THE VINDICATION OF THE DEAD: OR, Six Hours Reflections upon the Six Weeks Labour in Answering Mr. Ashton's Speech published by Authority.  
§ 1. THE Case of Mr. Ashton was indeed so hard, and his Speech so handsome, that I don't wonder to see a Secretary's Command for Printing an evasive, trifling, and malicious Paper, that endeavours to load his Person, and blast his Writings; but the Subject will bear no more, and the Government stands in need of a Defence. However I can't but wonder the late Answerer should expect to persuade the World it was not his; because he who professes himself an illiterate Man, and unskilled in the Laws, uses the Terms of Impending, Prevaricating, Premises and Consequence, (two of which are not Terms of Art, none of the Law; and those other two, that are Logical, made familiar to all those that have ever had any sort of Breeding or Conversation) for all that is said of this Nature, both at the Beginning and End of the Answer, will appear very impertinent to any one that reads his Trial, even as it is thought fit to be published; wherein some Things have been omitted, as well as others amended, to make it fit for perusal: For in that he defends himself so sensibly, that it provoked the L. Ch. Just. Pol— to rage, and sufficiently proved himself capable to write such a Paper; whose natural Parts were so very strong, and so well improved. And if he was so well satisfied that those that Comply with, as well as those that Support the present Establishment are Guilty of Perjury, and partake with Rebels, it very well became the Charity of a dying Man to warn those he left behind him to Repent; and if the Words of dying Men have generally more Weight, and make deeper Impressions, he did but his duty to recommend to those who survived him, Amendment and Restitution.  
§ 2. As for those Matters of Law, which he thought hard in his Trial. I believe he neither complained of, nor desired any thing, but what the Lord Chief Justice Pollexfen, Sir Francis Child, Mr. Herbert, and almost every Man upon his Jury, as well as Tremain, and all the other Council, would have Censured, or thought fit to be Granted in any other Reign: But by this we see they have learned to practise those Methods of Trial which themselves formerly complained of, as Arbitrary and Illegal; and have borrowed Law from the Tories, while to make them Amends they have taught them their Gospel. I must confess I know nothing could have seemed to warrant the late Extraordinary Proceed so well as a Reformation of our former ill Measures, and proved, that that, and not private Advantage, was the true Motive of the Undertaking. It cannot be denied but we are poorer of late than formerly, and if the evil In●●●●ments in the late Reigns are fit to be our Ministers under this, and what was Maladministration than commences just and necessary Politics now, we shall too certainly and too soon be miserable; if they don't change Things, you are little the better for changing the Men: The hardship and inequality of Trials, and Innovations upon the Rights of Subjects in that particular, made a very specious Head of the Prince of Orange 's Declaration; and it is one of the Articles of our new Original Contract, that the Subjects shall be free from such Burdens: But yet our Judges are in the beaten Road of Arbitrary Power, and can do nothing contrary to those blessed Precedents; and though it was great, and the self-denial of a dying Christian in Mr. Ashton, not to name the L. Ch. Just. P. and Mr. H. for fear of transgressing that Law of Christ of forgiving Enemies, yet it is to be hoped that some Parliament will mark them down to Posterity for Examples sake; I am sure I wish them no Punishment, but what may be necessary to keep a Judge (who ought to be the Prisoner's Council) from being an Advocate against him; and a Juryman from Party and Faction, where Life and Death. are concerned.  
§ 3. What Mr. H. did is thought so much the more strange, because 'tis confidently reported that upon hearing the Papers so Charged, upon my Lord Preston at his Trial, he said that Night publicly at the Grecian Coffee-house in Devereux-Court near the Middle Temple, that if he was not Excepted against upon Monday, he could not bring in either of the other; Guilty, in Relation to the Papers; yet he it was that would have helped them to Evidence, and improved one Insinuation against Mr. Ashton, which the Answerer I suppose had from the same Mint, viz. That one of the Papers was written in Mr. Ashton's Hand; though, as the Answerer observes, it had been very material to have made Proof of that upon his Trial, which they might easily have done, had it been true; no Man's Hand being better known, and they having in their Hands Volumes of his Writing, when he was in Places at Court: Though it had been after all for the Honour of our Deliverers to have exploded Similitude of Hands from being Evidence in Cases of High Treason. And unless the Answerer proves the Delivery of it to a third Person, he will be thought as much the virulent and unjust Murderers of his Reputation, as the others were of his Body, for want of due Proof that he knew the Contents. I think a Man is innocent of what he dies for, in the Sight of the Law, if the Evidence does not amount to Legal Proofs of the Indictment, and that aught in Common Justice as well as Charity to be thought the meaning of his Asserted Innocency; for he does not pretend he had not endeavoured to Restore the Uncle, and the Father, of Him and Her that possess the Throne.  
