kept up Regimentally to withstand an Invasion, under a pretence of being in readiness, than there is need for these twenty thousand to have their Horses always bridled and saddled, their Muskets and Pistols always cocked, or to lie in their Boots. So that the necessity of keeping a Land Force in time of Peace, when it comes to be examined, does not outweigh the Dust of the Balance, and we need weigh nothing against it.  
Our Author p●oceeds, p. 2. I will not suggest so unbecoming a Thought, as to imagine that any of our Neighbours will seek to take advantage against us; or break the Peace, and invade us contrary to the Honour and Faith of Treaties: No, I will not suspect it. But the best Guaranty of a Peace is a good Force to maintain it: and the surest way to keep all our Neighbours to an exact performance of Articles, is to be upon our Guard. They will be then faithful to Agreements, when they see no opportunities of surprising us, and that our Peace does not lay us asleep, and make us forget the Art of War. I mean it is no reflection on any of the Neighbouring Princes, when I conclude that their Faith is not so absolute a Security, but that we must help them to be true to their word, by showing them they are not like to get much by breaking it.  
In this third Paragraph he is at a deal of complimental Pains with our Neighbours, to get leave of them for his supposal of a treacherous Invasion: Or else he has no pretence for a Standing Army, to help them to be true to their word. He does not suspect, but only supposes, in order to get a Land Force established, and then they may come at their Peril.  
But does not this kind of Discourse very much disparage our new Peace, that the next Day we must stand in fear of an Invasion, which p. 15. he calls our present Danger, as if their Invasion were to come first, and their Ambassadors after: and to have our Peace so false built, as to want propping and shoreing already with a Land Force: and that we must have our Peace clad in Armour, and look so like a War, that we cannot know them asunder, unless it be by this difference, that then our Army was abroad, and now he would have it in our own Bowels?  
That which follows is still more surprising, in these words, p. 3. But mistake me not: When I seem to prepare you to consider the necessity of keeping a Land Force, I am far from the thought of a Standing Army. Any Man who would pretend to give a jealousy of the Nation to the King, and suggest that he could not be safe among them without he were environed with Guards and Troops, as it was in the late Reigns, aught to be abhorred by every true Englishman, by every Man who loves Liberty and his Country. The case at present is, whether considering the Circumstances that we and our Neighbours are now in, it may not be both prudent and necessary for us to keep up a reasonable Force from Year to Year: The State of Affairs both at home and abroad being every Year to be considered in Parliament, that so any such Force may be either increased, lessened, or quite laid aside as they shall see cause.  
In this Passage there are as many Fallacies and Deceits as there are Lines. For first, here is the christening of a Standing Army by the Name of a Land Force, and then it is no longer a Standing Army; no, God forbid. This is like the Lollards Device to keep Lent with a Pig; it was but plunging it into a Tub of Water, and saying, down Pig, up Pike, and forthwith it became very good Fish. I give the honour of this Invention to the Author of this Letter, for it was written before the meeting of the Parliament, so that he did not copy. And we are beholden to them for many more such disguising Terms and Blinds to the Nation. From hence came our Desertion and Abdication instead of a plain English Forfeiture, which the Scotch Parliament honestly called Forefaulting; hence likewise came our Convention Parliament, which they might better have called a Vestry or a Wardmote Parliament, for that had been an English Name. Now the mischievous Design of this was to rob the Nation of two important Points, first, That a King could forfeit; and secondly, That a true Representative of the Nation might be a Parliament without the Formality of the King's Writ. Whereas if K. james did not forfeit, I defy any Man to show how we came by this Government: And if the free Parliament which they called the Convention, was not a true Parliament, as well as the free Parliament in 60, which is adjudged so, particularly in the case of the Covent Garden Act; how th●n could it make a true King, capable to call a true Parliament ever after? The Defects and Difficulties are incurable. But allowing what they would have, that neither K. james nor any other King can forfeit; and that it is no true Parliament which meets upon the like occasion, as that which they disabled by the Name of Convention; you plainly see they have got two impregnable Fortresses of Arbitrary Power ready built, which want nothing but to be well garisoned with Land Forces.  
It is a known Art of Deceit to give any hated thing a new Name, whereby in effect it is put out of People's knowledge, and the old Notion and Apprehension of it is lost; so coining of Dollars is unlawful, but casting of them may be lawful. A Papist was a Name justly hated by Protestants, and always called to mind what the Nation had suffered by them: and yet in the last Reign, when they swarmed most, there was not one Papist left; they were all Catholics or of the King's Religion. So that if we were not perfectly reconciled to them under these new Names, we must fall out both with our King and our Creed. In like manner a Standing Army was always a Name of dread and horror to an English Ear, and signified the worst sort of Invasion, being intestine and already got within us. And therefore only the thing was to be brought upon us, but the startling Name to be renounced; and then Land Forces become as gentle and innocent a thing as Catholics.  
In the next place he would insinuate a difference betwixt a Standing Army now, and the Guards and Troops of the two last Reigns; as if a Standing Army wer● not the same thing, and equally destructive to the Liberties of a Nation at all times, let the Pretences of keeping them up be what they will. Slavery is the same, by what ever fetch it is brought about; and therefore whether a Standing Army than was under pretence of the King's Safety, or now for our own Safety, it altars not the Case, if we be alike overpowered and subdued by it, and Slavery inseparable from it, which is demonstrable. For to live under a Force and yet to enjoy Liberty or be a Freeman at the same time, is an utter impossibility and a contradiction in Terms. And therefore his own words return upon himself; any Man who suggests a pretence to the King for a Standing Army, aught to be abhorred by every Englishman, by every Man that loves Liberty and his Country: for the Reason and Force of the Abhorrence does not lie in the difference of Suggestions to the King, but in the Guards and Troops which are thereby raised, for they it is that ruin our Liberty and Country, and therefore give but a bad Character to any body that is for them.  
The next remarkable Deceit, for it would be tedious to reckon them all, is the prudent and necessary Provision of a reasonable Force from Year to Year, as if it were upon liking, though all the Reasons are perpetual. For our Neighbours mistaken Notion of keeping up a mighty Force is like to continue; and if those Forces were disbanded, yet they are in being, and may soon be rallied; England will always be an open, and I hope a plentiful Country, though not to subsist an Army; our Fleets liable to be Wind-bound, etc. so that his business is to get Footing for an Army for a Year first, and then we are like to have them for ever: for they ought not to cease while the Reason of them continues.  
