THE MEDAL. A SATIRE AGAINST SEDITION. EPISTLE TO THE WHIGS. FOR to whom can I dedicate this poem, with so much justice as to you? 'Tis the representation of your own hero: 't is the picture drawn at length, which you admire and prize so much in little. None of your ornaments are wanting; neither the landscape of the Tower, nor the rising sun; nor the Anno Domini of your new sovereign's coronation. This must needs be a grateful undertaking to your whole party: especially to those who have not been so happy as to purchase the original. I hear the graver has made a good market of it: all his kings are bought up already; or the value of the remainder so enhanced, that many a poor Polander, who would be glad to worship the image, is not able to go to the cost of him, but must be content to see him here. I must confess I am no great artist; but sign-post painting will serve the turn to remember a friend by, especially when better is not to be had. Yet for your comfort the lineaments are true; and though he sat not five times to me, as he did to B., yet I have consulted history, as the Italian painters do, when they would draw a Nero, or a Caligula; though they have not seen the man, they can help their imagination by a statue of him, and find out the colouring from Suetonius and Tacitus. Truth is, you might have spared one side of your Medal: the head would be seen to more advantage if it were placed on a spike of the Tower, a little nearer to the sun, which would then break out to better purpose. You tell us in your preface to the No-protestant Plot, that you shall be forced hereafter to leave off your modesty: I suppose you mean that little which is left you: for it was worn to rags when you put out this Medal. Never was there practised such a piece of notorious impudence in the face of an established government. I believe when he is dead you will wear him in thumb-rings, as the Turks did Scanderbeg; as if there were virtue in his bones to preserve you against monarchy. Yet all this while you pretend not only zeal for the public good, but a duc veneration for the person of the king. But all A folio pamphlet with this title, vindicating Lord Shaftesbury from being concerned in any plotting design against the king, was published in two parts, the first in 1681, the second in 1682. Wood says, that the general report was, that they were written by the earl himself, or that, at least, he found the materials; and his servant, who put it into the printer's hands, was committed to prison. D. men who can see an inch before them may easily detect those gross fallacies. That it is necessary for men in your circumstances to pretend both, is granted you; for without them there could be no ground to raise a faction. But I would ask you one civil question, what right has any man among you, or any association of men, (to come nearer to you,) who, out of parliament, cannot be considered in a public capacity, to meet as you daily do in factious clubs, to vilify the government in your discourses, and to libel it in all your writings? Who made you judges in Israel? Or how is it consistent with your zeal to the public welfare to promote sedition? Does your definition of loyal, which is to serve the king according to the laws, allow you the license of traducing the executive power with which you own he is invested? You complain that his majesty has lost the love and confidence of his people; and by your very urging it, you endeavour what in you lies to make him lose them. All good subjects abhor the thought of arbitrary power, whether it be in one or many: if you were the patriots you would seem, you would not at this rate incense the multitude to assume it; for no sober man can fear it, either from the king's disposition, or his practice, or even where you would odiously lay it, from his ministers. Give us leave to enjoy the government and the benefit of laws under which we were born, and which we desire to transmit to our posterity. You are not the trustees of the public liberty; and if you have not right to petition in a crowd, much less have you to intermeddle in the management of affairs, or to arraign what you do not like, which in effect is every thing that is done by the king and council. Can you imagine that any reasonable man will believe you respect the person of his majesty, when 't is apparent that your seditious pamphlets are stuffed with particular reflections on him? If you have the confidence to deny this, 't is easy to be evinced from a thousand passages, which I only forbear to quote, because I desire they should die, and be forgotten. I have perused many of your papers; and to show you that I have, the third part of your No-protestant plot is much of it The third part, printed in quarto, was supposed to be written by Ferguson, under my lord's eye. It reflects on the proceedings against him in the points of high treason, whereof he stood accused; and strives to depreciate the characters of the witnesses, by painting them in the most odious colours. The Growth of Popery was written by Mr. Marvel, who published it a little