§ 4 I don't see in Mr. Ashton's Paper so much Art as Honesty, according to his Principles; but I find in the Answerer all the advantage taken that his own six Weeks Labour, and a Club, could furnish; from hence a Compliment Mr. Ashton makes the Court Fol. 112 and 115. is with him a Proof that Mr. Ashton had a Copy of the Indictment; Panel of the Jury, sufficient notice, etc. (which I believe, and always did, to be necessary to make a Trial just and equitable, according to the Laws of England) at least the stress this Answerer lays upon that Compliment, proves that he esteems all the management of that Trial to have been very fair, and that so Pol— 's Brats in the Charge is a Language well becoming a Judge, and that Herbert's ensnaring Questions are no less becoming an impartial Juryman; I omit to mention any other hardships both in Mr. Ashton's and in my Lord Preston's Trial, but particularly the King's Council's excepting against so many Jurymen without showing Cause, which is so notorious a Prejudice to a Prisoner, that unless they can show very Authentic Precedents of the like Practice in Criminal Cases, they must give me, and others, leave to think it one of the boldest Encroachments upon the People's Liberties that our Age has produced; and all good Men ought to reflect upon the great Violations of their Liberties in this case by such unheard of Methods, as the late Trials give us an Account of. The Council for the Crown in the Trial of Crone excepting against Jurymen without showing Cause, and not being publicly animadverted upon for so doing, it gave them confidence to do the same thing in my Lord Preston's Trial; and had they had need, they would doubtless have ventured to set by Men, after they had been Sworn to pass upon the Life of the Prisoner; as in Croan's Trial they set by Mr. Harrison Goldsmith, Mr. Parker Tobacconist, Mr. Johnson Herald Painter, etc. all Men of Wealth, and Reputation; a procedure so palpably unjust, that my Lord Nott—m could not believe it, when it was told him.  
§ 5. Nor must I neglect to reiterate that unusual way of Charging the Jury in these Trials; the Bench often tells them that they believe in their Conscience, that the Prisoners are Guilty of such and such a thing, and that they must bring in their Virdict, Guilty; now the Jury is to have no belief but what arises plainly and positively from the Evidence brought before them, their Consciences are to be directed by plain Proof that appears so to them, not to be guided by other Men's Reasons; and if their belief be determined any other ways, than from the Evidence before them, all Trials will be rendered very Precarious; and I am very sorry to see our Reformers out bid in this point all the Extravagancies of which they so much complained of. If these things are necessary to support what is done, I will recommend farther to them the Scotch Boots and all the inventions of Tyranny in all Country's; but let us not pretend Jealousy for our Laws, and our Liberties, and encourage the most dangerous outrages against them. And God grant succeeding Times may never learn by their Example. God grant that a Judge may never dare to leave a matter of Law, as similitude of hands was to a Jury; nor them to find matter of Fact but according to the Evidence produced; and may he grant likewise that it may be scandalous to the last Degree in a Juryman to turn Prosecutor, and bustle for Evidence; had some of the Judges and Jurymen in the late Reigns been made Examples, we should have found these more tender in this; but perhaps some Men were cautious in that, knowing they should have occasion to use the Precedents in this. But I return to what more particularly concerns Mr. Ashton the Man (as P. in his Charge calls him) who ought to be honoured by every Party, if they have a fence of bravery in themselves; it is a shame that those that extolled the Gallantry of Sidney should lessen his Character, by saying how easy it is for an English Man to die; for few have, or can die like Mr. Ashton. Let us acknowledge Virtue in our Enemies, and have a greatness above Sect, above Mode and above Party; 'tis English Men come to this, they are not worthy of that liberty about which they make such ado.  
§ 6. Thus much for Mr. Ashton; I will now pass to the consideration to Passive Obedience, the Justice of this Cause, and the Legitimacy of the Prince of Wales.  