And Lastly, This Annual Army is to depend upon the Regulation of an Annual Parliament; but our Act is Triennial, and not overeasily obtained. However in a Parliament when it sits, the Land Force will come into consideration in order to be either increased, lessened, or quite laid aside as they shall see cause. There never will be cause to the end of the World to lay it aside, if not now; for now we are farthest off from an Invasion, having just struck up a firm and fast League, and made a sincere and lasting Peace, which if it be not the best at first, is worse than a new Broom, and differs from all other things in the World, which are always the worse for wearing. We were lately told, that once there appeared but one speck of Blue in the whole Horizon, whereas now it is all Blue, and there is not one speck of a Cloud. This Preface likewise says, England is now the wonder of the World, and it would be a greater wonder, if it should just now be invaded: and I challenge any Man to name any imaginable State of Affairs, when it shall be fitter and safer and more necessary to lay aside an Army than now. And therefore to say, it is now indispensibly necessary to our Preservation, 
P. 15.  and that it is present and certain ruin to be without it, 
P. 16.  and yet talk of laying it aside hereafter, shows that he neither means good Faith, nor writes good Sense.  
His next words are these: I will not argue with you so unfairly, as to urge much the Reasons that we have of trusting the King; for how much soever may be said on this Head, either from his Temper, his Circumstances, his Interest, and the course of his past Life, either with relation to the United Provinces, or to us here in England, and with how much reason soever this might be prosecuted, yet I will not lay much weight on it; for it is not just to press an Argument, that puts another Man in Pain, when he goes to answer it. I know it may be said, That Men are but Men; so that we make a dangerous Experiment of their Virtue, when we put too much in their Power: and that what is done to one King who deserves it, and will manage it faithfully, will be made an Argument to do the same for another King, that has neither Merit nor Capacity to entitle him to so entire a Confidence.  
To say all in one word, if we were in the same Condition in which we and our Neighbours were an Age ago, I should reject the Proposition with horror. But the case is altered; the whole World, etc.  
We will talk of Plowden's Saying and the Alteration of the Case by and by; in the mean time we will dispatch the former Paragraph. He says with a seeming Candour, that he will not urge much the Reasons we have of trusting the King. The Nation has already trusted the King with all that ever they had to trust him with, all the Rights of an English King, and the Imperial Crown of this Realm, with all the Dominions, Jurisdictions, Prerogatives and Preeminences belonging thereto. And when the Parliament invested His Majesty with this Regality, he was pleased to accept of it as the greatest Trust they could repose in him.  
But the new Trust this Letter insists upon is an Army which can overpower and conquer the Nation. For it is to be such a Force as can withstand an Invasion, which all the Nation besides is not able to do; that is to say, it can beat those that can beat us, and therefore it can much more beat us. So that it is a Force which commands all our Lives, Liberties, and Estates: and this Power is to be put into the King's Hands, and consequently the whole Nation is to beat his Discretion. This is the Trust. Now never trouble your Head more about it, nor about extolling the King, nor be in pain for your Answerer, how he will get over the Argument of the King's Merit to have this Trust and entire Confidence put in him. For we have higher thoughts of the King than you have, and particularly this honourable Notion of him which you have not, that he despises and scorns all your little Flatteries; and yet we believe that he does not deserve this Trust, nor can manage it faithfully; that he has neither Merit nor Capacity to entitle him to so entire a Confidence.  
No, not if he had all the Perfections upon Earth, as he has a great many; nay if he were an Angel, he were not fit for this Trust. For such an absolute Resignation of ourselves is only proper to be made to God. Thus the great Coligny rendered up himself to God when the treacherous Guards broke in upon him, Here I am, do with me as thou pleasest. It is an Act of Worship to commit ourselves and all that we have to a Discretionary Power, and therefore it ought to be paid to nothing but a being of infinite Goodness, which is also under the Conduct of unerring Wisdom. This Trust is too big for the Port and Capacity of a Man, or of any thing that is finite and fallible. This Author says, p. 4. in an arbitrary Government all depends upon the Will of the Prince. How could he have otherwise described the State and Condition of Creatures, in reference to their great Creator? That all should depend upon that Sovereign Will which brought us into Being, is highly reasonable; but that a Nation's All should depend upon the Will and Pleasure of a Man of their own setting up, is flat Idolatry, and beneath the Popish Worship of Saints and Angels. For what is this Will of the Prince that All depends upon? Is it essential Goodness and Righteousness? No, it is nothing less; it is Arbitrariness, it is Self-will, we will, because such is our Will and Pleasure, the most arrogant and senseless Will in the World. God never assumed this to himself, but he always acts by eternal Right and Reason; and his Throne is established in Righteousness. And therefore when Princes affect to be Arbitrary, they affect a proud, monstrous, blind and brutish Power, which is neither fit for Heaven nor Earth.  
The first rude and unexperienced Age of the World fell into the admiration of some great Personages, 
Ninus Belus, etc.  whom they chose for their Kings, and were governed by them at discretion; for they idolised and worshipped them both alive and dead. But they soon found their Error; they saw that to live by one Man's Will became the cause of all men's Misery; and this constrained them to come to Laws, as Hooker's words are. Now to relapse into this Folly and Idolatry would be unpardonable, after the World for so long time has known better. Neither could Mankind after such Wrecks on the Shore, and such Warnings of Mischief, ever fall into the like again, were they not wrought upon by practice and grossly deluded. Sometimes a Nation is enslaved by a Point of Religion; as the Grand Seignior's being Successor to Mahomet makes him absolute and arbitrary. He is a Vicegerent, and represents the great Prophet himself. Sometimes a Nation is taken at a disadvantage, when they are intoxicated and hardly themselves, as after a Restoration or Revolution, upon any Deliverance, or transport of Joy and Affection to their Prince; then is the time for designing Men to overreach a Nation, and to ruin them by their own fond and Hony-moon Grants. Then a Project of john Gyldenstern, for Instance, is very seasonable. These are the soft and easy Times, in which the Statesmen know a Nation is capable of being new moulded: for at such a time they have not one wise or wary Thought in their Heads. At other times a Nation is under some great Difficulties, and is forced to give some particular Power to enable their Prince for that present Distress; for Instance, to levy Money in an extraordinary way, while there is a War in the Country and the Parliament cannot meet; but he afterwards retains that Power, when the Reason and Occasion of it ceases, and perverts it to the altering of the Government. At another time a Nation is actually invaded, and foolishly and causelessly distrusting its own strength, gets help from others. So the Saxons helped the Britain's with a Land Force, but they helped them too much.  
