THE TRUE PATRIOT.
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No. 24. TUESDAY, April 15, 1746.
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— Medici mediam pertundite venam. JUV.
I HAVE heard it often objected to the friends of the government, when they have expressed their apprehensions of a Jacobite-party in this kingdom, that these fears were counterfeited, in order to form an argument for the support of a standing army, or to excuse some other ministerial schemes; for that, in reality, the very seeds of Jacobitism were destroyed, and rooted out from the minds of every Protestant British subject.
I am not ashamed to own myself to have been one of the many who were imposed on by these suggestions; I am much more concerned to see that this was an imposition, and that experience should at last have convinced every man that there are still some persons (an inconsiderable party indeed, when compared to the number of loyal subjects), who profess the Protestant religion, while they wish well to the designs of a Popish Pretender.
The principal motive which induced me to hold my former opinion, was the reasonableness of it. I disbelieved the existence of a Protestant Jacobitism, from the same principles which inspire me to deny our assent to many of these strange relations which certain voyage-writers recount to us. I looked upon such an animal as a greater monster, than the most romantic of these writers have ever described, and was therefore easily persuaded to credit those who very solemnly assured us, there was no such to be found in the land.
I have hitherto avoided any contest with these sort of gentlemen, not from the contempt of so poor a victory; for I should think my labours well bestowed, in bringing the weakest of them over to the cause of truth; but in plain fact, they are the last persons with whom I would willingly enter the lists of disputation, from absolute despair of success; for what is so difficult to answer as nothing, or what more impossible to be evinced, than the light of the sun to him who hath not eyes to discern it. I have therefore greatly admired the patriotism of those heroes, who have formerly wasted much of their time to prove, that millions were not intended by an all-good Being, for the use and wanton disposition of one man; that a Protestant church was not absolutely secure under the protection of a prince, who looks on himself as bound by his religion, and that on pain of damnation, to destroy it; that a magistrate, attempting to destroy those laws and constitutions which he was sworn and obliged to defend, forfeited that power which he so entirely perverted; with numberless other propositions equally plain and demonstrable, or rather indeed self-evident. So that if the absurdity of their tenets was not of itself sufficiently apparent, and did not glare them in the face, it hath been so irrefragably proved by the labours of those good men, who have undertaken the defence of the revolution, that the Jacobites of this age have no other excuse left, but that of not being able to read.
This is an excuse which I am sensible may be fairly pleaded by many, and those none of the least considerable pillars of the party. There have been, however, some who have not only read, but have endeavoured to answer these writers; and have very modestly attempted to oppose the common sense of mankind, in a point wherein their highest interest is concerned.
As such performances are seldom long-lived, few of them have reached our days; but the following letter, which I look upon as a very curious piece, and which was written in the reign of the late king William, contains, I believe, the sum of all those arguments which have been ever used on the behalf of Jacobitism; I shall, therefore, give it the reader, after having premised that it was written by a non-juror to his son at Oxford.
'DEAR SON,