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LIFE AND TIMES 
 
 OF 
 
 DANIEL DE FOE. 
 
THE 
 
 LIFE AND TIMES 
 
 OF 
 
 DANIEL DE FOE: 
 
 WITH 
 
 REMARKS DIGRESSIVE AND DISCURSIVE. 
 
 WILLIAM CHADWICK 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN RUSSELL SMITH, 
 
 3G, SOHO SQUARE. 
 
 M.DO{3C.LIX. 
 
0' 
 
 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 F. PICKTON, PRINTKE, 
 
 PKURY'S PLACE, 29, Oxronn STRKET. 
 
THE PREFACE. 
 
 A PREFACE to a book is, singularly enough, always written 
 after the completion of the book ; and ought in fairness to be 
 placed at the end, rather than before the commencement. 
 
 This is not the age for Prefaces, but yet I may be pardoned 
 for transgressing the rule of the times, if I only keep within 
 the limits of moderation. What do I gather from all my 
 DE-FOE reading but the force of that passage in scripture, 
 " Cast thy bread upon the waters, and thou shalt find it after 
 many days!' Old James Foe, butcher, of Cripplegate St. Giles, 
 cast his bread upon the water when he educated his son 
 Daniel at the Stoke Newington Academy for for what? 
 Daniel was a hosier, merchant, pantile maker, statesman, 
 poet, philosopher, free-trader, novelist in short, everything, 
 from the desolate island of Juan Fernandez to a felon's cell in 
 Newgate. Daniel lived neglected and died in gaol he died 
 in 1731 ; and yet left that which is not exhausted in 1859 
 his opinions recorded during a long, turbulent, and indus- 
 trious life. The Dissenter still educates at his academy he 
 throws the bread upon the waters; and only let the fostering 
 
VI THE PREFACE. 
 
 sunshine of persecution impart its fertilizing influences upon 
 the deposited grain ; and both crowned heads and saddled 
 backs shall see the results at the appointed time of harvest, 
 by the drudge of the office, the warehouse, or the shop being 
 stamped into the writer or the patriot. The pillory and the 
 gaol shut up the hosier's shop, and gave us Robinson Crusoe. 
 Yes ! the grinder's wheel was stopped in Bedford streets and 
 lanes ; and years of imprisonment in the borough gaol gave 
 us the Pilgrims Progress instead. Blindness, neglect, and 
 persecution, gave us the Paradise Lost. A twelve years' 
 imprisonment in the Tower gave Sir Walter Raleigh leisure 
 to write a History of the World ; and imprisonment, pillory, 
 and ears-shearing, set Prynne to write as many volumes as 
 would fill an ordinary cart. Yes, and I verily believe that a 
 good ducking in the Thames or Serpentine would force John 
 Bright, the patriot of Rochdale, upon my Reform Bill, in the 
 place of his own. 
 
 WILLIAM CHADWICK. 
 
 ARKSEY, NEAR DONCASTER, 
 March 18, 1859. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER I. Eeasons for writing this book Early years of Daniel De 
 Foe Dr. Eachard's account of the condition of the clergy 
 Roger L'Estrange De Foe's Speculum Crape-gownorum The 
 Monmouth invasion John Tutchin Position of James II. 
 The Revolution The modern education scheme The Bill of 
 Eights The Book of Sports 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. Eeign of William III. The True-born Englishman De 
 Foe in Newgate Made accountant to the commissioners of the 
 glass duty De Foe on projects Education of women Occa- 
 sional Conformity King William and his Parliament De Foe's 
 earlier political pamphlets Influence of the stock-jobbers De 
 Foe on Occasional Conformity John How The Succession Bill 
 The Kentish Petition, and the Legion Memorial War of the 
 Succession De Foe on the Original Power of the People Dis- 
 solution of Parliament, and " Legion's New Paper " Death of 
 King William Accession of Queen Anne, and High Church in 
 favour De Foe's Shortest Way with Dissenters The Tackers 
 Eights of Eoyalty De Foe's trial and sentence Eobert Harley 
 Trial of William Colepeper 57 
 
 CHAPTER III. De Foe's activity while in Newgate His tracts on 
 Occasional Conformity Arrogance of High Church Hostility 
 to De Foe His name used surreptitiously 197 
 
 CHAPTER IV. " Giving Alms no Charity " Provisions for Pauperism 
 ' Marlborough and High Church Haymarket Theatre and the 
 Kit-Cat Club The Church of England in the Colonies De 
 Foe's " Consolidator " The World in the Moon Dissent and 
 Passive Obedience Case of Abraham Gill . 225 
 
Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER V. De Foe employed by Harley A Freeholder of England 
 The parliamentary franchise, and bribery at elections De 
 Foe's dangers His peace-and-union principles The ghost of 
 Mrs. Veal Evils of private madhouses Joint-stock companies 
 Drury Lane Theatre and the High-Church party The law of 
 debtor and creditor De Foe's embarrassments 269 
 
 CHAPTER VI. De Foe's Jure Divino The Union with Scotland De 
 
 Foe in Edinburgh His relations with the Government . . .309 
 
 CHAPTER VII. Swift and the Government pamphleteers Trial of 
 Sacheverell Popular hostility to the Dissenters High-Church 
 riots Discouragement of the Whigs The Calves' Head Club 
 Dissolution of Parliament and turbulence of the elections Cha- 
 racter of Jonathan Swift Justice perverted by politics . . .334 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. Taxation of the Press Attempt to assassinate Harley 
 De Foe at war with both parties A new blow at the Dissenters 
 The peace of Utrecht De Foe's defence of his principles in 
 the Review Conduct of the parties towards him His Mercator, 
 
 and opinions on commerce 374 
 
 
 
 CHAPTER IX. De Foe's opinions on the peace His pamphlets relating 
 to the succession of the house of Hanover De Foe's consistency 
 and honesty Persecuted for his free-trade principles Plots 
 against civil and religious liberty in the Commons, Etc. Sec. . .400 
 
 CHAPTER X. Illness and death of Queen Anne De Foe's Family 
 Instructor Robinson Crusoe Thanksgiving at St. Paul's 
 Complete English Tradesman, and other works De Foe's illness 
 and death . 435 
 
THE 
 
 LIFE OF DANIEL DE FOE 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 WHEN an inexperienced and untried writer presumes to take up 
 pen on a subject so various and so complex as that involved in one 
 of the most stirring lives of the most stirring characters of the most 
 stirring times of English history, he may well crave time for inves- 
 tigating the charge of presumption which might fairly be brought 
 against him for attempting such a task. How, it may be asked, 
 came you to presume to write a Life of DANIEL DE FOE ? How, 
 indeed ! I ask that question to myself How ? Well, in Septem- 
 ber, 1856, my late worthy and lamented friend John Collinson and 
 myself took one of our many excursions into the romantic district 
 of Yorkshire known as Craven ; and arriving at Skipton in the even- 
 ing, repaired to the Devonshire Hotel, had tea, and then sat down 
 in the common room, where a gentleman of business related, for 
 two hours together, how once, near Leicester, Splasher ran away 
 with him in a gig. Being fairly run down with the tongue, evi- 
 dently under less control than the horse, I left the company to 
 visit an adjoining shop for the sale of old pictures, books, china, 
 and the thousand et ceteras which are in request with the English 
 collector. I found a lot of old trash, the sweepings of the shelves 
 and floor of the library of the last of the Vavasours of Weston 
 Underwood, in Wharfedale. I selected one work, of three volumes, 
 
 1 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 in tLSiho, a b'odk'df travels through England, by some party un- 
 lcfiQ\?a/, iTkis- Work J.'s'ead, and was struck with the ready talent of 
 the writer, as well as his unscrupulousness ; for he appeared never 
 at a loss in completing his task his book. I read with admiration 
 at the power of pen displayed in it, till admiration at pen ripened 
 into wonder at other powers. I read till I came to page 102 : 
 "This town" (Doncaster), Mr. Camden says, "was burnt entirely 
 to the ground, anno 759," and was hardly recovered in his time. 
 " But," adds this mysterious author, " it now looks more decayed 
 by time than accident, and the houses, which seem ready to fall, 
 might rise again to more advantage after another conflagration." 
 The brief sentence just quoted, stimulated to inquiry as to the 
 author his pursuits, his character, his life, his times, his death ; 
 and soon placed me in possession of seventy or more works written 
 by the same ready pen ; this was followed by deeper investigation 
 into the erratic waywardness of this ingenious writer, and led me to 
 take up pen myself, in order, if possible, to throw some additional 
 ray of light on the character of one of Britain's greatest of geniuses 
 DANIEL DE FOE, the writer of Robinson Crusoe, and (may I add 
 also ?) of the Complete Tradesman a work which I consider second 
 to none in the English language, and the work which formed the 
 groundwork of the character of the great Benjamin Franklin, for 
 that work is Franklin all over. Such is my apology for writing ; 
 such is my Preface. 1 
 
 The hero of these pages, DANIEL FOE, or DE FOE, as he chose to 
 call himself when arrived at manhood, under the impression that 
 a DE, somehow or other, legitimately belonged to the Foes, or, as I 
 would read the word, Vaux of the Vauxes or Fauxes of Northamp- 
 tonshire, where his grandfather lived in comfortable circumstances 
 
 1 Since investigating and writing the life of Daniel De Foe, the supposed author of 
 the above tour, I am led to believe that the work is not his, for he died in 1731, and 
 there are facts and adventures narrated as having been seen and encountered in 1732, 
 one year after De Foe was buried in Bunhill Fields Cemetery. What must I say to 
 this ? that it does not come up to Mrs. Veal, whe died at Dover on Friday, and went 
 to have an hour's chat with her old friend Mrs. Bargrave, at Canterbury, on Saturday, 
 the day following. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 3 
 
 as a yeoman, at Elton, or Eltington, in the north-west corner of 
 that county. 
 