But there never was such a Jest in the World as the present pretence which is now on foot. The shadow of an Ass, an imaginary Invasion, which they dare not suppose without unsupposing it again in the same breath, as we saw how this Author mumbled his Thistles in the third Paragraph. And under pretence of this supposable not to be supposed Invasion, we must have 20 thousand Men in Arms, to be upon constant Duty, to watch when the Sky falls, and to show the Man abroad, that all the Nation is not asleep. Although when the Man abroad pleases to come, we have those very 20 thousand ready enough to entertain him, though they do not stand Regimentally in their Arms 7 Years together to await his coming; and we have 30 thousand more as well finished Soldiers as they; and an hundred and fifty thousand more, that either are or soon may be as good as either of them; and some Millions of able Men, who when they are tried, may behave themselves as well as any of them all. Now here lies the Cheat of the business, though this 20 thousand Men be too many for an Embassy, and too few for the Man abroad, yet a small part of them is more than enough against all the Men at home, and an overmatch for the whole People of England: for in that Capacity they are said to be irresistible; and have none to deal with in that case, but naked unarmed Men with their Hands bound, whom they may conquer with the bare face of Authority. In short, this proposed Land Force is too few to defend the Nation against a numerous Invader, and more than enough to destroy us at home; so that this Author's necessity of having them, shows for what purpose he wants them, and cannot be without them: for if they are necessary, they are an indispensible Means to an End; and it is plain which End they can compass, and which not.  
But to return from whence I have made this Disgression. In an Arbitrary Government all depends upon the Will of the Prince. Is a whole Nation made for one Man? why else should it entirely depend upon his Will? Were they created for his Will and Pleasure, or is that Will and Pleasure of his always conducted by Divine Attributes, so as to be qualified for so great a Trust? If neither of these can be said, than it is plain that an Arbitrary Government is absurd and monstrous, and that it is against all the Right and Reason in the World, for 10 Millions of Men, endued with the same Faculties as he has, to depend upon the Will of one Man, as if he were a God. If there must be a public Will, there is as much reason for a public Conscience, and then the old Question of john Gerson Chancellor of Paris returns; Quorsum mihi mea conscientia, si mihi secundum alienam conscientiam vivendum est & moriendum? In like manner, why did God give every Man in a Community an Understanding, and Will, and Power of Choice and Consent, if they are all to depend upon one Man's Will? They had better have had none of all these. This Government therefore is contrary to the Frame and Constitution of Human Nature, it is fit only for Creatures which have no Reason, no Will, no Understanding; it is Common-hunt Government.  
I like the Kingdom of Ceilon in one point, for there we find plain dealing. The Kings have immemorially been in the mistaken Notion of keeping up Standing Armies, Thorn Gates, and all the Devices of Arbitrary Government: On the other side the People (as we would call them, but they know better) depend upon the Will of the Prince, and are in a most profound and devout Slavery; but then they treat their Prince and themselves thereafter. The King they call by a Name, that signifies somewhat higher than a Man, and next to God. Heretofore they styled him Dionanxi, 
Knox Hist. Ceilon, p. 38, 105.  which is an Addition to God; but a late Rebellion has frighted him, and put him out of conceit with that blasphemous Title, which he took before, but has since forbid it. When they speak to the King concerning themselves, they do not speak in the first Person, and say I did so or so, but Baulagaut, the Limb of a Dog did so. Or if he ask them how many Children they have, they answer the Limb of a Dog has so many Puppy-Dogs, and so many Bitch Puppies. Very concise and expressive! one would take it to be a Philosophical Language.  
Well, Gaudeant benè nati, as Sir Theodore Mayern used to say upon another occasion, God be thanked that we were not born Puppy-Dogs: And let us think never the worse of our Ancestors, for not providing us a King of a different Species from ourselves. In the mean time let the more refined parts of the World brag, that their King can send for their Head, tax them high and low, send them to their Wars, or to their Galleys as they please; and let them laugh at those few Nations as boorish and barbarous, uncourtly and uncivilized, who are not so entirely devoted to the Will of their Prince, as they are: provided none of these slavish Principles come hither, we fear no other Invasion. God has given us here a World by ourselves, and if any Slaves from abroad can beat us out of it, we ought not to enjoy it an hour longer; for he made no part of the World for Cowards.  
I return to our Author. To say all in one word, if we were in the same condition in which we and our Neighbours were an Age ago, I should reject the Proposition with horror. But the case is altered; the whole World, more particularly our Neighbours, have now got into the mistaken Notion of keeping up a Mighty Force, and the powerfullest of all these happens to be our next Neighbour, who will very probably keep up great Armies: and we may appear too inviting, if we are in such an open and unguarded Condition, that the success of the Attempt may seem to be not only probable but certain. England is an open Country, full of plenty, every where able to subsist an Army: Our Towns and Cities are all open, our Rivers are all fordable; no Passes nor strong places can stop an Enemy, that should land upon us. So that the whole Nation lies open to any Army that should once come into it.  
Now we are coming towards the Title Page of this Letter, and the Merits of the Cause; the necessity of a Land Force, and the Dangers that may attend it. The Dangers of a Land Force and the new Trust must needs be unspeakably great, when if we were in other Circumstances our Author would reject the Proposition with horror! And the necessity must needs be as unspeakably great, if we must take sanctuary in a Proposition of horror, and make that our Refuge. If this be true balancing, bad's the best.  