before his death, which happened in 1678. A second part of it was written by Mr. Ferguson above mentioned; for which, and other seditious practices, his body was demanded of the states of Holland, he being then at Brili, but refused; though Sir Thomas Armstrong had been was stolen from your dead author's pamphlet, called the Growth of Popery; as manifestly as Milton's Defence of the English People is from Buchanan De jure regni apud Scotos; or your first Covenant and new Association from the noly league of the French Guisards. Any one who reads Davila may trace your practices all along. There were the same pretences for reformation and loyalty, the same aspersions of the king, and the same grounds of a rebellion. I know not whether you will take the historian's word, who says it was reported, that Poltrot, a Hugonot, murdered Francis, Duke of Guise, by the instigations of Theodore Beza, or that it a Hugonot minister, otherwise called a Presbyterian, (for our church abhors so devilish a tenet) who first writ a treatise of the lawfulness of deposing and murdering kings of a different persuasion in religion: but I am able to prove, from the doctrine of Calvin, and principles of Buchanan, that they set the people above the magistrate; which, if I mistake not, is your own fundamental, and which carries your loyalty no farther than your liking. When a vote of the house of commons goes on your side, you are as ready to observe it as if it were passed into a law; but when you are pinched with any former, and yet unrepealed act of parliament, you declare that in some cases you will not be obliged by it. The passage is in the same third part of the No-protestant Plot, and is too plain to be denied. The late copy of your intended association, you neither wholly justify nor condemn; but as the papists, when they are unopposed, fly out into all the pageantries of worship; but in times of war, when they are hard pressed by arguments, lie close intrenched Dehind the council of Trent; so now, when your affairs are in a low condition, you dare not pretend that to be a legal combination, but whensoever you are afloat, I doubt not but it will be maintained and justified to purpose. For indeed there is nothing to defend it but the sword; 'tis the proper time to say any thing when men have all things in their power. In the mean time, you would fain be nibbling at a parallel betwixt this association, and that in the time of Queen Elizabeth. But there is given up by them a little before. This is the same man who was concerned in the Ryehouse Plot; and it is remarkable, that when the secretary of state was giving out orders for the seizing the rest of the conspirators, he privately bade the messenger to let Ferguson escape. D. When England, in the sixteenth century, was supposed in danger from the designs of Spain, the principal people, with the Queen at their head, entered into an association for the defence of their country, and of the Protestant religion, against popery, invasion, and innovation. D. this small difference betwixt them, that the ends of the one are directly opposite to the other: one with the Queen's approbation and conjunction, as head of it, the other without either the consent or knowledge of the King, against whose authority it is manifestly designed. Therefore you do well to have recourse to your last evasion, that it was contrived by your enemies, and shuffled into the papers that were seized; which yet you see the nation is not so easy to believe as your own jury; but the matter is not difficult, to find twelve men in Newgate who would acquit a malefactor. I have one only favour to desire of you at parting, that when you think of answering this poem, you would employ the some pens against it, who have combated with so much success against Absalom and Achitophel; for then you may assure yourselves of a clear victory, without the least reply. Rail at me abundantly: and, not to break a custom, do it without wit: by this method you will gain a considerable point, which is, wholly to waive the answer of my arguments. Never own the bottom of your principles, for fear they should be treason. Fall severely on the miscarriages of government; for if scandal be not allowed, you are no freeborn subjects. If God has not blessed you with the talent of rhyming, make use of my poor stock and welcome: let your verses run upon my feet and for the utmost refuge of notorious blockheads, reduced to the last extremity of sense, turn my own lines upon me, and in utter despair of your own satire, make me satirize myself. Some of you have been driven to this bay already; but, above all the rest, commend me to the nonconformist parson, who writ the Whip and Key. I am afraid it is not read so much as the piece deserves, because the bookseller is every week crying help at the end of his Gazette, to get it off. You see I am charitable enough to do him a kindness, that it may be published as well as printed; and that so much skill in Hebrew derivations may not lie for waste paper in the shop. Yet I half suspect he went no further for his learning, than