lmost the only domestic resources which the king could depend on
in the prosecution of these dangerous counsels.

The assistance of the French king was no doubt deemed by the cabal a
considerable support in the schemes which they were forming; but it is
not easily conceived they could imagine themselves capable of directing
and employing an associate of so domineering a character. They ought
justly to have suspected, that it would be the sole intention of Lewis,
as it evidently was his interest, to raise incurable jealousies between
the king and his people; and that he saw how much a steady, uniform
government in this island, whether free or absolute, would form
invincible barriers to his ambition. Should his assistance be demanded,
if he sent a small supply, it would serve only to enrage the people, and
render the breach altogether irreparable; if he furnished a great force,
sufficient to subdue the nation, there was little reason to trust his
generosity with regard to the use which he would make of this advantage.

In all its other parts, the plan of the cabal, it must be confessed,
appears equally absurd and incongruous. 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 hav