Et dici potuisse, et non potuisse refelli.
NOTES
ON
THE MEDAL.
The Polish medal.—P. [431.]
It was a standing joke among the opponents of Shaftesbury, that he hoped to be chosen king of Poland at the vacancy, when John Sobieski was elected. This was probably only a revival and new edition of an improbable story, that he expected Cromwell would have made him king of England. His supposed election, its causes, and effects, are very humorously stated in a pamphlet republished among Lord Somers' Tracts, already quoted, pp. 263, 358.
The author complains ironically, that, among the advantages of court favour, which Lord Shaftesbury had renounced for his country, already enumerated by one of his adherents, he had omitted to mention a yet more dignified sacrifice:
"I suppose, there are very few in this kingdom, that do not very sensibly remember the late inter-regnum in Poland, and how many illustrious candidates stood fair for the election. Sobieski, indeed, had done great things for that people; he had kept their potent enemy, the Turk, from entering any farther upon their frontier; was great and popular in the esteem and love of the best army, that, perhaps, they ever had; but, that was by much too little to entitle him to the succession of the throne, it appearing absolutely the interest of that nation, that the great Turk was not only to be beaten, but he must, in short, also be converted. And who so fit for such an enterprize as he that should be promoted to the regal authority? One that, from the high place he was to possess, might not only administer justice to them, but salvation to the greater part of Asia."—