Daniel Defoe - An Answer to a Question that Nobody thinks of, viz., But what if the Queen should Die?

The ministry, it is hoped, are established in the interest of their queen and country; and therefore it has been argued, that supposing the ministry had the pretender in their eye, yet that it is irrational to suggest that they can have any such view during the life of her present majesty. Nay, even those professed jacobites, who we spoke of just now, cannot be so ungrateful to think of deposing the queen, who has been so bountiful, so kind, so exceeding good to them, as in several cases to suffer them to be brought into the management of her own affairs, when by their character they might have been thought dangerous, even to her person; thus winning and engaging them by her bounty, and the confidence that has been placed in them, not to attempt anything to her prejudice, without the most monstrous ingratitude, without flying in the face of all that sense of honour and obligation, which it is possible for men of common sense to entertain. And it can hardly be thought that even papists themselves, under the highest possessions of their religious zeal, can conquer the native aversions they must have to such abominable ingratitude, or to think of bringing in the pretender upon this protestant nation, even while the queen shall be on the throne. But though this may, and some doubt that also, tie up their hands during the queen's life, yet they themselves give us but small reason to expect anything from them afterward, and it will be hard to find anybody to vouch for them then. These very jacobites, papists, and professed enemies to the revolution, may be supposed upon these pretensions to be quiet, and offer no violence to the present establishment while her majesty has the possession, and while that life lasts, to which they are so much indebted for her royal goodness and clemency. But what would they do if the queen should die?

Come we next to the French king. We are told, that not the French king only, but even the whole French nation, are wonderfully forward to acknowledge the obligation they are under to the justice and favour which they have received from her majesty, in the putting an end to the war; a war which lay heavy upon them, and threatened the very name of the French nation with ruin, and much more threatened the glory of the French court, and of their great monarch, with an entire overthrow, a total eclipse. A war which, by their own confession, it was impossible for them long to have supported the expenses of, and which, by the great superiority of the allies, became dreadful to them, and that every campaign more than the other; a war which they were in such pain to see the end of, that they tried all the powers and courts in Christendom, who were the least neutral, to engage a mediation in order to a treaty, and all in vain; and a war which, if her majesty had not inclined to put an end to, must have ended perhaps to the disadvantage and confusion of both France and Spain, if not of all Christendom. The obligations the French are under for the bringing this war to so just and honourable a conclusion are not at all concealed. Nay, the French themselves have not been backward to make them public. The declarations made by the French king of his sincerity in the overtures made for a general peace, the protestations of his being resolved to enter into an entire confidence, and a league offensive and defensive with the queen's majesty for the preservation of the peace of Christendom, his recognition of her majesty's just right to the crown, his entering into articles to preserve the union, acknowledging the ninth electorate in favour of the house of Hanover, and joining in the great affair of the protestant succession. As these all convince the world of the necessity his affairs were reduced to, and the great advantages accruing to him by a peace, so they seem to be so many arguments against our fears of the French entering into any engagements against the crown of Britain, much less any against the possession of the queen during her life. Not that the honour and sincerity of the king of France is a foundation fit for her majesty or her people to have any dependence upon; and the fraction of former treaties by that court, when the glory of that monarch, or his particular views of things has dictated such opportunity to him as he thought fit to close with, are due cautions to us all not to have any dependence of that kind. But the state of his affairs, and the condition the war has reduced him to, may give us some ground to think ourselves safe on that side. He knows what power he has taken off from his enemies in making peace with her majesty; he knows very well with what loss he sits down, how his affairs are weakened, and what need he has to take breath after so terrible a war; besides the flame such an action would kindle again in Europe; how it would animate this whole British nation against him, in such a manner, and endanger bringing in a new war, and perhaps a new confederacy upon him so violently, and that before he would be in a condition to match them, that no one can reasonably suppose the French king will run the hazard of it. And these things may tend to make some people easier than ordinary in the affair of the succession, believing that the French king stands in too much need of the favour of the queen of Great Britain, whose power it well behoves him to keep in friendship with him, and whose nation he will be very cautious of provoking a third time, as he has already done twice, to his fatal experience. All these things, we say, may seem pretty well to assure us that nothing is to be feared on that side so long as her majesty lives to sit upon the British throne. But all leaves our grand question unanswered; and though we may argue strongly for the French king's conduct while the present reign continues, yet few will say, What he will do if the queen should die?

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