The prevaricating Sons of the Church of England, have so plainly contradicted, by their Practices all that they have formerly Written; they have been all such sherlock's, that a Man had need be well satisfied of his Religion to keep him from Hobbism. Let those that Read this Pamphlet, Read the Authors Quoted in the History of Passive Obedience, let them peruse Tillotson's Letter to my Lord Russel when he was preparing to die. Let them consider impartially what all of them would have had the World believe they meant at that time, and then if they can, let them forbear abhorring such Practical Atheists, as are our Swearing admired Divines. I blame them sufficiently for Ascribing such Luscious Authority to Princes, they have tempted them to Exercise an uncontroleable Rule, and now they as vilely flatter the Mobb. I am not bound to defend all Mr. Ashton's Principles, which they had taught him; but I am confident they would have been Orthodox with the Body of the Church of England, had the Declaration of Indulgence never been put out by King James; and whatever the Answerer saith pag. 9 and 10. though too many prevaricate by Submission, and Obedience, yet there are but few of the Sons of that Church who submit to the Pr. of Or. as, or believe him, the Rightful Lawful King, and so consequently the Object of Passive Obedience; those that were of that Church in both Houses would have appeared as much against that Alteration of the Oath, as they did against Abjuration: Nay the very Secretary that is of that Communion, though he has gone greater lengths, than those who are strictly and sincerely of that Principle can approve of, would not I believe, be able to stretch his Conscience to swear this an Elective Monarchy, or the Quarrel Just, or which is the same thing the Pr. of Or. Lawful Rightful King.  
§ 7. If the Prince of Orange 's Declaration had been pursued (which was once by Mr. Ashton designed to have been reprinted as a proof, how well it hath been made good) if the false steps of the late Reigns had been rectified; if the Objected Imposture, League, and Murder, had been proved; the ill Ministers called to account, and the Prerogative fully debated and settled in Parliament, (a Reformation that would have looked worth our Hazards, our Fortunes, our Reproach, and our Lives) I say if this had been the effect of the Revolution, it might have tempted a prudent Man to sit quiet: But where are the Quo-Warranto-Projectors, the surrenderers of Charters, or the Regulators punished? many of them are well, and well preferred. Is the Parliament House less crowded with Officers▪ Danby is Precedent of the Council, and knows how to manage that matter. Are the Elections and returns better secured? The Quakers in the late Elections were no Freeholders in Berkshire, Hartfordshire, etc. and Jack How was a better Churchman than paul who was Speaker to the Convention upon the Corporation bottom at Windsor. Are 〈◊〉 Lives Liberties and the Estates of Englishmen better guarded? Unless you think mercenary Foreiners fit for that purpose than such who having Relations amongst us would be, and were tight to the National Interest. I know nothing we are the better, or wiser in, but in the Methos of Taxing the Subjects, and Guilding the Pill with popular Names, Enacting Martial Laws, Suspense of the Habeas Corpus, etc. while those very Persons who had taught us, That the King could not be called to account by his Subjects, and both swore themselves, and obliged others to swear, that it was not Lawful upon any pretence whatsoever to take Arms against him, engaged both themselves, and others, to help the Pr. of Or. to dethrone his Uncle, and his Princess' Father, the Lord's Anointed, and their own Lawful and Rightful Sovereign. The Prince's Declaration, and the Memorial of the States, denied that this was his Design, but St. Asaph has found it in the Revelations.  
§ 8. Now give me leave to examine the Justice of this Engagement; the Answerer plainly points out, that it was to stop the Increase of the French Monarchy: But this will not go down till the French League is proved, the contrary of which was most true; insomuch that though d' Avaux had got the Secret of this Invasion, and the King of France pressed King James to take Care, yet he was jealous it was art in the French King to dip him in his Quarrel, and could not believe the P. of O. would undertake what he thought so horrid and unnatural: So that Van Cyters his false Protestations had more Credit than the true Informations of Barillion; and some will think it was not impossible for that Parliament which K. James was Calling, to have persuaded him to have taken a just Care to balance Europe: I am far from commending the way they were to be Chosen in, perhaps I am as nice as any Man living of the Privileges of Englishmen, but I believe the Men that were recommended to the Corporations were many of them Chosen into the Convention, and some of them perhaps were but too hot Members there; nor do I believe they could have been mealy-mouthed under King James: So that the Emissaries of the P. of O. might have persuaded them to talk loudly of the Growth of France, and of the Growth of Popery, without all that Expense of Blood and Treasure we have been at, and God knows when it will be at an End; though if he came to save the People of England, he should have made us the better for his Preferment, and our Redemption; but considering the Natural Obligations he had to King James, he should not have made him only the worse.  
