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.