ARGUMENTS AGAINST All Accommodation and Treaties, Between the City of London, AND The Engaged Grandees OF THE Parliament & Army.  
Written by one that honours God, and loveth his King and Country.  
Printed in the Year 1648.   

Arguments against all Accommodation and Treaties between the City, and the engaged Grandees of the Parliament and Army.  
1 IT will neither be safe nor honourable, for so great a City to accommodate and join interest with a conspiring Party, that by frequent violations of their faith and duty, have enslaved King, Parliament, City and Kingdom, and broken the Faith of this Nation given to the Scots in the large Treaties, and in the Nationall Covenant.  
2 By accommodating with them, you make all their crimes your own, their subtlety being to involve you to join with them in defence of their crimes.  
3 The Scottish Quarrel is not against the English Nation, but against the treacherous and hypocritical Grandees, who by perjuring themselves, and satisfying their engagements both unto Kingdom and Army, keeping the Soldiers by false suggestions from disbanding, and totally obstructing Ireland's relief; and also a conspiring party in Parliament, who keep them up to make good the aforesaid crimes, forcing what Votes they please to pass, by over-awing the Parliament: witness Cromwell's laying his hand upon his sword, and forcing the House to pass those traitorous Votes against the King, contrary to their own consciences, Allegiance, Protestations, Vow and Covenant, and to raise Taxes upon the people, which they share amongst themselves. This war is not likely to be of any continuance, considering there being in the Army many conscientious men, who have had such ample experiment of the falsehood of their Grand Officers, that they are not like to hazard their lives again under the command of such grand Impostors as they are; also knowing the general hatred of the Kingdom to them under whose insupportable burdens and oppressions it groaneth. Nor have we any way to break the power of the said Grandees of this Army but by the Scots, whereby the just Rights and Interests of all three Kingdoms may be settled, and Ireland relieved: all which the Scots have declared in their former Papers delivered to both Houses of Parliament.  
4 If you accommodate with this Faction, you must have the same friends and foes with them, as well as the same sins and quarrels; and than it will grow to a Nationall Quarrel between England & Scotland, which will be of long continuance and misery: and the Interest of the King and his Children, and of all Princes of Christendom concerned in the example, will be carried on in the Kingdom of Scotland against you, if you join with those beggarly Grandees who have enriched themselves and their fellow-Impostors by the ruins of the Kingdom. You will lose your credit and interest with your friends and Brethren of Scotland; the only fear and terror of whose coming into England kept this Faction (which all men know is never satisfied with money & blood) from taking many of your innocent heads from off your shoulders: and confiscating your estates to pay the arrears of the Army: witness their often speeches to this purpose in the House of Commons, and their illegal and violent proceed against you: you will likewise lose all the people of England.  
I have showed you your losses; let me show you your gains by this accommodation; that by comparing one with the other, you may cast up your account, whether you shall be gainers or losers by it.  
1 They offer you the Tower of London, and your Militia to be restored (things of no great consideration) and your Aldermen and Citizens to be set at liberty: they do not offer to disband their Army, which makes them Lord it over you, and overpower both Tower and Militia; and when they have divided you from all your friends, and destroyed your reputation, and are secure from the Scots, the same violence which at first took your Tower, your Militia, and your most honest Citizens from you, can deprive you of them all again at pleasure, when you shall have none to stick by you: your obligations to them shall be of steel, theirs to you but of straw: he that gives me that he can deprive me of at pleasure, gives me nothing.  
2 Cromwell and his Party know your City to be the entire strength of England. In Rich. 2. days, (when it was not half for great and populnus as now) it slew Wat Tyler and routed his rabble, six times as many in number as the Army. They therefore fear you, and consequently hate you, and labour nothing more than to divide and weaken you, which is their proper interest: for which purpose (to divide the City in itself) they caused the Parliament to change your Militia into other hands: they cut off Westminister, Southwark, and the Hamlets from your Militia, to weaken it, they have divided you from the Parliament, they have endeavoured to divide the Country from you; Ut dividendo singula, imperent universis. Wherefore the Army in their Remonstrance 7. Decemb. 1647. insolently demand Reparations from the City to the Country adjacent, for above 100000. l. loss sustained through the Army's attendance on the City's defaults; which was a device only to make the Country quarrel with the City, and to make the Army Umpires.  
3 Consider, you shall join with them that never keep Faith longer than they may gain by it, whereof you have many examples. Any honest man may be deceived once, but he is a fool that will be deceived twice by one man.  
4 Nay you cannot treat with these men, nor give them a Common Council, or Hall, without loss and danger: They have always made lies their refuge, and built their designs upon the sandy foundations of Rumours and Tables.  
Cromwell and Glover already give out, that they and you are as good as agreed, that you differ only upon a puntilio of honour, which will soon be reconciled: what is the meaning of this? but that they (having creatures of their own, Commissioners in Scotland) they have advertisement to spread the same reports there, thereby to take off the edge of your friends affections; to lay an imputation of inconstancy upon you, and make you inconsiderable in the judgements of your best friends, and retard all endeavours for your succour. In the mean time, this party hath blocked up all passages to Scotland, that truth can have no access to you, and you have only such news as Darby-house doth please to impart to you. These men have committed those crimes that cannot be safe without commiting greater: they must on headlong: go not with them for company; they desire to bestow their plague-sores upon others. Let it not trouble you, that the Parliament hath approved their subscription of the Engagement with the Army; it was a Vote extorted in a thin house, many Members having been driven away by threats of the Army before; and there were many dissenting Members. A little patience and constancy will settle you in a lasting peace.  
To petition the Houses to repeal their four Votes against the King, is to save their reputation, that seek to destroy yours.  
FINIS.