If the war with Holland
were attended with great success, and involved the subjection of the
republic, such an accession of force must fall to Lewis, not to Charles:
and what hopes afterwards of resisting by the greatest unanimity so
mighty a monarch? How dangerous, or rather how ruinous, to depend upon
his assistance against domestic discontents! If the Dutch, by their own
vigor, and the assistance of allies, were able to defend themselves, and
could bring the war to an equality, the French arms would be so employed
abroad, that no considerable reenforcement could thence be expected to
second the king's enterprises in England. And might not the project
of overawing or subduing the people be esteemed of itself sufficiently
odious, without the aggravation of sacrificing that state which they
regarded as their best ally, and with which, on many accounts, they were
desirous of maintaining the greatest concord and strictest confederacy?
Whatever views likewise might be entertained of promoting by these
measures the Catholic religion, they could only tend to render all the
other schemes abortive, and make them fall with inevitable ruin upon the
projectors. The Catholic religion, indeed, where it is established, is
better fitted than the Protestant for supporting an absolute monarchy;
but would any man have bought of it as the means of acquiring arbitrary
authority in England, where it was more detested than even slavery
itself?
It must be allowed that the difficulties, and even inconsistencies,
attending the schemes of the cabal, are so numerous and obvious, that
one feels at first an inclination to deny the reality of those schemes,
and to suppose them entirely the chimeras of calumny and faction.
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