 It is a singular coincidence with Foe and De Foe, that Devereux 
 and Vaux or Faux are thoroughly Northamptonshire names of the 
 highest antiquity, and also of the highest respectability ; and if Foe 
 were right in the supposition that a De once constituted a part of 
 his family name, we have no alternative but to fall back upon 
 Devereux, without we suppose that the simple Foe was a Flemish 
 or Dutch or French Protestant importation, along with the straw- 
 plat of Dunstable, or the bobbin-lace of Northampton or Bedford. 
 Foe not being satisfactory, as not complete, according to the old 
 custom or usage, in spelling the family name, the De must be added; 
 so we have De Foe, a very humble imitation, no doubt, of the old 
 Northamptonshire stock, Devereux. Well, then, James Foe, a butcher 
 in Cripplegate St. Giles, came from Elton, or Eltington, where his 
 father lived, and was, according to the investigation and discovery 
 of George Chalmers, Esq., Daniel Foe, of that place, yeoman ; and 
 this James had a son Daniel, who chose to add a De to his name, 
 and thus became Daniel De Foe; and this individual is to form 
 the subject of our writing. 1 
 
 Daniel Foe, or De Foe as he called himself, was born in London, 
 in the year 1661, and, being the son of dissenting parents, his name 
 does not appear on the register of his father's parish ; for their 
 minister, Dr. Annesley, had been rector of St. Giles's till ejected by 
 Charles II., as one of the thousands ejected and persecuted even 
 unto death in that thoughtless reign ; after which he preached in 
 a conventicle or meeting-house in Little St. Helen's, Bishopsgate 
 Street, to numbers of his former parishioners; among the rest 
 was the sturdy, independent, self-relying family the Foes. Dr. 
 
 1 With respect to De Foe's Northampton shire origin, I am induced to believe, after 
 various inquiries at Elton, Elkington, Etton, Welton, and their neighbourhoods, for 
 Foes, Voes, or De Yoes, or De Foes, or any name from which Foe could be expected to 
 be derived, that James Foe, butcher, of Cripplegate St. Giles, London, never had a 
 Northamptonshire origin, but that his ancestor probably came, in the reign of Queen 
 Elizabeth, from the Spanish Netherlands, as a persecuted Protestant refugee, and that 
 Daniel De Foe was of the genus and species of the London water-cress criers of our day. 
 
 1* 
 
4 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 Annesley was much beloved by his flock, and by young Foe amongst 
 the rest, for he wrote an elegy on him : 
 
 Twas spoke from heaven, the best of men must die ; 
 
 No patent 's sealed for immortality : 
 
 Not God's own favourites can shun the stroke 
 
 Even God himself can not the law revoke ; 
 
 He can't, unless he should at once repeal 
 
 The eternal laws of Nature ; change his will ; 
 
 Declare his works imperfect, life restore 
 
 To all that 's dead, and be a God no more. 
 
 The world, whose nature is to fade and die, 
 
 Must change, and take up immortality ; 
 
 And time, which to eternity rolls on, 
 
 Must change, and be eternity begun. 
 
 All things must ever live, or man must die ; 
 
 The law 's supreme, and Nature must obey. 
 
 How vain, then, and impertinent is grief, 
 
 Which nor to dead nor living gives relief ! 
 
 Sighs for departed friends are senseless things, 
 
 Which them no help, nor us no comfort brings. 
 
 Tears on the graves, where breathless bodies lie, 
 
 Our ignorance or atheism imply ; 
 
 Ashes and sackcloth, cries and renting clothes, 
 
 Of folly more than our affection shows ; 
 
 For grief is nothing, properly, but rage, 
 
 And God himself 's the object we engage. 
 
 Of the boyhood of De Foe nothing is known, except that at the 
 early age of fourteen he was placed in an academy at Newington 
 Green, under the direction of the Rev. Charles Morton, an inde- 
 fatigable instructor and profound scholar as all the Mortons were 
 likely to be, either as persecuting Catholics at Bawtry and Scrooby, 
 where they rooted out the Pilgrim Fathers from the conventicle at 
 Scrooby Inn, or educating Daniel De Foe, the father of John 
 Wesley, Timothy Cruso (probably a schoolfellow of the writer 
 of Selkirk's history), Hannot of Yarmouth, Nathaniel Taylor, 
 Mr. Owen, and others, including Kitt Battersby, young Jenkins, 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. O 
 
 Hewling, and other Western martyrs, with Lawrence of Nantwich, 
 who was with Mr. Morton until the time when, in the year 1685, 
 he was driven by persecution from Newington Green, and obliged 
 to seek shelter and safety in the wilds of America, where he became 
 vice-president of Harvard College, New England, What De Foe 
 learnt at Mr. Morton's is not known ; but, as he was fellow-student 
 with some of the first men of the day, it is only fair to suppose that 
 he went through a rigid course of mental discipline, at a time when 
 Oliver Heywood, of North-Owram, used to preach sermons of five 
 hours' duration, and once extended even to six hours, when a dis- 
 covery was made that his watch had not been wound up, which 
 threw the preacher out one hour. As to how many languages 
 De Foe was master of, nothing is known ; for his boasting of his 
 knowledge of this or that was only produced by the insulting 
 taunts of Tutchin, Dunton, Oldmixon, Lesley, L'Estrange, and 
 others, the hired tools of arbitrary power, and the slang writers of 
 his day, who charged him with ignorance because he kept a hosier's 
 shop. This imputation of hosier was the banter of the whole 
 herd of hack scribes, the paid rabble of the pen, upon this man 
 for years. Ignorant as he was, he was more than a match for 
 the whole ignominious crew of these hired scribes, as many of 
 his works, such as the Complete Tradesman, Robinson Crusoe, 
 Jure Divino, the Tempest, and the Plague, with others, fully tes- 
 tify. De Foe had a singular mixture of wit, respectability, and 
 even personal vanity, on the one hand, and high, fixed, courageous 
 moral principle, on the other; and I could fancy that the father 
 brought the wit and vanity along with the name, while the heavy 
 principles of rigid virtue came by the mother, some fixed bright 
 star of Dr. Annesley's conventicled members. De Foe's mother's 
 name is never mentioned : so that we know not who she was ; but 
 
 Full many a gem of purest ray serene 
 The dark uufathomed caves of ocean bear ; 
 Full many a flower is born to blusli unseen, 
 And waste its sweetness on the desert air. 
 
 Many of De Foe's biographers relate a variety of anecdotes con- 
 nected with his early life, which I am obliged to omit for want of 
 
6 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 evidence of their truth ; those writers might have evidence, and on 
 that evidence they may write, but for want of that evidence I can 
 not write : I regret this, but so it is. I know I shall write only a 
 dull book, but so it must be so let it be ; a dull book for want of 
 materials, yes ! dull enough, for I will not write what is false. Now, 
 we have a character of a servant, written by James Foe, the father 
 of Daniel, when a very old man, living in lodgings in Broad Street, 
 at the Bell, in 1705. This character appears to be written for a 
 purpose, and bears in it all the precision of the style of the son, 
 Daniel De Foe, whom I believe to have been the dictator or prompter 
 of this certificate of good conduct. There was a brawl or contention 
 at Pinners' Hall Meeting-house, on the conduct of the minister, 
 and old James Foe had to write a testimonial as to the character of 
 a young woman who had lived with him sixteen years before, and 
 left with a good character, to Mr. Cave, the minister. This pro- 
 duction I believe to be the work of Daniel the son, and not of 
 James the father, which it professes to be. 
 
 Old James Foe ended his days in lodgings, and died without a 
 will, and probably in needy circumstances; and this certificate of 
 good conduct of a servant, who had left his service sixteen years 
 before with a character, is all that is recorded of him. Perhaps 
 the records of Dr. Annesley's Chapel might throw some light on 
 the subject of the marriage of James Foe, and bring to light the 
 name of the woman who was the mother of Daniel. I have the 
 impression that this woman, who has never been named by any of 
 Daniel De Foe's biographers, was a truly great woman, pious, and 
 of rigidly firm decision of character on all questions worthy of call- 
 ing forth an opinion. 
 
 Daniel De Foe having been born in 1661, and having gone to 
 Mr. Morton's academy at fourteen years of age, or in 1675, where 
 he remained for five years, or until 1680, he left that academy in 
 that year at the age of nineteen. 
 
 The first effort made by De Foe as an author, was on the Turkish 
 war, on which he took the ground of argument very opposite to the 
 popular feeling of the time, when all cried out for a British alliance 
 with the revolted Hungarians, supported by the Turks, against the 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 7 
 
 ruling power in Hungary, the Emperor of Austria; while De Foe 
 stood alone against that view of the question, and took nearly the 
 same line of argument on the Turkish alliance of that time with 
 Britain, that Mr. Cobden has taken at a later period on another 
 Turkish war with a British alliance. De Foe maintained that any 
 kind of Christianity, however corrupt, in Austria or Hungary, was 
 to be preferred to Mahomedanism in any shape; and that a sup- 
 port of the Turk against the Christian, was the support of the 
 worse against the better. 
 