§ 9 And here I cannot forbear mentioning one thing that is mightily discoursed, viz. that he did not only dethrone him as a King but despoiled him as a Merchant; and that when Sir Robert Howard denied by the Pr. of Or. Command to let him have his own Money out of his own Exchequer, after he returned from Rochester, and he was forced to borrow of a faithful Servant a Sum of Money to carry him off, and out of his great Justice made over to that Servant some Money which he had in the East-India-Company (as a Trader) to reinburse him, (the Company willingly joining in the disposal) yet even here he is using all his Power to wrest this Money out of the Gentleman's hands and suffers all the Tradesmen to whom the dispossessed King was indebted to devour that Gentleman for what belongs to the Royal Treasury to satisfy; he ought to give greater encouragement to gratitude, for Jeffrys himself could not prevail to destroy one of the Duke of Monmouth's menial Servants after his defeat; and this present King should be ashamed to be hardest upon such as Mr. Ashton and this Gentleman were, and to suffer all his Courts (and to help them too) to worry them every Term. This makes Mankind wonder.  
§ 10. But to return to the Invading Politics; The Dutch Ambassador ought not to have been ordered to deny those Preparations were against King James; and it was fit to have tried whether things might not have been amicable set right by Treaty, before they entered into Conspiracies, and Clandestine Confederacies; with the Pope, the Emperor, and Spanish King (with the Assistance of the Inquisition) to Establish the true Protestant Religion. Nor should Dickvelt have come hither to corrupt and to List the King's Subjects against him. Those that can find Precedents and Arguments for these things, can Reverse Nature and all her Laws, can put off the sense of a God and a World to come, whilst they basely lend their Pens, to the blackest Villainies; they may declaim for Lucifer, and commend the Aspiring minds of the fallen Angels, who have obtained a Government and Superintendency over Perjured and Wretched Souls, over the Base, the Treacherous, and the Ungrateful, and reign in the Hearts of none else; and that Church. Divine that can make the Message by the Three Noble Lords, a very good natured Compliment may go a great way, towards proving the Regicides Noble, and Conscientious Patriots; I think in my Conscience by his wording that Paragraph (which I had almost slipped over) he could have been willing, the Life of his Sovereign should have been taken away, to put an end to the War and the Charge; he might have had Arguments from the Army Remonstrants 1648. And with Dr. Bur—t's help and from his Text have proved it the Lord's doing; a Man would think he had been in Holland, that he allows all things to be done for Interest, and the most unnatural barbarity to be good breeding if it does the business; he let's lose all the Ambition imaginable in Princes against all the Sacred Ties of Natural and Civil Relation, against their Uncles, their Neighbours, their Allies, their Friends, and their Fathers-in-Law; and sets down the wildest Maxims that were ever Advanced in Politics and thinks to cast upon the Doctrines of the Church of England, every Act of State wherein Princes have consulted their own secular Advantages, and got a willing Clergy, or perhaps but one of that Robe to Countenance what yet was not so apparently opposite to the sense of all good Men, as our Pretences are.  
For my part this Answerer shall no more send me to the French Cabinet than to the Netherlands to be instructed in honesty. And I know no body that would have blamed the Pr. of Or. for obstructing the French Designs, if he had not taken an unjust way to do it. I wish he could have resettled the Edicts of Nantes, and the Assembly of the States there, the Liberties of the Oppressed, and Liberty of Conscience; but I am sorry he has chosen rather to be what After-ages will call a Pirate, and a Robber, than to be the acknowledged Benefactor and Protector of Mankind. He has had great Opportunities, but he has shown he knows not how to use them. He has not a Soul large enough for the Post in which this fickle Nation has put him. A Paltry Self-Interest governs his Councils, and as ill Men govern him, and make him mistake his way to Glory; there were too apparent Prints of this Self-Interest, in that part of his Declaration quoted by this Answerer in relation to the Prince of Wales; and since that is a new insisted on by this Licenced Author (though the Convention and present Parliament wisely let it alone, because many of the Members knew there would be produced unanswerable and undoubted Proofs) I will promise them they shall hear of it with a Witness in a particular Discourse, since it would draw this Paper to too great a length. I will conclude, after I have solemnly returned my Thanks to the Government, for at last publishing Mr. Ashton's Speech, though not without the best Answer they could make to it, which yet scarce ever was bought, but to make the Speech in a Closet no Crime.   

The Postscript.  
SInce this went to the Press there is published part of what Mr. Ashton left in the Hands of a private Friend; I hear the Court is much Enraged at it, and there is much hunting after the Printer: It seems the Government is very tender about the Proof of the Prince of Wales, Mankind must be informed in that Matter; and those that believe he is Legitimate only desire the next Parliament will give them a Fair Hearing. And if they don't demonstrate him so, by all the Series of Proofs necessary in such a Case, and to the Satisfaction of the whole World, they will be content to submit to, and to join, even with the Abdication, Conquest, or any other Title the King de Facto likes best.  
FINIS.