the index of Hebrew names and etymologies, which is printed at the end of some English Bibles. If Achitophel signify the brother of a fool, the author of that poem will pass with his readers for the next of kin. And perhaps it is the relation that makes the kindness. Whatever the verses are, buy them up, I beseech you, out of pity; The friends of the Earl of Shaftesbury insinuat ed every where, that the draught of that associa tion, which was said to be found among his papers, was put there by the person who seized them, to advance the credit of the tories, and give greater weight to the court charge. D. for I hear the conventicle is shut up, and the brother of Achitophel out of service. Now footmen, you know, have the generosity b make a purse for a member of their society, who has had his livery pulled over his ears; and even Protestant socks are bought up among you, out of veneration to the name. A dissenter in poetry from sense and English will make as good a Protestant rhymer, as a dissenter from the Church of England a Protestant parson. Besides, if you encourage a young beginner, who knows but he may elevate his style a little above the vulgar epithets of profane and saucy Jack, and atheistical scribbler, with which he treats me, when the fit of enthusiasm is strong upon him; by which well-mannered and charitable expressions I was certain of his sect before I knew his name. What would you have more of man? He has damned me in your cause from Genesis to the Revelations; and has half the texts of both the Testaments against me, if you will be so civil to yourselves as to take him for your interpreter, and not to take them for Irish witnesses. After all, perhaps you will tell me, that you retained him only for the opening of your cause, and that your main lawyer is yet behind. Now if it so happen he meet with no more reply than his predecessors, you may either conclude that I trust to the goodness of my cause, or fear my adversary, or disdain him, or what you please, for the short on 't is, 't is indifferent to your humble servant, whatever your party says or thinks of him. THE MEDAL. Or all our antic sights and pageantry, Oh, could the style that copied every grace, The loudest bagpipe of the squeaking train. Forsaken of that hope he shifts the sail, Almighty crowd, thou shortenest all dispute, Athens no doubt did righteously decide, run; To kill the father and recall the son. Some think the fools were most as times went then, [men. But now the world's o'erstock'd with prudent The common cry is e'en religion's test, The Turk's is at Constantinople best; Idols in India; Popery at Rome: And our own worship only true at home. And true, but for the time 't is hard to know How long we please it shall continue so. This side to-day, and that to-morrow burns; So all are God-a'mighties in their turns. A tempting doctrine, plausible and new ; What fools our fathers were, if this be true! Who to destroy the seeds of civil war, Inherent right in monarchs did declare; And, that a lawful power might never cease, Secur'd succession to secure our peace. Thus property and sovereign sway, at last In equal balances were justly cast: But this new Jehu spurs the hot-mouth'd horse; Instructs the beast to know his native force; To take the bit between his teeth, and fly To the next headlong steep of anarchy. Too happy England, if our good we knew, Would we possess the freedom we pursue! The lavish government can give no more : Yet we repine, and plenty makes us poor. God tried us once; our rebel fathers fought, He glutted them with all the power they sought Till master'd by their own usurping brave, The free-born subject sunk into a slave. We loath our manna, and we long for quails; Ah, what is man when his own wish prevails! How rash, how swift to plunge himself in ill; The witnesses that, leech-like, liv'd on blood, London, thou great emporium of our isle, Nor sharp experience can to duty bring, And they'll be sure to make his cause their own. The rich possession was the murderers' own. For what can power give more than food and [plain; And if their power the passengers subdue, But slides between them both into the best, The wholesome tempest purges what it breeds, To recommend the calmness that succeeds. But thou, the pander of the people's hearts, O crooked soul, and serpentine in arts, Whose blandishments a loyal land have whor'd, And broke the bonds she plighted to her lord; What curses on thy blasted name will fall! Which age to age their legacy shall call; For all must curse the woes that must descend on Religion thou hast none; thy Mercury [all. Has pass'd thro' every sect, or theirs thro' thee. But what thou givest, that venom still remains; And the pox'd nation feels thee in their brains. What else inspires the tongues and swells the Of all thy bellowing renegado priests, [breasts That preach up thee for God; dispense thy laws; And with thy stum ferment their fainting cause? Fresh fumes of madness raise; and toil and sweat To make the formidable cripple great. [power Shall burst its bag; and, fighting out their way, |