cated to his character, and he that lampoons or opposes him,
may border upon treason.

To dismiss this expression with the contempt which it deserves, yet
not without the reflections which it naturally excites, I shall only
observe, that all extension of the power of the crown must be
dangerous to us; and that whoever endeavours to find out new modes of
guilt, is to be looked on, not as a good subject, but a bad citizen.

Having thus shown, that the censure produced against this pamphlet is
unintelligible and indeterminate, I shall venture to mention some of
the assertions which have heated the gentleman into so much fury.
Assertions which I cannot be supposed to favour, since I wish they
might be false, and which I only produce in this place to give some,
whom their stations make acquainted with publick affairs, an
opportunity of confuting them.

It is asserted, that the French appear to have treated all our
armaments with contempt, and to have pursued all their schemes with
the same confidence as if they had no other enemy to fear than the
forces of Austria; this is, indeed, no pleasing observation, nor can
it be supposed to give satisfaction to any Briton, to find the
reputation of our councils and of our arms so much diminished, to find
the nation which lately gave laws to Europe, scarcely admitted to
friendship, or thought worthy of opposition in enmity, to hear that
those troops, which, in the days of our former monarchs, shook the
thrones of the continent, are passed by, without fear, and without
regard, by armies marching against their allies, those allies in whose
cause they formerly fought in the field. But the truth of the
assertion is too plain to all the nations of the world; and those
whose interest it may be to conceal from their countrymen what is
known to all the continent, may rage, indeed, and threaten, but they
cannot deny it; for what enterprise have we hitherto either prevented
or retarded? What could we have done on one side, or suffered on the
other, if we had been struck out from existence, which has not been
suffered, or not done, though our armies have been reviewed on the
continent, and, to make yet a better show, lengthened out by a line of
sixteen thousand of the troops of Hanover.

It is asserted in the same treatise, that the troops of Hanover cannot
act against the king, and that, therefore, they are an useless burden
to the state; that they compose an army of which no other effect w