And the Case of poor England must be strangely altered in one Age, if a Proposition of horror comes to be embraced as the only means of our Preservation. This Author is well aware that there is some deep Mischief included in this Trust of a Land Force, and in putting the full power and absolute disposal of a whole Nation into the hollow of one Hand, or else he could not in any Case reject it with horror. And therefore he ought to have fairly laid it open at large, and to have given it full weight, when he was weighing it against the necessity that there is for it. But instead of that, he dwindles this horrid Mischief into some may be but improbable dangers that may follow on it; 
P. 8.  remote and uncertain Fears of Dangers that will probably never happen. A Land Force, 
P. 15.  possibly at some distance of time, may at some time hereafter have ill Effects on our Liberty, which cannot be considerable, 
P. 16.  while England is true to itself. How can it be true to itself, when it is out of its own power, by being once fatally false to itself? No body can be true, but where there is a Trust. Nay, if any others mention the bad Consequences of a Standing Army, 
P. 14.  which he calls opening copiously upon the Subject, this with him is Rhetoric wrong applied, because the matter will lie before an undoubtedly once-a-Year Parliament: And therefore these Dangers in conclusion are the imaginary Fears and Amusements of a diseased Melancholy, which lies dreaming of what will probably never happen. 
P. 15.  Now if the Dangers of a Land Force amount to no more than this, how is this proposal to be rejected with horror? And how come these Dangers to be balanced? For Melancholic Fears, Imaginations, Amusements, Dreams can be balanced with nothing; because a Million of them will not turn an empty Scale.  
Whereas if he had dealt plainly and said, that the establishment of a Standing Army is an actual surrender of all our Liberties at once; that thence forward the whole Nation is at discretion, and lives under an armed irresistible Force; that all depends upon the Will of the Prince; that thereby we make ourselves as effectual Slaves as a Conquest can make us, and irrecoverably so, which that does not: If he had thus given us the plain English of his Trust and Land Force, the necessity of them had immediately been shent, for every body would have rejected the Proposition with horror, in any state of Affairs whatsoever. There never was such a Proposal in the World, unless that of Col. Titus to Oliver, and that I suppose not in earnest neither, that he would kill himself, lest somebody else should, and lest it might be done by some vulgar Hand.  
On the other side, a Foreign Invasion is no Proposition of horror, because we are always liable to it, and it cannot be otherwise, unless we lived in the Moon. It only imports that we may be put to defend our own, which we never enjoyed upon any other Terms. Our Lives, Liberties, Properties can be upon no other Tenure, than to have and to hold; and if we do not think fit to defend them, they are none of ours, but the next Man's that comes: for it is a virtual relinquishing our Right, and the last Occupant in that Case is the first, and enters upon that which has no Owner. But God be thanked England needs not to be so abandoned; for we have such an Over-plus of Strength in the Nation now, as we had not an Age ago: And as for the purpose of defending our Country, we never were in better Condition in any Age; though I confess not for Conquests abroad, which however is neither our Business nor our Interest.  
If therefore we shall appear too inviting to an Invader, unless we keep up a Standing Army; the Man abroad, HE, as it is in the Queries, (which is only this Letter turned Questionist) may come when he pleases and all his Men in Bear-skins: Nay, and every thing shall be just as this Author supposes; HE shall have a Lapland Wind sor HIM, and against us, 
P. 2.  and our powerful Fleet which ought to maintain our Empire on the Sea, shall be as insignificant and insufficient to stop him, as a Navy of Cockle-shells. Under an Arbitrary Government, you know, this Invasion may be so privately carried on, that they shall not know of it themselves: 
P. 6.  Therefore it will be impossible for us to get any Intelligence of it; so that like white Gunpowder, it shall do execution, and give no Report, but land and surprise us. Well, and what then? Why then England the wonder of the World is conquered and lost, for we cannot withstand it, and what is worse our Author's Stake is gone. 
P. 5.   
There was never such a scorn put upon the English Nation, which is a free independent Empire, to be represented thus little, as if it were no Nation at all, nor able to preserve itself, but lay at the Mercy of the next Invader; and must hire 20 thousand Men to keep their Country for them, lest it be pirated from them, and run away with; whom they must make their Patroons and Protectors at once, and be gladly enslaved by them, for fear of being enslaved by some body else. I have other Marks to guests at this Author by, but this plainly shows that he has not one drop of English Blood in his Veins, otherwise he would have let it all out, before he would so treacherously have disabled his Native Country, in order to enslave it: and because I take him to be neither Native nor Trueman but a Spy, I will deal with him thereafter, and show him wherein the Strength of England consists: and it lies in these three things, their Cause, their Courage, and their Numbers.  
Now our Cause against an Invader is such as no Country in the World has; we have such valuable Rights and Liberties of our own, and so entire a Propriety in ourselves and all that we have, that would make any Man in earnest to preserve them. Perhaps this may look like Vanity and magnifying our own Country, and some Neighbours of ours may think much at it, who have called their Country Gremium Libertatis, the Lap of Liberty, and now represent England by a Milch-Ewe; but I am satisfied that the English Liberties are the most substantial that are left in these parts of the World, though indeed they are due to all Mankind. Such as the making of our own Laws in Parliament; the applying these general Laws to a particular Case, by our Juries; the entire Property and Dominion we have in our Estates, so that, as Mr. Selden used to say, he that has but two Pence in England is a King of that two Pence. And the Air that we breath in is so free from Slavery, that no Man can be a Slave in England, but his very coming hither is a Manumission. These, as I said before, are the Birthright of Mankind; and for certain they did not enter into Society to be losers by it, nor establish Government to unman themselves, and to destroy the Rights that are essential to their Being; but did it only for the better Security of them, and to preserve and protect them by a united Strength. Now to have a due value for these Liberties is half in half towards the keeping them; so this Fetter-maker himself acknowledges in these words, p. 16. And whensoever the Nation has lost that noble Sense of Liberty, by which it has been so long preserved, it will soon make Fetters for itself, though it should find none at hand ready made. Either there is no coherence in the whole Letter, or the Fetters ready made to our hands are a Land Force and the Consequences of it; and who then sent for him, to force these Fetters upon us, by no less than an absolute and indispensible Necessity, and to enslave us before the time? For the City of London has not yet lost the noble Sense of Liberty; for in the last Speech the Recorder made to welcome home the King after the Peace, he says in the Name of the City, that their Liberties were dearer to them than their Lives; and I am sure the Country is of the same mind.  
