their politics, in pursuing the only method left to preserve them in power?  I said, they had involved the nation in debts, and engrossed much of its money; they go beyond me, and boast they have got it all, and the credit too.  I have urged the probability of their intending great alterations in religion and government:  if they destroy both at their next coming, will they not reckon my foretelling it, rather as a panegyric than an affront?  I said,[3] they had formerly a design against Mr. H[arle]y’s life:  if they were now in power, would they not immediately cut off his head, and thank me for justifying the sincerity of their intentions?  In short, there is nothing I ever said of those worthy patriots, which may not be as well excused; therefore, as soon as they resume their places, I positively design to put in my claim; and, I think, may do it with much better grace, than many of that party who now make their court to the present m[inist]ry.  I know two or three great men, at whose levees you may daily observe a score of the most forward faces, which every body is ashamed of, except those that wear them.  But I conceive my pretensions will be upon a very different foot:  Let me offer a parallel case.  Suppose, King Charles the First had entirely subdued the rebels at Naseby, and reduced the kingdom to his obedience:  whoever had gone about to reason, from the former conduct of those saints, that if the victory had fallen on their side, they would have murdered their prince, destroyed monarchy and the Church and made the king’s party compound for their estates as delinquents; would have been called a false, uncharitable libeller, by those very persons who afterwards gloried in all this, and called it the “work of the Lord,” when they happened to succeed.  I remember there was a person fined and imprisoned for scandalum magnatum, because he said the Duke of York was a Papist; but when that prince came to be king, and made open profession of his religion, he had the justice immediately to release his prisoner, who in his opinion had put a compliment upon him, and not a reproach:  and therefore Colonel Titus,[4] who had warmly asserted the same thing in Parliament, was made a privy-councillor.

By this rule, if that which, for some politic reasons, is now called scandal upon the late m[inist]ry, proves one day to be only an abstract of such a character as they will assume and be proud of; I think I may fairly offer my pretensions, and hope for their favour.  And I am the more confirmed in this notion by what I have observed in those papers, that come weekly out against the “Examiner.”  The authors are perpetually telling me of my ingratitude to my masters, that I blunder, and betray the cause; and write with more bitterness against those that hire me, than against the Whigs.  Now I took all this at first only for so many strains of wit, and pretty paradoxes to divert the reader; but upon further thinking I find they are serious.  I imagined I had complimented