 The next effort of his pen in the same year, 1682, was a 
 pamphlet in answer to Roger L' Estrange' s Guide to the Inferior 
 Clergy, entitled "Speculum Crape - gownorum ; or, a Looking- 
 Glass for the Young Academicks, new FoyFd: with Reflections 
 on some of the late high-flown Sermons. To which is added, An 
 Essay towards a Sermon of the Newest Fashion. By a Guide 
 to the Inferior Clergy. Ridentem discere verum, Quis vetat ? 
 London: Printed for E. Rydal, 1682." This work was taken 
 from Dr. John Eachard's Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt 
 of the Clergy and Religion enquired into. I have not a copy of De 
 Foe's book, for it is one of the scarcest of his pamphlets. It is 
 not, therefore, in my power to make extracts from De Foe, and I 
 may be pardoned if I use Eachard instead. The work is valuable 
 and worth quoting ; and therefore I will make the best use of my 
 judgment in choosing extracts, though I shall not pretend to make 
 any alterations such as De Foe made, almost to the ruin of the 
 Norwich crape trade ; for his coupling crape gowns and clerical 
 inferiority, at once discarded for ever the universal use of crape for 
 waistcoats, cassocks, gowns, &c., among the inferior clergy of the 
 Church of England ; and this he did by writing a burlesque on 
 honest Dr. Eachard's valuable work of advice to the clergy of the 
 English Church. 
 
 It should be stated, that after the year 1662, when the Act of 
 Uniformity passed, and the Dissenters became as respectable as 
 numerous, the high-flyers of the Church of England increased in 
 force and in the venom of their malignity against them ; and the 
 profligate press of a debased and bribed talent of a sold people, sold 
 
8 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 to France to all intents and purposes, by a degraded sovereign 
 (Charles II.) poured out all its phials of wrath and unscrupulous 
 malignity upon the heads of the only sound part of the population, 
 the Dissenting priesthood, who refused compliance with the religious 
 injunctions of the Act of Uniformity of 1662. Amongst this herd of 
 violent unscrupulous malignity stood first, as a public writer in the 
 pay of the priesthood, Roger L' Estrange, a man who, according to 
 Bishop Burnet, was the chief manager of all those angry writings, 
 which he published every week under the title of the Observator (a 
 kind of newspaper of one or more sheets), written against the 
 Dissenters, and published about the year 1681 . He was a writer 
 paid by the court and clergy, and drew considerable sums for the 
 services he rendered to the party. His vile productions raised a 
 violent ferment amongst the clergy, who, with great heat and in- 
 discretion vented their rage, both in the pulpits and common con- 
 versation, but most particularly at the elections of members of 
 Parliament, against the Dissenters : a course of procedure which 
 drew much hatred and censure upon them. L'Estrange was very 
 unscrupulous as a writer, but yet curious in searching after 
 novelties in ages past. In him I find the religious sect of the 
 " Smectymnuans, a sort of cattel whose task it was to pray and 
 preach royalty and kingly government out of repute, to make room 
 for their goodly Directory, since the whole tribe of Adonirams are 
 cut off and extinct." And it was in answer to this I/Estrange that 
 De Foe wrote his work, to show to all the world that the Dissenters 
 did not alone possess all the preaching absurdities of the kingdom, 
 nor yet all the ignorance; for the practice of sending lads from 
 Northern schools to Cambridge, by the carrier with his packhorses, 
 was a great evil in the university education in the reign of Charles II. 
 Poor youths were sent as sizars without any previous calculation as 
 to college expenses, long vacations, and all the et ceteras entailed 
 upon a youth destined for a clergyman of the Church of England. 
 Dr. Eachard, who had been master of Katharine Hall and vice- 
 chancellor of the university, complains of this want of forethought 
 as to money matters, and also of want of knowledge in the youths 
 themselves, who had frequently to be sent back by the first carrier 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 9 
 
 seated on the pack as returned goods for the North. Dr. Eachard's 
 work is very severe, but yet the high-flyers, by their malignity 
 in writing on the Dissenters, had themselves to thank for its 
 severity. 
 
 " I cannot foresee any other remedy/' he says, " but that most of 
 those university youngsters must fall to the parish, and become a 
 town charge, until they be of spiritual age. For philosophy is a very 
 idle thing when one is cold ; and a small system of divinity (though 
 it be Wollebius himself) is not sufficient when one is hungry. 
 What, then, shall we do with them, and where shall we dispose of 
 them, until they come to an holy ripeness ? May we venture them 
 into the desk to read service ? That cannot be, because not capable; 
 besides, the tempting pulpit usually stands too near. Or, shall we 
 trust them in some good gentlemen's houses, there to perform holy 
 things? With all my heart; so that they may not be called down 
 from their studies to say grace to every health ; that they may have 
 a little better wages than the cook or butler ; as also that there be 
 a groom in the house, besides the chaplain (for sometimes, to the 
 ten pounds a year, they crowd the looking after a couple of geld- 
 ings) ; and that he may not be sent from table picking his teeth, 
 and sighing with his hat under his arm, whilst the knight and my 
 lady eat up the tarts and chickens. It may be also convenient if 
 he were suffered to speak now and then in the parlour, besides at 
 grace and prayer-time ; and that my cousin Abigail and he sit not 
 too near one another at meals, nor be presented together to the 
 little vicarage. All this, Sir, must be thought of; for in good ear- 
 nest, a person at all thoughtful of himself and conscience, had much 
 better choose to live with nothing but beans and pease-pottage 
 (so that he may have the command of his thoughts and time), than 
 to have his second and third courses, and to obey the unreasonable 
 humours of some families. 
 
 " He, therefore, that foresees that he is not likely to have the 
 advantage of a continued education, had much better commit him- 
 self to an approved of cobler or tinker, wherein he may be duly 
 respected according to his office and condition of life, than to be 
 only a disesteemed pettifogger or emperick in divinity." Speaking 
 
10 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 of language, the Doctor adds, "We know, the language that the 
 very learned part of this nation must trust to live by, unless it 
 be to make a bond or prescribe a purge (which possibly may not 
 oblige or work so well in any other language as Latin), is the 
 English. 
 
 " As for divinity, in this place I shall say no more, but that those 
 usually that have been rope-dancers in the schools, oft-times prove 
 jack -puddings in the pulpit. 
 
 "The world is now, especially in discourse, for one language ; and 
 he that has somewhat in his mind of Greek or Latin, is requested 
 nowadays to be civil, and translate it into English for the benefit 
 of the company. And he that has made it his whole business to 
 accomplish himself for the applause of a company of boys, school- 
 masters, and the easiest of country divines, and has been shouldered 
 out of the Cockpit for his wit, when he comes into the world 
 is the most likely person to be kicked out of company for his 
 pedantry, and overweening opinion of himself. 
 
 " Amongst the first things that seem to be useless may be 
 reckoned the high tossing and swaggering preaching, either mount- 
 ingly eloquent, or profoundly learned. For there be a sort of 
 divines who, if they do but happen of an unlucky hard word all 
 the week, they think themselves not careful of their flock if they 
 lay it not up till Sunday, and bestow it amongst them in their 
 next preachment. Or if they light upon some difficult and obscure 
 notion, which their curiosity inclines them to be better acquainted 
 with, how useless soever, nothing so frequent as for them, for a 
 month or two months together, to tear and tumble this doctrine ; 
 and the poor people once a week shall come to gaze upon them by 
 the hour, until they preach themselves, as they think, into a right 
 understanding. 
 
 " If the minister's words be such as the constable uses, his 
 matter plain and practical to such as come to the common market, 
 he may pass possibly for an honest well-meaning man, but by no 
 means for any scholar ; whereas, if he springs forth now and then 
 in high raptures towards the uppermost heavens, dashing here and 
 there an all- confounding word ; if he soars aloft in unintelligible 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 11 
 
 huffs, preaches points deep and mystical, and delivers them as dark 
 and phantastical : this is the way, say they, of being accounted a 
 most able and learned instructor. 
 
 "This learned way of talking, though for the most part it is 
 done merely out of ostentation, yet sometimes (which makes not 
 the case much better) it is done in compliment and civility to the 
 all- wise patron, or all-understanding justice of the peace in the 
 parish ; who, by the common farmers of the town, must be thought 
 to understand the most intricate notions, and the most difficult 
 languages. 
 
 " I certainly know several of that disposition, who, if they chance 
 to have a man of any learning or understanding, more than the 
 rest in the parish, preach wholly at him, and level most of their 
 discourse at his supposed capacity, and the rest of the good people 
 shall have only a handsome gaze or view of the parson. As if 
 plain words, useful and intelligible instructions, were not as good 
 for an esquire, or one that is in commission from the king, as for 
 him that holds the plough or mends hedges. 
 
 " To omit future reward was it not always esteemed of old, 
 that correcting evil practices, reducing people who lived amiss, was 
 much better than making a high rant about a shuttlecock, and 
 talking tara-tantaro about a feather ? 
 
 " Metaphors, though very apt and allowable, are intelligible but 
 to some sorts of men, of this or that kind of life, of this or that 
 profession. For example, perhaps one gentleman's metaphorical 
 knack of preaching comes of the sea, and then we shall hear of 
 nothing but starboard and larboard, of stems, sterns, and fore- 
 castles, and such-like salt-water language : so that one had need 
 take a voyage to Smyrna or Aleppo, and very warily attend to all 
 the sailor's terms, before I shall in the least understand my 
 teacher. Now, although such a sermon may possibly do some good 
 in a coast town, yet upward into the country, in an inland parish, 
 it will do no more than Syriack or Arabick. Another he falls a 
 fighting with his text, and makes a pitched battle of it, dividing it 
 into the right wing and left wing, then he rears it, flanks it, in- 
 trenches it, storms it ; then he musters all again, to see what word 
 
12 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 was lost or lamed in the skirmish ; and so, falling on again with 
 fresh valour, he fights backward and forward, charges through and 
 through, routs, kills, takes, and then, gentlemen as you were, 
 or, as the modern serjeant would say, ' When I say, as you were, be 
 you as you was.' 
 