They that have these Liberties, and this opinion of them, cannot choose but venture freely for them; whereas they that live under an Arbitrary Government have nothing of their own to defend, they can but secure their present Master's claim to them, and only fight not to be turned over: Slaves they are already, and an Invasion can make them no worse, and therefore they can have but small Heart or Encouragement to oppose it. And if they did not fight as blindly as they believe, but seriously reflected, that they venture their Lives to support an unnatural and wicked Power of Oppression, as good Soldiers as many of them be, it would make their Swords drop out of their Hands. On the other side, when Men fight for a Country and Constitution that there is no out-living, and Death itself is the less damage of the two, they are ready to sacrifice themselves for it. Especially when what they defend are the just Rights of Mankind, and to preserve their Posterity from being Puppy-Dogs; when they follow the eternal Connsel of God, as Zuinglius calls it. If thou mayest be free use it rather, and seek only to continue his Servants and their own Men, this entitles them to a higher Assistance: For omnibus Honestam Libertatem quaerentibus (and which is better propugnantibus) Deus praesto est; and God himself will own such a Cause as this.  
Besides the goodness of the English Cause, the Courage of the English is a part of our Strength, in which it is enough to say that they are not inferior to any Nation; only this seems to be the advantage of a free Government, that whereas in other Countries there is as true Valour to be found as any here, yet it is not national; if it be in some of the Nobless, yet the Peasantry is abject and quite out of Heart. It is true, the Nation is not so well exercised in Arms, as they were when Bows and Arrows were the Artillery of the World, though it is easy to apply the old Laws about them to the use of Fire-Arms: But in the mean time where there is sheer Courage in a Nation, Men are Soldiers by instinct, and as soon as they see an Enemy know how to kill him; and though they cannot do it in manner, and form, and with address, yet if they do it any how it will serve turn: for if they are to seek after the first firing, and are forced to use the Butt-end of the Musket, as it was at Philip's Norton, an Invader brained is well killed, and such undisciplined Hands will do the work. But this is an invidious Subject; and the Courage of any People appears best by being tried.  
The last thing is the Numbers of England, which though it be the Arm of Flesh, and not proudly to be relied upon, yet it may be put into the Scale and weighed against the Terrors of an Invasion. Upon such an occasion as this when the Late King's Ministers were endeavouring to establish a Standing Army by a side Wind, only by getting a supply of Money for them for a Year, this was Sir Thomas Clarges' Argument against it in Parliament, That we had a native Strength of seven Millions of Men in England, and therefore had no occasion for a Standing Army, either against an Insurrection or an Invasion, for both of them were pretended at that time. And it is such an Argument, as makes all the Pretences for a Land Force look very ridiculously. Is the Nation defenceless with seven Millions, and is it safe with twenty Thousand, part of that seven Millions? I have heard of one Man chaceing a Thousand, but I never heard of one Man guarding a Thousand. So that it is here as Polybius says, it is in Declarations of War, one Reason is given out, but that which is concealed is the true Reason. But to return, in seven Millions we have so great choice, that if one Million will not fight to defend their native Country another will, and a third may see fair play, and a fourth is a good Reserve, and so are all the rest. So that under God we defy all the Invasions of the World beside; and especially if an Invasion should come from one quarter, I am satisfied that the Nation is ready for them, they are so ill beloved, at an hours warning: And there are many Thousands in England, that would rather see them on Shore, to have the fight of them, than go to their Dinner.  
In these three things united, lies our Strength; for if our Cause and Courage were gone, (as they will go or stay both together) Nos numerus sumus, and we should be an easy Prey to the next Invader: For the Wolf never cares how many the Sheep are. And again, though our Cause and Courage be never so good, if it were possible for an Invasion to outnumber us, they might subdue and be too many for us by their odds. And therefore it is worthy of the public Wisdom of the Nation to take care to preserve it entire in all these Particulars: for while the People are in heart to fight, and have somewhat to fight for, and are enough of them, there is no danger of any harm coming to them. They can indeed be broken and enslaved no other way but by a Standing Army, for while there is no force to overrule, the Law takes place; but then they may be drained and diminished in the strength of their Numbers several ways, these two especially.  
First by suffering the Natives of England to straggle into foreign and remote Countries, from whence in all likelihood they will never return; especially if they have offers of Preferment, and those are often our usefullest Men, whereby they are lost to the Nation: or else into Countries nearer home, where they may possibly hereafter take Service and be employed to our prejudice; and these are a double loss, for every single Man that goes out, is two against us. The like may be said concerning our Horses, which next to our People are of the greatest use in War; and yet agreeably to all our other Contradictions, we fright the People with Invasions, and at the same time transport our Horses daily and mount our Invaders.  
A second way of diminishing the Strength of the Nation as to its numbers, is by letting in Foreigners and Aliens amongst us. To a Man's first superficial thoughts it may seem quite otherwise, and that it is an Addition of Strength; but upon a true computation it is a great abatement, and for every Foreigner living in England we have an English man the less. Because they not only are a dead weight to the Nation, and cannot be relied upon for any assistance, but perhaps they may be Enemies, for who can vouch for Inhabitants unknown? And then so many Thousands as they are, so many Thousands we must strike off from our seven Millions, to balance them. The old Romans had that Notion of a Stranger that he was an Enemy, and by the Name Host indifferently expressed them both, and indeed who can know them asunder? And if they be Enemies, they are certainly the most dangerous, as being already within us. Neither is it the first time that Strangers in England have been the Nest-Eggs of a Foreign Invasion. The Saxon Aid that Vortigern and his silly Thanes let in, sent afterwards for so many more of their Countrymen, as served to conquer the Nation. The Normans likewise that were here in England in the Confessors time, were a great help, and encouragement, and inlet to the following Norman Invasion. For though the Kingdom expressly ordered when they first sent for him over (as having dearly paid for the admission of Strangers) That he should not bring any number of Normans along with him, mandantes ei ut securè cum Paucis Normannis veniret, paruit autem Edwardus & cum paucis in Angliam veniens, etc. yet so many found the way hither afterwards as filled the best places both in Court and Church, as we learn by Ingulphus Abbot of Croyland, who very well knew. So that Duke William had a settled Correspondence, and a Party ready form long before he came. I know there are many amongst us that can find out great Security in their being of this or that Country, this or that Religion; so in New-England they have a distinction of Friend-Indians, and Enemy-Indians, but very often that distinction is lost, and they prove all one.  
