A subject is not always master of his sovereign's measures, nor always to examine what persons or parties the prince he serves employs, so be it that they break not in upon the constitution; that they govern according to law, and that he is employed in no illegal act, or have nothing desired of him inconsistent with the liberties and laws of his country. If this be not right, then a servant of the king's is in a worse case than a servant to any private person.
In all these things I have not erred; neither have I acted or done anything in the whole course of my life, either in the service of her majesty or of her ministry, that any one can say has the least deviation from the strictest regard to the protestant succession, and to the laws and liberties of my country.
I never saw an arbitrary action offered at, a law dispensed with, justice denied, or oppression set up, either by queen or ministry, in any branch of the administration, wherein I had the least concern.
If I have sinned against the whigs, it has been all negatively, viz., that I have not joined in the loud exclamations against the queen and against the ministry, and against their measures; and if this be my crime, my plea is twofold.
1. I did not really see cause for carrying their complaints to that violent degree.
2. Where I did see what, as before, I lamented and was sorry for, and could not join with or approve,—as joining with jacobites, the peace, &c.,—my obligation is my plea for my silence.
I have all the good thoughts of the person, and good wishes for the prosperity of my benefactor, that charity and that gratitude can inspire me with. I ever believed him to have the true interest of the protestant religion and of his country in his view; and if it should be otherwise, I should be very sorry. And I must repeat it again, that he always left me so entirely to my own judgment, in everything I did, that he never prescribed to me what I should write, or should not write, in my life; neither did he ever concern himself to dictate to or restrain me in any kind; nor did he see any one tract that I ever wrote before it was printed; so that all the notion of my writing by his direction is as much a slander upon him as it is possible anything of that kind can be; and if I have written anything which is offensive, unjust, or untrue, I must do that justice as to declare, he has no hand in it; the crime is my own.
As the reproach of his directing me to write is a slander upon the person I am speaking of, so that of my receiving pensions and payments from him for writing, is a slander upon me; and I speak it with the greatest sincerity, seriousness, and solemnity that it is possible for a Christian man to speak, that except the appointment I mentioned before, which her majesty was pleased to make me formerly, and which I received during the time of my lord Godolphin's ministry, I have not received of the late lord treasurer, or of any one else by his order, knowledge, or direction, one farthing, or the value of a farthing, during his whole administration; nor has all the interest I have been supposed to have in his lordship been able to procure me the arrears due to me in the time of the other ministry. So help me God.
I am under no necessity of making this declaration. The services I did, and for which her majesty was pleased to make me a small allowance, are known to the greatest men in the present administration; and some of them were then of the opinion, and I hope are so still, that I was not unworthy of her majesty's favour. The effect of those services, however small, is enjoyed by those great persons and by the whole nation to this day; and I had the honour once to be told, that they should never be forgotten. It is a misfortune that no man can avoid, to forfeit for his deference to the person and services of his queen, to whom he was inexpressibly obliged; and if I am fallen under the displeasure of the present government for anything I ever did in obedience to her majesty in the past, I may say it is my disaster; but I can never say it is my fault.
This brings me again to that other oppression which, as I said, I suffer under, and which, I think, is of a kind that no man ever suffered under so much as myself; and this is to have every libel, every pamphlet, be it ever so foolish, so malicious, so unmannerly, or so dangerous, be laid at my door, and be called publicly by my name. It has been in vain for me to struggle with this injury; it has been in vain for me to protest, to declare solemnly, nay, if I would have sworn that I had no hand in such a book or paper, never saw it, never read it, and the like, it was the same thing.