Letter 156

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CLVI. — To certain Proprietors of East-India Stock.

To all who have had East-India Stock lately transferred to them in order to qualify them for voting at the Election for Directors on Wednesday next.

GENTLEMEN AND LADIES, [Without date.]

DO you know what the oath is which you are to take before you will be admitted to vote? It is as follows: — “I, A. B., do swear that the sum of five hundred pounds, or more, of the capital stock of the United Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies doth at this time belong to me in my own right, and not in trust for any other person or persons whatsoever. So help me God”

Do not you hereby call upon God, either to help you, or to send down his curse upon you, as your oath is true or false?

If you consider this, can you take a false oath? can you call God to witness to a lie?

Are you not doing this, if the stock standing in your name is not your real and true property?

Have you not given a note of your hand for it, which is to be returned upon your retransferring the stock?

Are you either benefited or hurt by the rise or fall of the stock? If not, can you say you are proprietor at all?

Does it alter the case, though a third person lend you the money to pay for that stock which you are so to retransfer? Still you neither gain nor lose by the rise or fall of the stock: A plain proof that you have no property therein.