 "Now, to such of his parish as have been in the late wars, this 
 is not very formidable ; for they do but suppose themselves at 
 Marston Moor, Naseby, and Edgehill ; and they are not much scared 
 at his doctrine. But as for others, who have not had such fighting 
 opportunities, it is very lamentable to consider how shivering they 
 sit without understanding, till the battle is over. 
 
 " As some are very high and learned in their attempts, so others 
 there be who are of somewhat too mean and dirty imaginations. 
 Such was he who goes by the name of Parson Slip-stocking : who, 
 preaching about the grace and assistance of God, and that of 
 ourselves we are able to do nothing, advised his beloved to take 
 him in this plain similitude : A father calls his child to him, 
 saying, Child, pull off this stocking. The child, mightily joyful, that 
 it should pull off father's stocking, takes hold of the stocking, and 
 tugs, and pulls, and sweats, but to no purpose ; for stocking stirs 
 not, for it is but a child that pulls. Then the father bids the child 
 to rest a little, and try again ; so then the child sets on again, tugs 
 again, and pulls again, and sweats again, but no stocking comes ; 
 for child is but a child still. Then, at last, the father, taking pity 
 upon his child, puts his hand behind, and slips down the stocking, 
 and off comes the stocking. Then how does the child rejoice ! for 
 child hath pulled off father's stocking. Alas, poor child ! it was 
 not child's strength, it was not child's sweating, that got off the 
 stocking ; but it was the father's hand behind that slipped down the 
 stocking. Even so 
 
 "Not much unlike to this was he, that, preaching about the 
 sacrament and faith, makes Christ a shopkeeper, telling you, that 
 Christ is a treasury of all wares and commodities. And therefore, 
 opening his wide throat, cries aloud, Good people, what do you 
 lack ? What do you buy ? Will you buy my balm of Gilead, any 
 eye-salve, any myrrh, aloes, or cassia ? Shall I fit you with a robe 
 
J 
 
 LIFE OF DE FOE. 13 
 
 of righteousness, or with a white garment ? See here. ! what is it 
 you want ? Here *s a very choice armory : shall I show you an 
 helmet of salvation ; a shield, or a breastplate of faith ? Or will 
 you please to walk in, and see some precious stones? a jasper, a 
 saphyre, or a chalcedonit ? Speak ! What will you buy ? 
 
 " Now, for my part, I must needs say, and I much fancy I speak 
 the mind of thousands, that it had been much better for such an 
 impudent and ridiculous bawler as this to have been condemned 
 to have cried oysters or brooms, than to discredit after this unsanc- 
 tified rate, his profession and our religion. 
 
 " One gets to his text thus : As Solomon went up six steps to 
 come to the great throne of ivory, so must I ascend six degrees to 
 come to the high top meaning of my text. Another, thus : As 
 Deborah arose and went along with Barak to Kedesh ; so if you 
 will go along with him, and call in at the third verse of this chapter, 
 he will shew you the meaning of his text. 
 
 "Another, he fancies his text to be extraordinarily like an orchard 
 of pomgranates ; or like St. Matthew sitting at the receipt of 
 custom ; or like the dove that Noah sent out of the ark. I believe 
 there are above forty places of scripture that have been like Rachel 
 and Leah ; and there is one in Genesis, as I well remember, that is 
 like a pair of compasses stradling ; and, if I be not much mistaken, 
 there is one somewhere else, that is like a man going to Jericho. 
 
 " Now, Sir, having thus made the way to the text as smooth and 
 plain as anything, with a preface, perhaps, from Adam though his 
 business lie at the other end of the Bible, in the next place, he 
 comes to divide the text, 
 
 Hie labor, hoc opus. 
 
 Per varies casus, pe tot discrimina rerum. 
 
 Silvestrem tenui 
 
 Now, off comes the gloves; and, the hands being well chafed, he 
 shrinks up his shoulders, and stretches forth himself as if he were 
 going to cleave a bullock's head, or rive the body of an oak. But 
 we must observe, that there is a great difference of texts. For all 
 texts come not asunder alike ; for sometimes the words naturally 
 
14 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 fall asunder ; sometimes they drop asunder ; sometimes they melt ; 
 sometimes they untwist ; and there be some words so willing to be 
 parted, that they divide themselves, to the great ease and rejoicing 
 of the minister. But, if they will not easily come in pieces, then 
 he falls to hacking and hewing, as if he would make all fly into 
 shivers. The truth of it is, I have known, now and then, some 
 knotty texts, that have been divided seven or eight times over, 
 before they could make them split handsomely, according to their 
 mind. But the luckiest that I have met withal, both for wit and 
 keeping the letter, is upon those words of St. Matthew xii. 43, 
 44, 45 : When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh 
 through dry places, seeking rest, and finding none. Then he saith: 
 / will return, fyc. In which words all these strange things were 
 found out. First there was a captain and a castle. Do you see, 
 Sir the same letter ? Then there was an ingress and egress ; and 
 a regress or re-ingress. Then there was unroosting and unresting. 
 Then there was number and name ; manner and measure ; trouble 
 and trial ; resolution and revolution ; assaults and assassinations ; 
 voidness and vacuity. This was done at the same time, by the 
 same man. But to confess the truth of it, 'twas a good long text, 
 and so he had great advantage. 
 
 " But, for a short text, that certainly was the greatest break that 
 ever was, which was occasioned from those words of St. Luke xxiii. 
 28: Weep not for me, weep for yourselves; or, as some read it, 
 but weep for yourselves. It is a plain case, Sir, here are but eight 
 words; and the business was so cunningly ordered, that there 
 sprung out eight parts. Here are, says the Doctor, eight words 
 and eight parts: 1. Weep not ; 2. But weep; 3. Weep not, but 
 weep ; 4. Weep for me ; 5. For yourselves ; 6. For me, for your- 
 selves ; 7. Weep not for me ; 8. But weep for yourselves. That is 
 to say North, north by east ; north-north-east ; north-east by 
 north; north-east, north-east by east; east, north-east; east by 
 
 north ; east. Now, it seems not very easy to determine which 
 
 has obliged the world he that found out the compass, or he that 
 divided the forementioned text. I suppose the cracks will go gene- 
 rally upon the Doctor's side, by reason what he did was done by 
 
J 
 
 LIFE OF DE FOE. 15 
 
 undoubted art, and absolute industry; but as for the other, the 
 common report is, that it was found out by mere foolish fortune. 
 Well, let it go how it will, questionless they will be both famous in 
 their way, and honourably mentioned to posterity. 
 
 "Neither ought he to be altogether slighted who, taking that 
 of Gen. xlviii. 2, for his text, viz. And one told Jacob, and said, 
 Behold, thy son Joseph comet h unto thee, presently perceived, 
 and made it out to the people, that his text was a spiritual dial. 
 For, says he, here be in my text twelve words which do plainly 
 represent the twelve hours. Twelve words : And one told Jacob, 
 and said, Behold, thy son Joseph cometh unto thee. For it is not 
 said, Behold Jacob or behold Joseph ; but it is, and one told Jacob, 
 and said, Behold, thy son Joseph cometh unto thee. That is to say, 
 behold And, behold one, behold told, behold Jocob, again behold 
 and, behold said (and also) behold Behold, &c., which is the reason 
 that the word behold is placed in the middle of the other twelve 
 words, indifferently pointing to each word. 
 
 "Now, as it needs must be one of the clock before it can be two or 
 three, so I shall handle the word And, the first word in the text, 
 before I meddle with the following. And one told Jacob. This 
 word And is but a particle, and a small one ; but small things 
 are not to be despised. St. Matt, xviii. 10 : Take heed that you 
 despise not one of these little ones. For this And is as the tacks 
 and loops amongst the curtains of the tabernacle. The tacks put 
 into the loops did couple the curtains of the tent, and sew the tent 
 together. So this particle And being put into the loops of the words 
 immediately before the text, does couple the text to the foregoing 
 verse, and sews them close together. 
 
 " Another takes that of Isa. xli. 14, 15 : Fear not, thou worm 
 Jacob, &c., thou shalt thresh the mountains. Whence he observes 
 that the worm Jacob was a threshing worm. 
 
 " Now, Sir, if you be for a very short and witty discovery, let it 
 be upon that of St. Matt. vi. 27 : Which of you by taking thought 
 can add one cubit more unto his stature ? The discovery is this : 
 That whilst the disciples were taking thought for a cubit, Christ 
 takes them down a cubit lower. Notable, also, are two discoveries 
 
16 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 made upon St. Matt. viii. 1 : When he came down from the moun- 
 tain, great multitudes followed him. 1. That Christ went down as 
 well as went up when he came down from the mountain; 2. That the 
 multitude did not go hail fellow met with him, nor before him : for 
 great multitudes followed him. But I shall end all with that very 
 politick one that he makes upon St. Matt. xii. 47 : Then one said 
 unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, 
 desiring to speak with thee. But he answered and said, Wlio is 
 my mother ? and who are my brethren ? I discover now, says he, 
 that Jesus is upon business. Lastly, suppose that you were not fully 
 satisfied that pluralities were lawful or convenient, may I be so 
 bold, Sir, I pray what text would you choose to preach upon 
 against non-residents ? Certainly, nothing ever was better'picked 
 than that of St. Matt. i. 2 : Abraham begat Isaac. A clear place 
 against non-residents. For had Abraham not resided, but discon- 
 tinued from Sarah his wife, he could never have begot Isaac." 
 
