a standing army. This we have the authority of the ancient borough of Carlisle, that it is the safety of the prince, and the glory of the nation, as appears by their renowned address to King James II. Then we should see a new face of our nation, and Britain would no more be a naked nation, as it has formerly been; then we should have numerous and gallant armies surrounding a martial prince; ready to make the world, as well as his own subjects, tremble; then our inland counties would appear full of royal fortifications, citadels, forts, and strong towns; the beauty of the kingdom, and awe of factious rebels: it is a strange thing that this refractory people of ours could never be made sensible how much it is for the glory and safety of this nation that we should be put into a posture of defence against ourselves: it has been often alleged, that this nation can never be ruined but with their own consent: if then we are our own enemies, is it not highly requisite that we should be put in a position to have our own ruin prevented? And that since it is apparent we are no more fit to be trusted with our own liberties, having a natural and a national propensity to destroy and undo ourselves, and may be brought to consent to our own ruin, we should have such princes, as for the future know how to restrain us, and how reasonable is it to allow them forces to do so?

We might enlarge here upon the great and certain advantages of this best of governments, a standing army; we might go back to the Persian, Grecian, and Roman empires, which had never arrived to such a pitch of glory if the people and nations whom they subdued had been able to nose them with such trifles as what we call constitution, national right, ancient privileges, and the like; we might descend also to particular advantages of government, which it is hoped we may attain to in Britain when the pretender arrives, some of which are grown obsolete, and out of use, by custom, and long possession of those troublesome things called liberties; among these may be reckoned,

1. The whole kingdom will be at once eased of that ridiculous feather-cap's expense of militia and trained-bands, which serve for little else but to justify the picking the peoples' pockets, with an annual tax of trophy-money, and every now and then putting the city of London and parts adjacent, to ten thousand pound charge, to beat drums, and shoot muskets, for nothing; when, on the contrary, you shall in the blessed revolution we now invite you to, have all this done gratis, by the standing troops kept constantly in pay; and your lieutenancy may lay down their commissions among the rest of non-significants of the nation.

2. You shall be for ever out of danger of being ridden again by the mob, your meeting-houses shall no more be the subject of the enraged rabbles; nor shall the bank of England desire the drums to beat at midnight to raise a guard for Grocers' hall; your new monarch will suffer none to insult or plunder the city but himself; and as the city itself shall never want soldiers, (how should it, when the whole kingdom shall become a garrison?) the money in the bank shall always be defended by a strong guard, who shall, whenever there is any danger of its being too safe, convey it, for its eminent security, from Grocers'-alley to the Tower, or to the exchequer, where it shall not fail to be kept for the advantage of the public.

3. Again; upon this happy change we shall immediately be delivered from that most infamous practice of stock-jobbing, of which so much has been said to so little purpose; for the funds being turned all into one general stock, and the prince being himself your security, you may even write upon all your companies this general phrase, viz., No transfer, as they do when the books are shut up at the bank, or East-India house; so as all the rivers of water are swallowed up in the sea, as one ocean, to which they are all tending, so all these petty cheats will be engulfed at once in the general ocean of state trick, and the Exchange-alley men may justly be said to buy the bear-skin ever after.

4. When (which is a blessing we fear we cannot hope for before) we may expect to be delivered from the throng of virulent and contumacious libels which now infest our streets; and the libellers themselves being most exemplarily punished, for a terror to the rest, will not dare to affront the government with ballads and balderdash; if an impudent fellow dares lift up his pen against the authority and power of his prince, he shall instantly feel the weight of that power to crush him, which he ought before to have feared; and pamphleteers shall then not be whipped and pilloried, but hanged; and when two or three of them have suffered that way, it is hoped those wholesome severities may put an effectual stop to the noise and clamour they now make in the nation; above all, the hands of the government will then be set free from the fetters of law; and it shall not be always necessary for the ministers of state to proceed by all the forms of the courts of justice, in such cases, by which the scribblers of the age pretend to stand it out against the government, and put their own construction upon their libels. But when these happy days arrive, juries and judges shall find and determine in these and all other cases, bring verdicts, and give sentence, as the prince in his royal justice shall direct.

We might enter here upon a long list of other happy circumstances we shall all arrive to, and of great advantages not here named, which the coming in of the pretender shall infallibly bring us to the enjoyment of, particularly in matters of religion, civil right, property, and commerce; but the needful brevity of this tract will not admit of it, we shall only add one thing more, which gives weight to all the rest, viz., that the certainty of these things, and of their being the natural consequences of the bringing in the pretender, adds to the certain felicity of that reign. This sums up the happiness of the pretender's reign; we need not talk of security, as the Review has done, and pretend he is not able to give us security for the performance of anything he promises; every man that has any sense of the principles, honour, and justice of the pretender, his zeal for the Roman catholic cause, his gratitude to his benefactor, the French king, and his love to the glory and happiness of his native country, must rest satisfied of his punctually performing all these great things for us; to ask him security, would be not to affront him only, but to affront the whole nation; no man can doubt him; the nature of the thing allows that he must do us all that kindness; he cannot be true to his own reason without it; wherefore this treaty executes itself, and appears so rational to believe, that whoever doubts it may be supposed to doubt even the veracity of James the Just.

What unaccountable folly then must those people be guilty of, who stand so much in the way of their own and their country's happiness, as to oppose, or pretend to argue against, the receiving this glorious prince, and would be for having Dutch men and foreigners forsooth to come, and all under the notion of their being protestants? To avoid and detect which fallacy, we shall in our next essay enter into the examination of the religion and orthodox principles of the person of the pretender, and doubt not to make it out, for the satisfaction of all tender consciences, that he is a true protestant of the church of England, established by law, and that in the very natural primitive sense of that phrase as it was used by his royal predecessor, of famous and pious memory, Charles II.——and as such, no doubt, he will endeavour for the recovery of the crown, which crown, if he obtains it, you see what glorious things he may do for himself, and us.

Quam si non tenuit magnis tamen excidit ausis.