But these Men have a yet farther reach, for they will have neither Friend-Indians nor Enemy-Indians, nor Indians at all, but know how to make them all their own, and very good Englishmen, by a General Act of Naturalisation: which is just such a Fetch, as the winning of Persons disaffected to a Government by giving them the greatest Places of Trust, which only enables them to do the more Mischief. This Project is so contrary to our Constitution, that he who has the Original Magna Charta with K. John's Seal to it, may find there, if he pleases to look into it, this Original English Right. That all Strangers shall be amoved out of the Kingdom. Accordingly the Practice was ever both before and since to keep Strangers out of the Kingdom, or when ever they got in and increased to any number, to expel them and set them a fatal Day for their departure: by which time they all slunk away and vanished like so many Phantasms or Apparitions; for so the old Historians pleasantly express it, as if the Nation took great Contentment in it. And indeed they thought them always such a Grievance, that when they could not otherwise find means to send them home, (as when they were the Queen's Kindred, or otherwise countenanced by the Court) the Barons with Sword in hand would see it done. At other times they bought them off, when they could not otherwise be fairly rid of them, of which we have this following remarkable Instance.  
Hanelec Prince of Denmark married an Heiress to one of the Saxon Heptarchs', and thereby the Danes got Footing in England, which caused all the Danish Outrages till Knute. But when Knute was possessed of the whole Kingdom, after the Death of Edmond Ironside, To have England see that now he was hers, he sends away his Navy and Stipendiary Soldiers home to their Countries, and puts himself wholly upon this People; taking the way of Mildness, a better means for his Establishment than Force: but the Land paid for the remuneration of his People and this Evacuation of Strangers 83000 Pounds of Silver; which it rather consented to do at once, than to have them a daily burden to pester the State for ever. These are the words of our Historian Daniel, p. 19 Our ancient Historians add, that this was done Rogatu Baronum at the Request of the Parliament, which is plain by their paying the Money.  
Notwithstanding this, there were so many Danes got into the Kingdom in these 3 Danish Reigns which lasted but 26 Years, as served to lord it over the Natives: so Brompton p. 934. expresses their contemptuous Usage of the English. If a Dane met an Englishman upon a Bridge, the Englishman durst not stir a foot till the Dane had quite passed the Bridge; and moreover, unless the English had made the Danes an Obeisance, they were sure to be sound beaten. But this at the Death of Hardiknute put an end to the Danish Line, and occasioned the total expulsion of them for ever. And this might justly make the Realm so very cautious about the next King the Confessor's Norman Retinue; which for all their care laid the Foundation of the Norman Invasion. For as soon as Duke William heard both at once of the Death of Edward and the Coronation of Harold, he assembles the States of Normandy, and lays before them his Pretensions to England, and solicits their assistance to recover it; showing them apparent probability of success, by infallible Intelligence he had from the State, his strong Party therein; with the debility and distraction of the People. Daniel p. 34. These were Friend-Indians got into the Bowels of the Realm, who thus betrayed it to a foreign Invasion.  
In short, the Wisdom of the Nation in former Ages, by which we subsist at this Day, was against the admitting of any Aliens into the Kingdom, unless it were Merchants-Strangers for the sake of Commerce; and they too were restrained in these two Points besides divers others, not to take a House, nor stay above 40 days: as we find by the London Petition reciting the ancient Usages, and the Act made upon it, 50 E. 3. Tener hostiel, & de fair leur demeure outre 40 jours, la ou en temps passe nul estranges Merchant's nul des cestes points solint user. But this is a Subject that deserves a just discourse; because the very great care our Ancestors took, and the weighty Reasons upon which they proceeded in this Affair, cannot be fully seen at a glance, nor be truly represented in a few words by the by. The impairing of the Natives; the discovering the Secrets of the Realm to our Enemies abroad, the ill Offices they always did at Court, witness the Count of St. Paul's advice to R. 2. which put him upon all the outrageous Tyranny of the latter part of his Reign; their being the constant Implements of Arbitrary Princes, when they could not confide in their own Subjects, that is, when they would not serve them in their arbitrary Designs, nor be made the Instruments of enslaving their native Country; these were some of the most obvious and most frequently avowed Reasons against the admission of Strangers, or suffering them to be here. But then there were others which lay much deeper, at the very bottom of the Constitution: For every Hundred in a County being subdivided into Decennaries or tithings, and these consisting of Men that were all bound for one another, and were mutual Pledges for the good behaviour of each other, and every Master of a House answerable for his whole Family, it was impossible there should be any room left in England, either for Strangers or Vagabonds. And this was the Perfection of the English Constitution both in the Saxon and Norman Times, which rendered it the most united Nation under Heaven, and they were all of them in strictness of Speech conjurati fratres in defensionem regis & regni, and as much sworn Brothers as if they had been one Mother's Children. Now in such a Constitution it was impossible for a Stranger to thrust in his Nose; for where could nine Men together be found to answer for Monsieur Whatchum, who had neither Friends by Father's side nor Mother's side to be his Hostages, with whom they must converse by an Interpreter, of whom they could have no hold nor security having no knowledge, and who might go and leave his Pledges in the lurch as lightly as he came? And therefore the Strangers and Aliens that were so often evacuated could not have made their abode here, if they had not crept in as Inmates into great Cities, or at Court, or in the Church; and there it was they swarmed, and lived upon the spoils of the Nation. Our most judicious Antiquaries cannot mention these Decennaries or associated Neighbourhoods, without bewailing the decay of that part of our Constitution; as if the Nation had thereby lost all its compacted Strength, and were become like a great Wall of loose Stones without Mortar, and only a multitude of Individuals. I am sorry too, but do not think the loss of them so fatal. For whether the English Temper and Inclination led them to these Guilds and Fraternities, or whether the living so long under them produced that Temper, or both; I am sure it runs in a blood, and all Englishmen still retain a reservedness and shyness towards Strangers, and cannot be suddenly acquainted; they also will engage very far for one another, and they take an injury done to another as done to themselves. These fruits and advantages of the Decennaries still remain, as if they were yet standing. And though the English have now Squabbles and Differences amongst themselves (so they had then, and a Headborough to compose ●hem) yet a common Cause and a common Enemy always reconciles and unites them; and as lose as the Stones may seem to be, let but an Invasion come and that will find Mortar.  
