not but represent opposition to
France, and vigorous measures taken to restrain her ambition, as
unnecessary for England, because they well knew that the counsels of that
king had been utterly averse to such measures; that his whole policy made
him a friend to France; that he was governed by a French mistress, and
even bribed by French money to give that Court his assistance, or at
least his acquiescence, in all their designs.
_De Witt_.--A King of England whose Cabinet is governed by France, and
who becomes a vile pensioner to a French King, degrades himself from his
royalty, and ought to be considered as an enemy to the nation. Indeed
the whole policy of Charles II., when he was not forced off from his
natural bias by the necessity he lay under of soothing his Parliament,
was a constant, designed, systematical opposition to the interest of his
people. His brother, though more sensible to the honour of England, was
by his Popery and desire of arbitrary power constrained to lean upon
France, and do nothing to obstruct her designs on the Continent or lessen
her greatness. It was therefore necessary to place the British Crown on
your head, not only with a view to preserve the religious and civil
rights of the people from internal oppressions, but to rescue the whole
State from that servile dependence on its natural enemy, which must
unquestionably have ended in its destruction. What folly was it to
revile your measures abroad, as sacrificing the interest of your British
dominions to connections with the Continent, and principally with
Holland! Had Great Britain no interest to hinder the French from being
masters of all the Austrian Netherlands, and forcing the Seven United
Provinces, her strongest barrier on the Continent against the power of
that nation, to submit with the rest to their yoke? Would her trade,
would her coasts, would her capital itself have been safe after so mighty
an increase of shipping and sailors as France would have gained by those
conquests? And what could have prevented them, but the war which you
waged and the alliances which you formed? Could the Dutch and the
Germans, unaided by Great Britain, have attempted to make head against a
Power which, even with her assistance, strong and spirited as it was,
they could hardly resist? And after the check which had been given to
the encroachments of France by the efforts of the first grand alliance,
did not a new and greater danger make it necess
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