 Dr. Eachard goes so far as to state that the above style of 
 preaching was common among the inferior clergy of the Church of 
 England in the reign of Charles II., and he declares that a great 
 scholar of our nation has affirmed " That such preaching as is 
 usual, is a hindrance of salvation, rather than the means to it. And 
 what he intends by usual, I shall not here go about to explain." 
 
 There can be no doubt but the common indiscriminate practice 
 of giving titles for orders was a very great evil of the time, and al- 
 lowed the entrance into the church of a class of men "totally unfit 
 in mind, and not ever likely to be worth two groats in body." 
 This was a crying evil of the day, and Dr. Eachard faithfully 
 deals with it as such. He seriously laments it, as we shall pre- 
 sently see. 
 
 "Where the ministry is pinched, as to the tolerable conveniences 
 of this life, the chief of his care and time must be spent, not in 
 an impertinent considering what texts of scripture will be most 
 useful for his parish, what instructions most seasonable, and what 
 authors best to be consulted; but the chief of his thoughts, and 
 his main business, must be to study how to live that week? 
 Where he shall have bread for his family ? Whose sow has lately 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 17 
 
 pigged? Whence will come the next rejoicing goose, or the next 
 cheerful basket of apples ? How far to Lammas or Offerings ? 
 When shall we have another christening and cakes, and who is 
 likely to marry or die ? These are very seasonable considerations, 
 and worthy of a man's thoughts. For a family can't be main- 
 tained by texts and contexts ; and the child that lies crying in the 
 cradle will not be satisfied without a little milk, and perhaps sugar, 
 though there be a small German system in the house. 
 
 " But suppose he does get into a little hole over the oven, with 
 a lock to it, call'd his study, towards the latter end of the week 
 you must know, Sir, there are very few texts of scripture that can 
 be divided, at soonest, before Friday night ; and some there be that 
 will never be divided but upon Sunday morning, and that not very 
 early, but either a little before they go, or in going to church ; 
 I say, suppose the gentleman gets thus into his study: one may 
 very near guess what is his first thought when he comes there, viz., 
 that the last kilderkin of drink is near departed ; and that he has 
 but one poor single groat in the house, and there 's judgment and 
 execution ready to come out against it for milk and eggs. Now, 
 Sir, can any man think that one thus racked and tortured can be 
 seriously intent half an hour to contrive any thing that might be of 
 real advantage to his people ? Besides, perhaps that week he has 
 met with some dismal crossings and undoing misfortunes. There 
 was a scurvy-conditioned mole that broke into his pasture and 
 ploughed up the best part of his glebe ; and a little after that came 
 a couple of spiteful, ill-favoured cows, and trampled down the little 
 remaining grass; another day, having but four chickens, sweep 
 comes the kite, and carries away the fattest and hopefullest of all 
 the brood. Then, after all this, came the jackdaws and starlings 
 (idle birds that they are!), and they scattered and carried away 
 from his thin- thatched house, forty or fifty of the best straws ; and 
 to make him completely unhappy, after all these afflictions, another 
 day that he had a pair of breeches on, coming over a perverse stile, 
 he suffered very much in carelessly lifting over his leg. Now, what 
 parish can be so inconsiderate and unreasonable, as to look for any 
 thing from one whose fancy is thus checked, and whose under- 
 
 2 
 
I 
 
 18 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 standing is thus ruffled and disordered. They may as soon expect 
 comfort and consolation from him that lies racked with the gout 
 and stone, as from a divine thus broken and shattered in his 
 fortunes. 
 
 " But we '11 grant that he meets not with any of these such fright- 
 ful disasters, but that he goes into his study with a mind as calm 
 as the evening. For all that, upon Sunday we must be content 
 even with what God shall please to send us. For, as for books, he 
 is (for want of money) so moderately furnished, that, except it be a 
 small Geneva Bible, so small, as it will not be desired to lie open of 
 itself, together with a certain Concordance thereunto belonging; 
 as also a book for all kinds of Latin sentences, called Polyanthea, 
 with some Exposition upon the Catechism (a portion of which is 
 to be got by heart, and to be put off for his own), and perhaps 
 Mr. Caryl upon Pineda, Mr. Dod upon the Commandments, and 
 Mr. Clark's Lives of Famous Men, both in church and state, such 
 as Mr. Carter, of Norwich, that uses to eat such abundance of 
 pudding ; besides, I say, these, there is scarce any thing to be found 
 but a budget of old stitched sermons, hung up behind the door, 
 with a few broken girths, two or three yards of whipcord, and 
 perhaps a saw and a hammer, to prevent dilapidations. Now, what 
 may not a divine do, though but of ordinary parts and unhappy 
 education, with such learned helps and assistances as these? No 
 vice surely durst stand before him, and heresie affront him. 
 
 " But cannot a clergyman chuse rather to lie upon feathers than 
 an hurdle, but he must be idle, soft, and effeminate ? May he not 
 desire wholesome food and fresh drink, unless he be a cheat, a 
 hypocrite, and an impostor? and must he needs be void of grace, 
 though he has a shilling in his purse after the rates be crossed ? and 
 full of pride and vanity, though his house stands not upon crutches, 
 aftd though his chimney is to be seen a foot above the thatch ? Oh, 
 how prettily and temperately may half a score children be main- 
 tained with almost twenty pounds per annum I What a handsome 
 shift a poor, ingenious, and frugal divine will make, to take it by 
 turns, and wear a cassock one year, and a pair of breeches another ? 
 What a becoming thing is it for him that serves at the altar to fill 
 
J 
 
 LIFE OF DE FOE. 39 
 
 the dungcart in dry weather, and to heat the oven and pull hemp 
 in wet ? And what a pleasant sight is it to see the man of God 
 fetching up his single melancholy cow, from a small bit of land that 
 is scarce to be found without a guide ? or to be seated upon a soft 
 and well-grinded pouch of meal ? or to be planted upon a pannier, 
 with a pair of geese or turkeys bobbing out their heads from under 
 his canonical coat, as you cannot but remember the man, Sir, that 
 was thus accomplished ? or to find him raving about the yards, or 
 keeping his chamber close, because the duck lately miscarried of 
 an egg, or that the never- failing hen has unhappily forsaken her 
 wonted nest ? 
 
 " That constitution of our church was a most prudent design, that 
 says, that all who are ordained shall be ordained to somewhat ; not 
 ordained at random to preach in general to the whole world, as they 
 travel up and down the road, but to this or that particular parish. 
 And no question the reason was to prevent spiritual pedling and 
 gadding up and down the country with a bag of trifling and insig- 
 nificant sermons, inquiring who will buy any doctrine ? so that no 
 more might be received into holy orders than the church had pro- 
 vided for. But so very little is this regarded, that if a young 
 divinity intender has but got a sermon of his own or of his father's, 
 although he knows not where to get a meal's meat, or one penny of 
 money by his preaching, yet he gets a qualification from some bene- 
 ficed man or other, who perhaps is no more able to keep a curate 
 than I am to keep ten footboys, and so he is made a preacher ; and 
 upon this account I have known an ordinary divine, whose living 
 would but just keep himself and his family from melancholy and 
 despair, shroud under his protection as many curates as the best 
 nobleman in the land has chaplains. 
 
 " Now, many such as these go into orders against the sky falls, 
 foreseeing no more likelihood of any preferment coming to them 
 than you or I do of being secretaries of state. Now, so often as 
 any such as these, for want of maintenance, are put to any unworthy 
 and disgraceful shifts, this reflects disparagement upon all that 
 order of holy men. 
 
 " I am almost confident, that since the Reformation nothing has 
 
 2* 
 
I 
 
 20 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 more hindred people from a just estimation of a Form of Prayer 
 and our holy Liturgy, than employing a company of boys or old 
 illiterate mumblers to read the service. And I do verily believe, 
 that at this very day, especially in cities and corporations (which 
 make up the third part of our nation), there is nothing that does 
 more keep back some dissatisfied people from church till service be 
 over, than that it is read by some ten or twelve pound man, with 
 whose parts and education they are so well acquainted, as to have 
 reason to know, that he has but just skill enough to read the 
 lessons with twice conning over. And though the office of the 
 reader be only to read word for word, and neither to invent and 
 expound, yet people love he should be a person of such worth and 
 knowledge as it may be supposed he understands what he reads. 
 And although for some it were too burthensome a task to read the 
 service twice a day, and preach as often, yet certainly it were much 
 better if the people had but one sermon in a fortnight or month, 
 so the service was performed by a knowing and valuable person, 
 than to run an unlearned rout of contemptible people into holy 
 orders, on purpose only to say the prayers of the church, who per- 
 haps shall understand very little more than a hollow pipe made of 
 tin or wainscot. 
 
