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552 THE TRUE BORN ENGLISHMAN.. for.

The Conclusion.

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HEN let us boast of ancestors no more!
Or deeds of heroes done in days of yore;
In latent records of the Ages past,

Behind the rear of Time, in long Oblivion
placed!

For if our Virtues must in lines descend,
The merit with the families would end;
And intermixtures would most fatal grow,
For Vice would be hereditary too!
The tainted blood would of necessity,
In voluntary wickedness convey!

Vice, like ill-nature, for an Age or two,
May seem a generation to pursue:

But Virtue seldom does regard the breed,
Fools do the Wise, and wise men Fools succeed.

What is it to us, what ancestors we had?

If good, what better? or what worse, if bad?
Examples are for imitation set,

Yet all men follow Virtue with regret!

Could but our ancestors retrieve their fate,
And see their offspring thus degenerate;
How we contend for birth and names unknown,
And build on their past actions, not our own :
They 'd cancel records, and their tombs deface,
And openly disown the vile degenerate race!

For fame of Families is all a cheat!

'TIS PERSONAL VIRTUE ONLY MAKES US GREAT!

THE

HISTORY

OF THE

Kentish

ΡΕΤΙΤΙΟΝ.

LONDON, Printed in the Year, 1701.

[In this piece, the word Country is used sometimes where we should now say County; and sometimes where its modern equivalent would be District, as in the present phrase of the Country side.

The Writer says at p. 556-Nor is my name LEGION: yet this piece has been usually attributed to DEFOE. Of course, his name was DEFOE, not LEGION.]

THE PREFACE.

WOULD be hard to suspect him of errors in fact, who writes the Story of Yesterday. A Historian of Three Weeks must certainly be just, for had he never so much mind to lie, it would be nonsense to expect the World could be imposed upon. Everybody's memory would be a living witness against him, and the effect would only be to expose himself.

Authors of Histories generally apologise for their Quotations, place their industry in the search after Truth, and excuse themselves by asserting the faithfulness of their Collections. The Author of the following sheets is not afraid to let the World know that he is so sure everything related in this Account is literally and positively true, that he challenges all the Wit and Malice the World abounds with, to confute the most trifling circumstance.

If aggravations are omitted, and some very ill-natured passages let go without observations, those persons who were guilty of them, may observe that we have more good nature than they have manners: and they ought to acknowledge it, since a great many rudenesses, both against the King himself and the Gentlemen concerned, have escaped their scurrilous mouths, which are not here animadverted upon.

And lest the World should think this presumptive, and that the accusation is only a surmise; we will query, What they think of that kind remark of Mr. J. H[0]w[E], finding the King's Letter to the House, and the Kentish Petition to come both on a day,. and the substance to be the same, that "the King, the Dutch, and the Kentish men were all in a plot against the House of Commons!"

I could have swelled this Pamphlet to a large Volume, if I should pretend to collect all the Billingsgate language of a certain House full of men, against the King, the Lords, and the Gentlemen of Kent; but it is a fitter subject for a Satyr than a History. They have abused the nation, and now are become a Banter to themselves; and I leave them to consider of it, and reform!

I assure the World, I am no Kentish man; nor was my hand to the Petition; though, had I been acquainted with it, I would have gone a hundred miles to have signed it, and a hundred more to have had the opportunity of serving my Country at the expense of an unjust confinement for it.

Defoe. July 1701.

556 THE JACOBITES DRINKING TO JACK HOWE. Py

It may be fairly concluded, I am no Warwickshire man neither, with a Petition in my pocket, brought a hundred miles, and afraid to deliver it.

Nor [is] my name Sir ROBERT CLAYTON: by which you may know I did not promise the Members, who were then in fear enough, to use my Interest to stifle a City Petition.

Nor is my name LEGION. I wish it were! for I should have been glad to be capable of speaking so much truth, and so much to the purpose, as is contained in that unanswerable Paper [LEGION's Memorial, see pp. 577-584].

But I am an unconcerned Spectator, and have been an exact Observer of every passage, have been an Eye and Ear-Witness of every most minute article, and am sure that everything related is exactly true, as the causes of it all are scandalous and burdensome to the nation.

As to the Gentlemen of the House of Commons, I shall not pretend to enter into their character, because I care not to enter into captivity! nor come into the clutches of that worst of brutes, their Sergeant !

Literally speaking, no Member of the House of Commons can be a Jacobite, because they have taken the oaths to King WILLIAM. But this may be observed, that the Jacobites in England are generally the only people who approve of their proceedings, and applaud their measures. And it is observable that at Paris, at St. Germains, the general compliment of a Health in all English company is à la santé [de] Monsieur JACK HOW[E]! the truth of which, there are not a few very good Gentlemen in Town can attest, from whence I think I may draw this Observation, that either he is a Jacobite, or the Jacobites are a very good-natured people.

Noscitur ex socio qui non dignoscitur ex se.

The following pages contain an exact History of the Kentish Petition, and of the treatment the Gentlemen who presented it, met with both from the House, the Sergeant, and at last, from their ountry.

The best way to come to a conclusion, whether the Gentlemen. Petitioners were well or ill used, is to review the matter of fact? All panegyrics and encomiums came short of the natural reflections which flow from a True Account of that proceeding: and the whole is collected in this form, that all the World may judge by a true light, and not be imposed upon by partial and imperfect Relations.

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