And What if the Pretender should Come? Or Some Considerations of the Advantages and Real Consequences of the Pretender's Possessing the Crown of Great Britain

But we have more and greater advantages of the coming of the pretender, and such as no question will invite you to receive him with great satisfaction and applause; and it cannot be unnecessary to inform you, for your direction in other cases, how the matter, as to real and imaginary advantage, stands with the nation in this affair; and First, the coming of the pretender will at once put us all out of debt. These abomination whigs, and these bloody wars, carried on so long for little or nothing, have, as is evident to our senses now, (whatever it was all along), brought a heavy debt upon the nation; so that if what a known author lately published is true, the government pays now almost six millions a year to the common people for interest of money; that is to say, the usurers eat up the nation, and devour six millions yearly; which is paid, and must be paid now for a long time, if some kind turn, such as this of the coming of the pretender, or such like, does not help us out of it; the weight of this is not only great, insuperably great, but most of it is entailed for a terrible time, not only for our age, but beyond the age of our grandchildren, even for ninety-nine years; by how much the consideration of this debt is intolerable and afflicting to the last degree, by so much the greater must the obligation be to the person who will ease the nation of such a burden, and therefore we place it among the principal advantages which we are to receive from the admission of the pretender, that he will not fail to rid us of this grievance, and by methods peculiar to himself deliver us from so great a burden as these debts are now, and, unless he deliver us, are like to be to the ages to come; whether he will do this at once, by remitting most graciously to the nation the whole payment, and consequently take off the burden brevi manu, as with a sponge wiping out the infamous score, leaving it to fall as fate directs, or by prudent degrees, we know not, nor is it our business to determine it here; no doubt the doing it with a jerk, as we call it, comme une coup de grace, must be the most expeditious way; nay, and the kindest way of putting the nation out of its pain; for lingering deaths are counted cruel; and though une coup d'eclat may make an impression for the present, yet the astonishment is soonest over; besides, where is the loss to the nation in this sense? though the money be stopped from the subject on one hand, if it be stopped to the subjects on the other, the nation loses or gains nothing: we know it will be answered, that it is unjust, and that thousands of families will be ruined, because they who lose, will not be those who gain. But what is this to the purpose in a national revolution; unjust! alas! is that an argument? Go and ask the pretender! Does not he say you have all done unjustly by him? and since the nation in general loses nothing, what obligation has he to regard the particular injury that some families may sustain? And yet farther, is it not remarkable, that most part of the money is paid by the cursed party of whigs, who from the beginning officiously appeared to keep him from his right? And what obligation has he upon him to concern himself for doing them right in particular, more than other people? But to avoid the scandal of partiality, there is another thought offers to our view, which the nation is beholding to a particular author for putting us in mind of; if it be unjust that we should suppose the pretender shall stop the payment on both sides, because it is doing the whigs wrong, since the tories, who perhaps being chiefly landed men, pay the most taxes; then, to keep up a just balance, he need only continue the taxes to be paid in, and only stop the annuities and interest which are to be paid out. Thus both sides having no reason to envy or reproach one another with hardships, or with suffering unequally; they may every one lose their proportion, and the money may be laid up in the hands of the new sovereign, for the good of the nation.

This being thus happily proposed, we cannot pass over the great advantages which would accrue to this nation in such a case, by having such a mass of money laid up in the exchequer at the absolute command of a most gracious French sovereign. But as these things are so glorious, and so great, as to admit of no complete explication in this short tract, give us leave, O people of Great Britain, to lay before you a little sketch of your future felicity, under the auspicious reign of such a glorious prince, as we all hope, and believe the pretender to be. 1. You are to allow, that by such a just and righteous shutting up of the exchequer in about seven years' time, he may be supposed to have received about forty millions sterling from his people, which not being to be found in specie in the kingdom, will, for the benefit of circulation, enable him to treasure up infinite funds of wealth in foreign banks, a prodigious mass of foreign bullion, gold, jewels, and plate, to be ready in the tower, or elsewhere, to be issued upon future emergency, as occasion may allow. This prodigious wealth will necessarily have these happy events, to the infinite satisfaction and advantage of the whole nation, and the benefit of which I hope none will be so unjust, or ungrateful, to deny. 1. It will for ever after deliver this nation from the burden, the expense, the formality, and the tyranny, of parliaments. No one can perhaps at the first view be rightly sensible of the many advantages of this article, and from how many mischiefs it will deliver this nation. 1. How the country gentlemen will be no longer harassed to come, at the command of every court occasion, and upon every summons by the prince's proclamation, from their families and other occasions, whether they can be spared from their wives, &c., or no, or whether they can trust their wives behind them, or no; nay, whether they can spare money or no for the journey, or whether they must come carriage paid or no; then they will no more be unnecessarily exposed to long and hazardous journeys, in the depth of winter, from the remotest corners of the island, to come to London, just to give away the country's money, and go home again; all this will be dispensed with by the kind and gracious management of the pretender, when he, God bless us, shall be our more gracious sovereign. 2. In the happy consequence of the demise of parliaments, the country will be eased of that intolerable burden of travelling to elections, sometimes in the depth of winter, sometimes in the middle of their harvest, whenever the writs of elections arbitrarily summons them. 3. And with them the poor gentlemen will be eased of that abominable grievance of the nation, viz., the expense of elections, by which so many gentlemen of estates have been ruined, so many innocent people, of honest principles before, have been debauched, and made mercenary, partial, perjured, and been blinded with bribes to sell their country and liberties to who bids most. It is well known how often, and yet how in vain, this distemper has been the constant concern of parliaments for many ages, to cure, and to provide sufficient remedies for. Now if ever the effectual remedy for this is found out, to the inexpressible advantage of the whole nation; and this perhaps is the only cure for it that the nature of the disease will admit of; what terrible havock has this kind of trade made among the estates of the gentry, and the morals of the common people? 4. How also has it kept alive the factions and divisions of the country people, keeping them in a constant agitation, and in triennial commotions? So that what with forming new interests, and cultivating old, the heats and animosities never cease among the people. But once set the pretender upon the throne, and let the funds be but happily stopped, and paid into his hands, that he may be in no more need of a parliament, and all these distempers will be cured as effectually as a fever is cured by cutting off the head, or as a halter cures the bleeding at the nose. How infatuated then is this nation, that they should so obstinately refuse a prince, by the nature of whose circumstances, and the avowed principles of whose party, we are sure to obtain such glorious things, such inestimable advantages, things which no age, no prince, no attempt of parties, or endeavour, though often aimed at of ministers of state, have ever been able to procure for us. 2. This amassing of treasure, by the stopping the funds on one hand, and the receiving the taxes on the other, will effectually enable the pretender to set up, and effectually maintain, that glorious, and so often-desired method of government, au coup de canon, Anglice, 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?