at all improbable, that the Pretender himself puts his
chief hopes in the friendship he expects from the Dissenters and Whigs,
by his choice to invade the kingdom when the latter were most in credit:
and he had reason to count upon the former, from the gracious treatment
they received from his supposed father, and their joyful acceptance
of it. But further, what could be more consistent with the Whiggish
notion of a revolution-principle, than to bring in the Pretender? A
revolution-principle, as their writings and discourses have taught us to
define it, is a principle perpetually disposing men to revolutions: and
this is suitable to the famous saying of a great Whig, "That the more
revolutions the better"; which how odd a maxim soever in appearance, I
take to be the true characteristic of the party.

A dog loves to turn round often; yet after certain revolutions, he lies
down to rest: but heads, under the dominion of the moon, are for
perpetual changes, and perpetual revolutions: besides, the Whigs owe all
their wealth to wars and revolutions; like the girl at Bartholomew-fair,
who gets a penny by turning round a hundred times, with swords in her
hands.[11]

To conclude, the Whigs have a natural faculty of bringing in pretenders,
and will therefore probably endeavour to bring in the great one at last:
How many _pretenders_ to wit, honour, nobility, politics, have they
brought in these last twenty years? In short, they have been sometimes
able to procure a majority of pretenders in Parliament; and wanted
nothing to render the work complete, except a Pretender at their head.

[Footnote 1: No. 39 in the reprint. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 2: Juvenal, "Satires," ii. 24.

"Who his spleen could rein,
And hear the Gracchi of the mob complain?"--W. GIFFORD.

[T.S.]]

[Footnote 3: The Calves-Head Club "was erected by an impudent set of
people, who have their feast of calves-heads in several parts of the
town, on the 30th of January; in derision of the day, and defiance of
monarchy" ("Secret History of the Calves-Head Club," 1703). [T.S.]]

[Footnote 4: These works can hardly be called "tracts." Algernon Sidney's
"Discourses concerning Government" (1698), is a portly folio of 467
pages, and Ludlow's "Memoirs" (1698-9) occupy three stout octavo volumes.
[T.S.]]

[Footnote 5: On July 21st, 1683, the University of Oxford passed a decree
condemning as "false, seditious, and impious," a series of twenty-seven
propositions,