An Appeal from the Country to the City, for the Preservation of His Majesties Person, Liberty, Property, and the Protestant Religion.

The volume is in good – very good condition. Disbound with some leaves shaved affecting edge letters, although the text remains clear.

An Appeal from the Country to the City

In the autumn of 1679, the government of Charles II “was rendered nearly apoplectic” by ‘An appeal from the country to the city, for the preservation of His Majesties person, liberty, property, and the Protestant religion.’, considered the most offensive of all the pamphlets published at that time. It appeared anonymously, signed “Junius Brutus,”, by the English deist and philosopher Charles Blount (1654 – 1693). The major purpose of the tract was to promote the exclusion of the Duke of York and help prepare the way for the hoped-for return of the Duke of Monmouth.

The government acted swiftly with Lord Chief Justice Francis North and Attorney General Sir William Jones evaluating the pamphlet for the Privy Council. Several people were called before the council, and two female press people and two clerks in the letter office were arrested. Benjamin Harris, the publisher would later be tried for publishing the Appeal and the pamphlet was ordered to be burnt by the common hangman.

The Appeal remains infamous for its hysterical descriptions if popery should prevail:

“First, Imagine you see the whole Town in a flame, occasioned this second time, by the same Popish malice which set it on fire before. At the same instant fancy, that amongst the distracted Crowd, you behold Troops of Papists, ravishing your Wives and your Daughters, dashing your little Childrens brains out against the walls, plundering your Houses, and cutting your own throats, by the Name of Heretick Dogs: Then represent to your selves the Tower playing off its Cannon, and battering down your Houses about your Ears. Also casting your eye towards Smithfield, imagine you see your Father, or your Mother, or some of your nearest and dearest Relations, tyed to a Stake in the midst of flames, when with hands and eyes lifted up to Heaven, they scream and cry out to that God for whose Cause they die; which was a frequent spectacle the last time Popery reign’d amongst us.

 Fancy you behold those beautiful Churches erected for the true Worship of God, abused and turn’d into idolatrous Temples, to the dishonour of Christ, and scandal of Religion; the Ministers of God’s holy Word torn in pieces before your eyes, and their very best Friends not daring even to speak in their behalf; Your Trading’s bad, and in a manner lost already, but then the only Commodity will be Fire and Sword; the only object, Women running with their hair about their ears, Men cover’d with blood, Children sprawling under Horses feet, and only the walls of Houses left standing: When those that survive this fatal day, may sigh and cry, Here once stood my House, there my Friend’s, and here my Kinsman’s; But alas that time is past! The only noise will then be, O my Wife, O my Husband, O my dearest Children! In fine, what the Devil himself would do, were he here upon Earth, will in his absence infallibly be acted by his Agents the Papists; those who had so much ingratitude and baseness to attempt the Life of a Prince so indulgent to them, will hardly be less cruel to any of his Protestant Subjects.”

Per Wikipedia

Charles Blount (27 April 1654 – August 1693) was an English deist and philosopher who published several anonymous essays critical of the existing English order.

Blount’s publications were consistently anonymous or written under a pseudonym, and with a radical or Whig slant. In 1673 he wrote Mr Dreyden Vindicated, defending John Dryden’s The Conquest of Granada from Richard Leigh’s attacks. In 1673 he also penned the anonymous The Friendly Vindication.

In 1678 Blount became a member of the Green Ribbon Club, a group of radical Whig advocates and activists. In 1679 he published An Appeal from the Country to the City under the name of “Junius Brutus”. It was a strongly Whig piece that suggested that the Popish Plot was entirely real. It painted a lurid picture of what life in London would be like under James II and Roman Catholicism. In this case, the printer was seized and fined, and the pamphlet was burned by the common hangman (i.e. a symbolic execution of the book for treason). The same year, he assumed the name of Philopatris (“lover of his country”) to write A Just Vindication of Learning, which was an argument against the act licensing printers. He mimicked John Milton’s previous Areopagitica. After the death of Thomas Hobbes Blount produced an anonymous broadsheet of “sayings” from Hobbes’ book Leviathan.

In 1693 Blount used his ironic approach to argue for the validity of William and Mary. His King William and Queen Mary Conquerors argued that they were, in fact, conquerors of England, since they landed with force; therefore the people should support them as able protectors, as Hobbes had argued that the people should obey anyone who represented such force. This pamphlet was licensed by the Tory licensor, Edmund Bohun. In 1695 Parliament debated the fate of the work and had it, too, burned by the common hangman; and Bohun lost his position. Then in 1695 The Act for the licensing of the press was allowed to expire.  With the lapse of the act, Blount’s works were published as The Miscellaneous Works of Charles Blount, Esq. [London] Printed in the year 1695.