This was the old English Conduct heretofore towards Foreigners, but the modern Policy is for the direct contrary a general Naturalisation. Whenever I hear that word, I cannot forbear thinking, What is old England now to be planted and peopled? Or are we to begin a new Commonwealth with an Asylum, in Romulus' way? The Nation never yet wanted People to keep the Plough going, notwithstanding the great increase of Tillage; and we have more hands for Manufactures than we can find in Employment. Our Merchants and Retailers are innumerable, and most of our Professions are overstocked. And this glut of Men continues, though one would have expected that the vast Colonies we have sent into America, should long since have drained us. We have shoals of Seamen to maintain our Dominion there, and to enlarge Commerce; and though England be an open Country, yet it is so well man'd, that it scorns all other Fortifications. What then do we want Strangers for, unless it be to make a dearth of Provision, which is always a greater Tax upon our own People than a Capitation, and more unequally laid; or else to beat out our own substantial Manufactures, with Outlandish frippery and foreign Knacks? I have heard indeed that it will raise the price of Land, but is the Nation going to sell? However raising the price of it, will make it only so much the worse for an English Purchaser. Others would have a General Naturalisation for the sake of the French Refugees, who being shut out of their own Country for being Protestants, aught by all means to be encouraged to make this their home.  
I think all the World endeavours to make earnings of that poor People, and to serve their own little ends upon them. Their own Monarch gained several Points by expelling them out of France, for thereby he showed the plenitude of Arbitrary Power, which will have all its Slaves believe as they are bidden, as well as they do every thing else; and can at pleasure make out casts of vast numbers of Natives, who had as much right to stay in their own Country, as any of those whom they left behind them. And then he could do nothing greater to ingratiate himself with the See of Rome, and with a Church of his own, which is so full of Riches and Treasure, that if we give any heed to the Author of the Queries, it may have I know not how many Invasions in the Belly of it. King Ch. 2. reaped as great advantages on this side the Water by entertaining and succouring them. For thereby he strongly confirmed the old authorized cheat of his being a good Protestant, which enabled him to carry on his Church-game, and to settle a Popish Successor after him. It gave him an opportunity likewise to tax and burden the Whig part of the Nation with large Collections and Contributions for them, in which the Popish Party and their Adherents did not think themselves concerned; so that by his tender and compassionate Briefs in their behalf, he found a way to weaken and empoverish the Protestants here, and gave them an indigent People to keep. Their Passive and Slavish Principles were also of great use to him, and very instructive to his own People, how to bear all the Hostilities of their Prince, and to submit to be dragooned without resistance, and even to turn Refugees themselves, whenever the French and Irish Papists were to be called for in their room. The Church likewise, that then was, would lose none of the advantages which they could make by them, but presently beguiled john Calvin of his Countrymen and Followers, and by getting them to conform, and renounce their own orders in taking Episcopal, rendered our own Dissenters at home so very inexcusable, that then they might Pound them and Pinfold them, and do what they would with them. The late King james still continued them in the Nation, and let in more, to make good that spirit of Forbearance and Toleration, which he always professed; and to show that whatever the French Popery was, his was only for a Magna Charta of Liberty of Conscience. And what further use may be meant to be made of them, I list not to inquire; but if ever hereafter England be hurt, it must be by Mercenaries and Foreigners.  
And therefore I take it to be the happiest expedient which several French Persons of Quality have found out for them, to go and be their own Men in a new-discovered Country, and there hold their very cheap Lands of the Manor of Greenwich; wherein they will far as well as our own Refugees did in New-England, and, which is the worst I ever wished them, I hope they will far better, and never have their Charter taken from them. For if on the other hand they be hired to settle in Ireland, that Kingdom will soon be found, not to be in English Hands. But wherever they go, they must needs say, that they have met with a very kind Reception in England, considering that all the while they have very much impaired many thousands of the Natives here, and have interfered with them in their very Livelihood. They have likewise had Taxes granted towards their Maintenance, which was an Indulgence not extended to the English Refugees that fled from the Irish Massacre, and to many more that have had fairer Pretensions to it.  
Another Argument for a General Naturalisation is gratitude to the Dutch, who ought to share in the Advantages of England, since they bore so great a part in preserving them for us, and in giving us our present King. That's a Debt, I confess, which will be always praying and never paid, though the People have required him with 3 Kingdoms, the greatest Recompense upon Earth. But I will be judged by Hugo Grotius in his de Rebus Belgicis, whether that State could ever have helped itself, much less any Body else, if it had not been for the English Assistance heretofore. Which I often thought of, and therefore thought it very long before they interposed in our behalf, when by our Folly we had brought ourselves full as low as the once distressed States of Holland; but they did it at last very amply and very effectually. So that there has been an intercourse of mutual Kindness and good Offices betwixt the two Nations, which I hope will never be wanting upon all other occasions, but should be right sorry if the like occasion should ever happen to either. But what is this to a general Naturalisation? Because the Dutch and we are very good Friends and Allies, and do best as Neighbours, therefore we must adopt them, and give them the Birthright of England, and the Inheritance of Magna Charta! We did not come so lightly by those Liberties; but the transmitting of them down to Posterity has been a business of much toil and sweat, and much blood. Yes, say these Men, by communicating this Benefit to the Dutch Protestants, we gain another to ourselves, and make it their Interest to help us maintain our Constitution, against a false Party within us which would betray it.  
But they must first understand our Constitution, before they can help to defend it, which no Foreigner ever yet did. I appeal to those who have conversed most with foreign Ambassadors and the ablest Ministers from abroad, whether any of them could comprehend the Nature of our Government, though they resided here never so long, or were ever able to frame a tolerable Notion of what the English Constitution is? For Instance, when they have been informed that this is a Monarchy and an Hereditary Monarchy, they presently conclude the King can do all, and there is an unalterable Line of Succession; and when they come here and see it otherwise, than they conclude the King can do nothing, and the Kingdom is Elective: and when they are told that neither is it so, than they conclude it is a Riddle of a Government; and so it is to them, for it is the English Government, which falls under no Rules nor Terms of Art. For it was not borrowed from Aristotle or Plato, or any of those Platform Men; neither was it moulded by our Ancestors out of a mixture of Absolute Monarchy, Aristocracy and Democracy, as the Answer to the 19 th' Propos. says. But it is wholly built upon the Reason of the thing, it is directed to the high Honour of God, and the common Profit of the Realm; and consists of downright Honesty and deep Thought; it has no other mixtures in it. Accordingly a Saxon Koning had never been called a Monarch, but only to show that he was no Heptarch, and it was equivalent to Totius Albionis Rex; not that it imported any Absolute Power, for he was empowered by the Folcmote. Potestatem habet a populo effluxam, as Fortescue expresses it, speaking of an English King. And yet you cannot say that he has no Power because he has only a Legal Power, for he is invested with as large and as great Powers, and as truly Royal and Imperial, to answer all the ends of Government, as any King or Emperor in Christendom: And the noblest of his Powers and which has most perfection in it is this, That he can do no wrong; for to be able to do that is but Impotency, as Fortescue has wisely observed.  