 "The next thing that does much heighten the misery of our 
 church as to the poverty of it, is the gentry's designing not only 
 the weak, the lame, and usually the most ill-favoured of their chil- 
 dren, for the office of the ministry, but also such as they intend to 
 settle nothing upon for their subsistence ; leaving them wholly to 
 the bare hopes of church preferment. For, as they think, let the 
 thing look how it will, it is good enough for the church ; and that 
 if it had but limbs enough to climb the pulpit, and eyes enough to 
 find the day of the month, it will serve well enough to preach and 
 read service. So, likewise, they think they have obliged the clergy 
 very much, if they please to bestow two or three years' education 
 upon a younger son at the university, and then commend him to 
 the grace of God and the favour of the church, without one penny 
 of money, or inch of land. You must not think that he will spoil 
 his eldest son's estate, or hazard the lessening the credit of the 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 21 
 
 family, to do that which may tend any way to the reputation and 
 honour of the clergy. And thus it comes to pass that you may 
 commonly ride ten miles, and scarce meet with a divine that is worth 
 above two spoons and a pepper-box besides his living and spiritual 
 preferments. For, as for the land, that goes sweeping away with 
 the eldest son, for the immortality of the family ; and as for the 
 money, that is usually employed for to bind out and set up other 
 children. 
 
 " So that if it be enquired by any one, how comes it to pass that 
 we have so many in holy orders that understand so little, and that 
 are able to do so little service in the church ? if we would answer 
 plainly and truly, we may say, because they are good for nothing 
 else. For shall we think that any man that is not cursed to use- 
 lessness, poverty, and misery, will be content with twenty or thirty 
 pounds a year? For, though in the bulk it looks at first like a 
 bountiful estate, yet, if we think of it a little better, we shall find 
 that an ordinary bricklayer or carpenter, that earns constantly but 
 his two shillings a day, has clearly a better revenue, and has certainly 
 the command of more money." 
 
 The work from which these extracts are made was written anony- 
 mously, and with much secrecy ; and the author had allotted to him 
 as many professions and employments as there are companies in the 
 city of London, and as the Grand Seignior had his titles of honour ; 
 to say nothing of "rogue, raskal, dog, and thief (which may be taken 
 by way of endearment, as well as out of prejudice or offence) ; mali- 
 cious rogue, ill-natured raskal, lazy dog, and spiteful thief." Setting 
 aside all these, they travelled him quite through the map ; for he was 
 " barbarian, Indian, Turk, and Jew ; and, besides all this, business 
 went on at home all the while ; for there he was rebel, traytor, Scot, 
 Sadducee, and Socinian." This I take from the preface of the 
 second part, in answer to Sir Roger L'Estrange, the hired writer 
 and, perhaps, slang actor of that day. No doubt but Sir Roger 
 would dine with great people on this event, and perhaps receive 
 his instructions over turtle and venison, and be instructed in the 
 path of malice and untruth, how he was to make his attack, and 
 how be paid for making it. The bar ! was he at the bar? only at 
 
22 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 the bar, and then ! why, Jeffreys earned the bread of iniquity, and 
 eat it ; and on the flight from Rochester of his lord and master, 
 James, he was found by accident, and arrested by a London street 
 mob, dressed as a tramp sailor ! He was committed to Newgate, 
 or the Tower, by the Lord Mayor of London, where he ended 
 his career in ten days or a fortnight by drinking brandy. Lord 
 Chancellor Jeffreys was a slang actor, brought upon the stage by 
 royalty to stifle truth. But suppose the stiff-necked advocate of 
 the sacred exclusiveness of six-headed aristocracy could not very 
 well see, elevated to the judicial bench, as the slanderous judge, 
 his venison-chewing, soup-drinking companion what then ? His- 
 toriographer royal, with a something promised from some other 
 purse than his own ? will that do ? or poet-laureate on the first 
 vacancy, with a pension fully written and acknowledged ; and no 
 trick at stealing a march upon a confiding public, by a secret- 
 service payment for work done ? Well ! pay or no pay, write, 
 slander, cut down truth; and, if nothing better can be found, 
 perhaps my Lord Hesitation of Scrupulous Manor may find a 
 stool and desk at the Admiralty, with 100 per annum; and, if 
 that can't be done, there is the situation of Hal at Windsor Castle, 
 where the young scions of royalty may be shown how truth and 
 justice may be slandered down by dishonesty. 
 
 So much for hired writers and slang actors : they do their work, 
 and receive their reward. Roger L'Estrange, the great hired scribe 
 of the High-Church party of James II. 's reign, was caught, in the 
 times of the Civil War, at Lynne, in Norfolk, acting as a spy of 
 the Cavaliers, for which he was tried, and sentenced to be hanged in 
 Smithfield by the neck till he should be dead. He was not hanged, 
 but kept a prisoner in Newgate for several years, where he learnt 
 the manners and language of a jail, as appears so plentifully in his 
 Observators, Rye- House plot, and other destable libels against the 
 Protestant religion and liberty ; which Newgate finish, or rubbing- 
 up in education, made him so great an ornament to the cause he 
 espoused that of the Cavaliers, or High-flyers of the Church of 
 England. 
 
 In the year 1678, this same man was licensed by the Govern- 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 23 
 
 ment of Charles II, to break open houses and closets, on suspi- 
 cion only of any good liberty-in-religion-advocating pamphlets 
 in short, any pamphlets advocating the rights of the vitality of 
 Protestantism. 
 
 This convicted spy, condemned to be hanged, the well-paid tool 
 of the High-Church party a party, according to Bishop Burnet, 
 whose stupidity and ignorance as pulpiteers could only be equalled 
 by their malice and rage was the execrable corrupter of his times. 
 It was, indeed, through the penny papers, published by this mis- 
 creant, that the clergy of his party, with the vilest part of the 
 people, were corrupted; and the corruption from this man's pen 
 gave to his party the name of Tories, a name given to the wildest of 
 the wild Irish. 
 
 The hireling I/Estrange had many opponents in pamphlet- 
 writing, among whom stood the patriot M.P. for Hull, who, 
 when he wrote on behalf of liberty, had to turn printer too; for 
 such was the tyranny of the times such was arbitrary power in 
 high places, that writers, printers, and publishers, on the side of the 
 country, were put down and silenced by imprisonments; at least 
 one, Francis Smith, was thrown into Newgate ; N while I/Estrange 
 was suffered to insult the religious and wise part of the nation, to 
 vilify the Reformation and the free constitution of England, not 
 only with impunity, but with reward ; though there was really no 
 more wit than truth in his writing. He was a sort of Gathercole 
 in his day, having the same class of readers, and the same class of 
 support. As for wit, Andrew Marvel was far his superior, though 
 he had not had the benefit of his Newgate training. De Foe was 
 his master as a writer, and so was Dr. John Eachard, the author of 
 the book so freely quoted above, which I/Estrange answered in a 
 book condemned to the cheesemonger's weighed paper, whither my 
 copy is traced by a note on the back. 
 
 Oldmixon, in his History of England, writing on the supposed 
 murder of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, says of Roger I/Estrange, 
 who ridiculed the idea of that murder and the Popish Plot too, " I 
 will take the liberty with L' Estrange which his character justifies. 
 There 's no decency toward a villain that had a hundred times 
 
24 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 deserved the gallows, which he was condemned to thirty years 
 
 before." The Lord L , in the House of Peers, gives a lively 
 
 picture of this scribbler, who, without the least knowledge of its 
 strength, purity, and elegance of style, was cried up, at our two 
 famous universities, as a master of the English tongue. He pub- 
 lished a heap of libels and lampoons to rail away the Popish Plot 
 and Sir Edmundbury Godfrey's murder, in language which would 
 be a shame to our markets; and his lordship takes this notice 
 of him: 
 
 "I would not have so much as a Popish man or Popish woman to 
 remain here ; not so much as a Popish dog or a Popish bitch, nor 
 so much as a Popish cat that should pur or mew about the King. 
 We are in a labyrinth of evils, and must carefully endeavour to get 
 out of them ; and the greatest dangers of all amongst us, are con- 
 cerning Protestants, who, notwithstanding the many evidences of 
 the plot, have been industrious to revile the King's witnesses ; and 
 such an one is Roger L'Estrange, who now disappears, being one 
 of the greatest villains upon earth a rogue beyond my skill to 
 delineate, who has been the bugbear of the Protestant religion, 
 and traduced the King and the King's evidences by his notorious 
 scribbling writings, and has endeavoured, as much as in him lay, 
 to eclipse the glory of the English nation. He is a dangerous rank 
 Papist, proved by good and substantial evidence ; for which, since 
 he has walked under another disguise, he deserves of all men to be 
 hanged, and I believe I shall live to see that be his fate. He has 
 scandalized several of the nobility, and detracted from the rights of 
 his Majesty's great council the Parliament. He is now fled from 
 justice, by which he confesses the charge against him, and that 
 shews him to be guilty." This wretched felon was made a justice 
 of the peace to prosecute Protestant dissenters with his power as 
 well as with his pen. He was afterwards dubbed one of King 
 James's House of Commons, whom Echard the historian so highly 
 honours for their great fortunes and virtues. From his invectives 
 does that historian take his ribaldry against the discovery of the 
 Popish Plot, as will be observed in the sequel. 
 
 Of Roger L'Estrange, who was knighted by Charles II. for 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 25 
 
 his eminent services as a slanderous writer and a propper-up of 
 fraud against truth, I shall say no more ; indeed I should not have 
 dwelt upon his merits so long, had I not been desirous to show what 
 championship High-Church presumption, ignorance, poverty, and 
 dishonesty, had to boast of. Sir Roger L'Estrange, Knt., was the 
 champion of that party. 
 
