If his party had thought, that this had been a true Expedient, I am
confident it had been mentioned in the last Parliament at _Westminster_.
But there, _altum silentium_ not one word of it. Was it because the
Machine was not then in readiness to move! and that the Exclusion must
first pass? or more truly was it ever intended to be urged? I am not
ashamed to say, that I particularly honour the Duke of _Monmouth_: but
whether his nomination to succeed, would, at the bottom be pleasing to
the Heads of his Cabal, I somewhat doubt. To keep him fast to them by
some remote hopes of it, may be no ill Policy. To have him in a
readiness to head an Army, in case it should please God the King should
die before the Duke, is the design; and then perhaps he has reason to
expect more from a Chance Game, than from the real desires of his party
to exalt him to a Throne. But 'tis neither to be imagined, that a Prince
of his Spirit, after the gaining of a Crown, would be managed by those
who helped him to it, let his ingagements and promises be never so
strong before, neither that he would be confin'd in the narrow compass
of a Curtail'd Mungril Monarchy, half Common-wealth. Conquerors are not
easily to be curbed. And it is yet harder to conceive, that his
pretended Friends, even design him so much as that. At present, 'tis
true, their mutual necessities keep them fast together; and all the
several Fanatick Books fall in, to enlarge the common stream: But
suppose the business compassed, as they design'd it, how many, and how
contradicting Interests are there to be satisfied! Every Sect of High
Shooes would then be uppermost; and not one of them endure the
toleration of another. And amongst them all, what will become of those
fine Speculative Wits, who drew the Plan of this new Government, and who
overthrew the old? For their comfort, the Saints will then account them
Atheists, and discard them. Or they will plead each of them their
particular Merits, till they quarrel about the Dividend. And, the
Protestant Successor himself, if he be not wholly governed by the