So again, this Monarchy you may call Hereditary if you will, because it often goes that way, unless the State think fit to order it otherwise. And yet this Hereditary Monarch is solemnly adjured not to meddle with the Crown unless he mean to keep his Oath and govern according to Law: and the consent of the People to have him for their King, is as absolutely requisite at his Coronation, as if he were chosen in the Field. And the Succession is so far from being unalterable, that it was laid down as a first Principle by Sir Thomas More and Sir Richard Rich Attorney General, 
Ld. Herb. H. 8.  That an Act of Parliament could make him Richard Rich King, in their Argument about the Supremacy of H. 8. And this is so fundamental a Point in the English Government, of such undoubted Right and such weighty Consequence, that the denial of it was made High Treason during Q. Eliz. Reign, and it is still a Praemunire to this day. And yet I trow we are no elective Kingdom neither, but a wiser Constitution than that comes to. We have no Interrex in a Vacancy to play his Rex, nor Cardinal Primate to make a false return of an Election, and to elude the People's choice; but the Crown rests and remains with the People of England, who had always the disposal of it, till they invest a new King with it; and during that time the Pleas of the Crown are theirs, and the Offences committed against the Peace, are done against the Realm, and must be so prosecuted.  
The Rights likewise of the English Subjects are as little understood by Foreigners, which occasioned that Speech of one of them not long ago, The English take themselves to be all Kings, but ere long they will find their mistake. No, the English don't take themselves to be all Constables, much less Kings: they know their distance and their duty to that high Office, no People more. And if they have a good Prince they know how to value him, (if they have a Tyrant or an Oppressor, that's their own fault and not his;) but if they have a good one, they think themselves happy to live under him, they love, honour and obey him, they reverence and admire him, and all but worship him. And this they do freely and cheerfully, not with a forced Subjection, but as Freemen and not Slaves, nor with made cringes and inward hate. But when that is done, in all their English Rights and Liberties they are as free as the thought in a Man's mind, and no Emperor can be more. 
Testam. Alfred. apud. Asser Meneu.  So King Alfred and his Parliament declared them, and I never read of their being enslaved since. Knute swore fealty to them, and the other reputed Conqueror took the present Coronation Oath. I cannot but say that several of his Successors did their true endeavour to enslave the Nation; but they perished in the attempt, and it ended in their own destruction: And it was all their own. For it was impossible for Englishmen not to know and maintain their Rights and Liberties, it being in those days made a matter of Conscience so to do. All Confessors were required to be perfect in Magna Charta, 
Pupilla oculi, f. 59  on purpose to inform and direct the Consciences of the People in keeping it. And Magna Charta was likewise ordered by several Statutes first to be publicly read in all Cathedrals twice a Year, and then the Breakers of it to be excommunicated, and their Excommunication denounced in all Parish Churches; in order to which every Cathedral was furnished with an authentic Copy under the Great Seal. But in latter Reigns, instead of inculcating and enforcing the English Rights and Liberties, the Cathedrals and Confessors have untaught them the People, and have sacrificed them up to Sir Wynstan Churchill's Divi Britannici.  
I will not go about to reckon up all the Worthies that have signalised themselves in this Service, but leave that to the Historiographer Royal of Passive Obedience; nor instance in Bancroft, Sibthorp, and Manwaring: the first of whom transforms several of the English Principles into dangerous Positions, and fetches them from Geneva, whereas the Confessors in Q. Mary's time carried them from hence; and the other two by their arbitrary Doctrine so far profaned preaching, that they did not make it the foolishness St. Paul speaks of, but quite the other thing. But I will confine myself to the late A. B. Laud, as being a Representative, and Head of that Party which the late K. james termed the Laudean Church of England- men, and which that he might the more confirm to himself, he assured by Dr. Parker in 83. That as they had been always for him, he would always be for them.  
About 3 or 4 Years ago came out his own History written by himself, whereby it appears that his great design of establishing Arbitrary Government was admirably well laid. For he goes orderly to work, removendo prohibens & promovendo adjuvans, first by throwing down Magna Charta, and then by setting up his own Arbitrary Cannons. A Writing of his (which was brought in evidence against him, to prove his endeavouring to subvert the Laws) began with these words, Magna Charta had an obscure Birth, and was fostered by an ill Nurse. 
Land's Hist. P. 409.  Upon this he says the manager of the House of Commons spoke loud, and asked, what Laws he would spare, that spoke thus of Magna Charta? After some little shuffling of an answer to keep his hand in ure, he justifies those opprobrious words, and intimates likewise that another Manager afterwards was conscious of the faultiness of Magna Charta, and indefensibleness of it against that Paper, by omitting the mentioning of it upon two very just occasions of mentioning it, else he would never have denied a Vindication to Magna Charta. Here, says the Publisher, is a void space left in the Margin, with design (as I suppose) to insert therein some Passages out of Law-Books, concerning the obscure Birth of Magna Charta: which space was not filled up. H. W.  
I am very certain that Magna Charta had never done him nor any other Englishman any wrong; but because it stood in his way, and hindered him from making his Court with his Passive Obedience, and from making himself and his Master great, he thus vilifies it, and endeavours to bring it into hatred and contempt. It is the same Aspersion which is expressed more plainly and less slyly by others of the same stamp, That it was at first extorted, and afterwards maintained by Rebellion; who have likewise made the House of Commons to be of the same extraction, and alike born in Sin, being founded in Rebellion, 49 H. 3. There is no honest Englishman but if there was occasion would spend his blood for Magna Charta, that sacred Repository of all the English Liberties, and therefore I shall not grudge to spend a few Lines in vindication of it, though it be here represented as if it had been some spurious Birth and been suckled by a Wolf. But this must be the work of a second Part.  
FINIS.