 From Roger L'Estrange, and his vulgar and dishonest advocacy, 
 let us turn to De Foe, the object of this book. He now appears 
 embarked in trade, and located in Freeman's Court, Cornhill, in 
 1685, at which occupation he continued till 1695, a period of ten 
 years. We have seen that he was born in 1661, and that at fourteen 
 years of age he went to Mr. Morton's academy, and remained there 
 five years, which brings us to 1680, when he disappears from the 
 stage for five years. There are thus five years of his life lost to the 
 public, in which nothing is known of him, except that he wrote his 
 Speculum Crape-gownorum in 1682. What are we to make of this, 
 but that he, the son of James Foe, butcher, was placed apprentice 
 for five years with some hosier ? perhaps called Norton, for he had a 
 son Norton, afterwards a prose writer, and a dull one; the said 
 Norton Foe not possessing any of the quickness of his father as an 
 English writer. 
 
 The Monmouth invasion took place in the year 1685, the year 
 De Foe commenced business; therefore we cannot suppose that 
 his absence had anything to do with that, if we are to suppose, 
 along with others, his biographers, that he really was there as a 
 fighter. 
 
 It is very evident that Dr. Eachard was a writer with whom 
 Daniel De Foe was very intimate; for the above work abounds 
 with that style of wit which became, very early in life, his model 
 as a writer. His first work, Speculum Crape-gownorum, was, no 
 doubt, borrowed from Dr. Eachard' s work altogether. This was 
 in 1682; but in 1704, or twelve years later, De Foe wrote his 
 Consolidator, or Journey to the Moon; and this work also was bor- 
 rowed from Dr. Eachard's work above quoted. Dr. Eachard was, 
 in my opinion, godfather to Daniel De Foe as a writer, as Daniel 
 De Foe was godfather to Benjamin Franklin, Richardson, and others ; 
 
26 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 even Swift, as we have stated, borrowing his idea of Gulliver's Travels 
 from his Consolidator. 
 
 Charles II. dying on February 6th, 1685, in the fifty-fourth year 
 of his age arid the twenty-fifth of his reign, his brother, James II., 
 ascended the throne, to the great dismay of all thinking people, 
 and to the joy of another class, who poured in the most fulsome 
 addresses, offering to the new sovereign life and fortune ; and the 
 drum-ecclesiastic was sounded in his praise, because the church 
 was to be supported or protected; for these two words, in 1685, 
 were nearly synonymous, inasmuch as supported meant protected 
 against something Dissent. 
 
 James's arbitrary proceedings were so distasteful to the nation, 
 that they gave confidence to James Duke of Monmouth, the natural 
 son of Charles II., and induced him to land at Lyme, in Dorsetshire, 
 in the summer of 1685, with eighty persons (chiefly soldiers of for- 
 tune and poor Scotch noblemen), for the invasion of Great Britain 
 and Ireland. 
 
 The Duke of Monmouth was a Protestant, and a jolly, good- 
 humoured fellow, who made himself as acceptable to the thoughtless 
 class of the community as possible, by attending hunting meetings 
 and horse-matches ; and by these arts of seeking applause, brought 
 thousands of the people together at those gatherings to see him. 
 This man De Foe was very partial to, and he supported his claims 
 to the crown, believing in all truth that Charles II. was really 
 married to Lucy Walters, his mother. De Foe had seen him 
 a tall, heavy, yet handsome man ride for a plate at Aylesbury 
 races; he frequently rode his own horse at these meetings, and 
 sometimes won the race. This pandering to vulgar popularity at 
 coursing, hunting, or racing matches, was encouraged by the Earl of 
 Shaftesbury, his friend and supporter; and this injudieious sup- 
 port was the real cause of the misfortunes which befel this noble 
 and talented statesman. Lord Shaftesbury possessed an ambition 
 which, pushed forward to premature action, ended in disaster: he 
 was an unstable, clever man, and a dangerous adviser. This ill- 
 counselled invasion, supported neither by national sympathy, or- 
 ganization, arms, men, nor money, totally and at once failed, as 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 27 
 
 it must of necessity fail : the poor duke was taken prisoner, and 
 carried to London, and beheaded upon Tower Hill, on July 15th, 
 1685. It is not necessary to dwell upon this rash adventure; but 
 when De Foe affirms that he was there as a fighter, what must 
 I say? 
 
 De Foe wrote Speculum Crape-gownorum three years before this 
 rebellion ; and he must have been thoroughly known to the govern- 
 ment of James II., and watched and marked out for destruction. De 
 Foe was not there, though he says he was ; but poor Tutchin, his 
 political contemporary and fellow-labourer, was there, and was taken 
 prisoner, and tried by Judge Jeffreys, at Dorchester; and Jeffreys 
 told him the time when he went to Holland, with whom he lodged 
 when there, the manner of his coming to this country, and the 
 fictitious name he went by at the time, as well as his connection 
 with certain gentlemen in Hampshire, who raised some men at 
 Lymington for the Duke of Monmouth. 
 
 Poor Tutchin's sentence, for changing his name, was, "that he 
 should remain in prison during the space of seven years ; that once 
 every year he should be whipped through all the market towns in 
 Dorsetshire ; that he should pay a fine of one hundred marks to the 
 King, and find security for his good behaviour during life/' 
 
 When this sentence was pronounced in court, the ladies, of whom 
 there were a great number present, all burst out a crying; but 
 Jeffreys, turning towards them, said, " Ladies, if you did but know 
 what a villain this is as well as I do, you would say this sentence 
 is not half bad enough for him." The clerk of the arraigns also 
 stood up in court, and said, " JVI y lord, there are a great many 
 market towns in this county ; the sentence reaches to a whipping 
 about once a fortnight, and he 's a very young man/' " Aye," 
 says Jeffreys, " he 's a young man, but he 's an old rogue ; and all 
 the interest in England shan't reverse the sentence I have passed 
 upon him." 
 
 " But certainly no devil incarnate could rage, nor no Billingsgate 
 woman could scold, worse than this judge did at this young gentle- 
 man whilst he was at the bar; he called him a thousand rogues 
 and villains, told him that he was a rebel from Adam, that never 
 
28 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 any of his family had the least loyalty ; and, said he, I understand 
 you are a wit and poet ; pray, Sir, let you and I cap verses. Mr. 
 Tutchin smiled in his face and told him, he knew upon what 
 ground he stood, and when he was overmatched." Tutchin refused 
 to ask pardon of his inhuman judge, but addressed his Majesty as 
 follows : 
 
 "To THE KING'S MAJESTY. 
 
 " The humble Petition of John Tutchin, of Lymington, in the 
 county of Southampton, gentleman, now a prisoner in the 
 County Gaol of Dorset, 
 " Sheweth, 
 
 " That your petitioner now lies in this prison under sentence of 
 the Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys, to remain in the said prison during 
 the space of seven years ; that once every year he shall be whipped 
 through all the market towns in Dorsetshire ; that he shall pay a 
 fine of one hundred marks to the King, and find security for his 
 good behaviour during life. 
 
 " That this sentence was passed upon your petitioner under pre- 
 tence of his having changed his name ; and no matter of treason or 
 rebellion being proved upon him. 
 
 " That your petitioner has always demeaned himself according to 
 his duty required by law, and that he is ready to venture his life in 
 defence of a lawful King, that shall govern according to law, in pre- 
 servation of the liberties of Englishmen. 
 
 " That he humbly conceives the sentence passed upon him by the 
 said Jeffreys is worse than death ; and, therefore, 
 
 " Humbly prays your Majesty will be mercifully pleased to grant 
 him the favour of being hanged with those of his fellow-prisoners 
 that are condemned to die ; and 'till then your petitioner shall ever 
 pray, &c. " JOHN TUTCHIN." 
 
 On this man, so circumstanced, the mean tool of Robert Harley, 
 Alexander Pope, could write, 
 
 And Tutchin, flagrant from the scourge, below. 
 Here we have two men alike in their political views, principles, 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 29 
 
 and callings, as public writers; for both were champions of civil 
 and religious liberty in the worst of times, and as champions they 
 stood alone, or nearly so : the one named John Tutchin, of the 
 Observator ; the other, Daniel De Foe, of the Review, and of every 
 thing, from peace, free trade, union with Scotland, and the rights 
 of conscience, down to magic and flights to the moon, almanac- 
 making, &c. These two, ranged on the same side, against all the 
 powers of earth, as writers, never could agree. Tutchin was 
 quarrelsome and imperious, and always charging De Foe with being 
 illiterate, and keeper of a hosier's shop ; to which De Foe would 
 reply, that he would translate four languages with him or Tom 
 Brown for twenty pounds. Perhaps De Foe might trench on John's 
 especial ground, when he used to boast that he had been concerned 
 in the Monmouth invasion : a pretension which John Tutchin 
 might fairly call in question, for that was his especial field of 
 honour. De Foe had no right to be robbing Tutchin of his laurels, 
 for he had ground enough and to spare, if he had not been eaten up 
 with vanity and ambition. Had he not been in Newgate twelve 
 months, and had he not stood in the pillory at the Royal Exchange, 
 and in Cheapside, and at Temple Bar ; had he not been advertised 
 in the London Gazette by the Secretary of State, and fifty pounds 
 offered for his apprehension, and his person described in that Hue 
 and Cry ; and, as for his writings too, had he not had four of his 
 productions at least burnt in Palace Yard, by the hands of the 
 common hangman, by an express vote of the House of Commons ? 
 What could the man want more? why trench on John Tutchin? 
 But Tutchin had been tried for high treason. Well : but if he 
 had was not De Foe confined in Newgate for several months, in 
 1713, on a charge of high treason, and was he not set at liberty, 
 without trial, by Queen Anne and her confidential friend and 
 minister, Robert Harley ; and was not the warrant for his release 
 signed by the Secretary of State Bolingbroke? They could not hang 
 the man for doing their work : De Foe had been writing What if 
 the Queen should die ? at the instigation of some one, and he was 
 not to be hanged for it. When De Foe claimed the privilege of 
 boasting that he had been concerned in the Monmouth invasion, he 
 
30 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 ought to have reflected that he wrote Speculum Crape-gownorum, one 
 of the most offensive pamphlets to the highflyers of the Church of 
 England that ever was written, only two years before this invasion. 
 There is no doubt but Daniel De Foe would be known well to all 
 the tools, police, or spies of James II., and his whereabouts would 
 be strictly inquired after, during all the murdering by law of the 
 eight hundred prisoners in Dorsetshire and Somersetshire, by Judge 
 Jeffreys. De Foe was a great admirer of the Duke of Monmouth, 
 and no doubt but he would both write and talk in his favour in all 
 companies. De Foe was no keeper at home ; for he was a wit, and 
 the life of all companies. It is highly probable that this Mon- 
 mouth plot was, like a great many other plots, Roman Catholic or 
 Presbyterian, got up by the King or his friends, during his un- 
 bounded popularity in the nation, to free himself at once from his 
 most dangerous because Protestant rival ; and with him some hun- 
 dreds of individuals who would be his greatest tormentors when he 
 set fairly to work to re-establish the Roman Catholic religion within 
 these realms, by the forms of law acts of Parliament. 
 
 In the reign of James II., or in that of his brother, when he 
 acted plot-master for that brother, many, very many innocent per- 
 sons were murdered by law, either to gain a point in kingcraft, or 
 to revenge the death of their father, Charles I. These two reigns 
 forcibly remind us of the tremendous ground-swell which we always 
 find to exist at sea for many hours after a storm. 
 
 The storm of the execution of Charles I. produced a political 
 ground-swell in the British dominions, which did not subside till 
 the death of Queen Anne, in 1714, a period of sixty years; during 
 which, one king had to run away, and two sovereigns were brought 
 to an untimely grave by the contentions of parties in the state, and 
 the flagrant want of principle of their ministers and the national 
 delegates assembled in the House of Commons. 
 
 Poor Jam.es II. appeared to have received certain high notions 
 of the kingcraft science of his grandfather, James I. ; and he was 
 always attempting to display this science in carrying on the affairs of 
 his government. No monarch in Great Britain ever had the same 
 opportunities freely given to him nay, thrown after him, and even 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 31 
 
 upon him by his people; and yet he did not know how to use 
 those advantages when made ready to his hands. Two millions 
 a year were given to him by his Parliament for carrying out 
 his government requirements; and the first step he took was to 
 raise twenty thousand men on Hounslow Heath as a private army, 
 which he took immediate steps to officer with Irish Papists, to the 
 superseding of Protestant English officers; and the British regi- 
 ments of the line were tampered with in every way, by the intro- 
 duction of wild Irish Papists into the ranks, and also into the 
 commissions. The church was handled in the same point-blank, 
 peremptory way. His sense of kingcraft, his poor old grandfather's 
 legacy, was his ruin. He ran his head against every interest, right, 
 privilege, or prejudice in his dominions ; and he did this at once, 
 to make up for lost time, for he was getting old, and life is short. 
 It was his design to make all his subjects Roman Catholics, and 
 vassals of France ; and he intended to assist the French King to 
 overturn the Protestant liberties of Europe, beginning with Hol- 
 land. At the very time of the Revolution, 1688, steps were being 
 taken by James and Louis XIV. for the carrying out this measure, 
 which was to be consummated by the old project of Richelieu and 
 Mazarine, of uprooting all the Protestantism of Europe, and erecting 
 in its place the dearly cherished project of the universal monarchy 
 of France. This was the grand secret of the success of the glorious 
 revolution of 1688 in England. William was forced upon his 
 adventure by Holland, Sweden, Austria, and even the very Pope 
 himself, who might appear to sacrifice the spiritual interests of his 
 sovereignty for the sake of the temporalities of his Italian king- 
 dom, threatened to be swallowed up by the all-grasping kingly gripe 
 of the ambitious French monarch. The fourteen thousand Dutch 
 soldiers, taken from the garrisons in Holland for William's security 
 in England, were made up by a like force being lent to Holland by 
 Sweden, for the security of Holland in the mean time. This shows 
 the movement to have been European, and not personal on the part 
 of the Prince of Orange. 
 
 It should be stated, that Lord Danby, afterwards Duke of Leeds, 
 was a main instrument in bringing about the glorious Revolution of 
 
32 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 1688, by turning match-maker between the Prince of Orange, the 
 King's nephew, and Mary, James's daughter, the young lady being 
 only fifteen years of age ; and he managed affairs so adroitly, that 
 the King was forced into the measure by his necessities and de- 
 pendence on his Parliament. James, the father of the young lady, 
 was commanded by his brother to submit to the match ; and when 
 all was ready, the plot exploded, and the King had an intimation of 
 two hours only, before the event was completed ; and poor James, 
 the Duke of York and father of the bride, had only sixty minutes 
 allowed him to give his consent, and reconcile himself to the loss of 
 his daughter. Lord Danby ! immortal honours rest upon that hal- 
 lowed name. The Duke of Leeds, as the representative of his great 
 ancestor, must receive his reward national respect and national 
 gratitude to the name. This grand master-plot of a great states- 
 man, saved this kingdom, perhaps, from unheard-of troubles, and 
 even from loss of nationality. It was a grand move in state policy, 
 made in favour of the Protestantism of Europe, against the pretensions 
 of the French monarchy, in its aspirations after universal dominion. 
 " The French King well knew the blow he had sustained, and 
 betrayed his resentment to Mountague, the English ambassador, 
 when he said of the Duke of York, that he had given his daughter 
 to the greatest enemy he had in the world. Upon the ambassador's 
 return, the Lord Danby asked him how the King of France received 
 the news ; he answered, As he would have done the loss of an army ; 
 and spoke very hardly of the duke for not acquainting him with it. 
 Lord Danby answered, He wronged him ; for he did not know of 
 it an hour before it was published, and the King himself not above 
 two hours. This was a master-piece in the earl, who, since he was 
 Duke of Leeds, has declared in print, that he will not suffer that 
 part of his service to be buried in oblivion a part that would never 
 be forgiven by the duke and the Romish party." All this I take 
 verbatim from Mr. Lawrence Echard, the historian of the day, 
 archdeacon of Stowe, and chaplain to the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury : a staid respectable authority, living and publishing at the 
 time. Mind not John Eachard, De Foe's pattern-card for wit and 
 smart writing, even on things sacred. The two, John and Law- 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 33 
 
 rence, were not related, for their names were spelt differently, for 
 one was Eachard, and the other Echard. It is well to notice this 
 difference, for these two men have frequently been confounded as 
 the same individual, though two individuals could not be more 
 dissimilar : the one eminent, no doubt, in his time, as a divine and 
 a wit ; and the other equally illustrious, in his way, as a historian. 
 
 On this same authority, that of Lawrence Echard, it may be 
 stated, that on the 9th of September, 1688, the French Minister, 
 D'Avaux, presented a memorial to the States General to the effect : 
 "That his master understood that their design was against 
 England; and in that case he signified to them, that the ties of 
 friendship and ALLIANCE between him and the King of Great 
 Britain would oblige him not only to assist, but also to look upon 
 the first act of hostility against him to be a manifest rupture of the 
 peace, and a breach with the crown." The answer returned to 
 England, on an address from that crown, was, " That they armed 
 in imitation of his Britannick Majesty ; and that they were long 
 since convinced of the ALLIANCE into which he had entered with 
 France, and which had been owned to them by the Count d'Avaux." 
 There must have been an alliance between France and England 
 when the French monarch offered to send over to England 40,000 
 French troops to James' assistance; an offer which the Earl of 
 Sunderland, the English Prime Minister, dared not accept. 
 
 This offer being rejected, the French King offered to march 
 these same troops into Holland, in order to prevent the Prince of 
 Orange's descent upon England, which offer was rejected also. 
 James knew well, that 14,000 Dutch Protestants, under the com- 
 mand of his son-in-law the Prince of Orange, would be more safe 
 guests in his Protestant dominions than 40,000 Papists under the 
 King of France. 
 
 All this time poor James was not inactive in fitting out his fleet, 
 and giving out commissions for the augmenting his army, his chief 
 reliance being on Lord Tyrconnel, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, to 
 whom he sent positive and immediate orders for whole regiments of 
 Irish Papists a class of troops on whom he chiefly relied to be 
 sent to England with the least possible delay ; the men who shortly 
 
 3 
 
34 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 afterwards, in Berkshire and Oxfordshire, when they were disbanded 
 without payment of arrears of wages, threatened to put everything 
 to fire and sword, and attained, through their great zeal for the 
 Roman Catholic faith, and threatenings to all Protestants, the long- 
 remembered appellation of James's Apostolical Dragoons. On the 
 23rd of September the English ambassador at the Hague received 
 direct information, officially from that court, as to the designs of 
 the Prince of Orange, which he at once communicated to his master 
 in England, with the intelligence also that several English lords and 
 gentlemen had already crossed the sea, and lay privately in Holland, 
 ready to accompany the Prince to England; these were Sidney, 
 brother to the Earl of Leicester ; Sir Rt. Peyton, Sir Rowland Gwyn, 
 Dr. Burnet, and others ; Dr. Burnet being chaplain to the Prince of 
 Orange, friend, companion, and minister, and perhaps the chief con- 
 coctor of the whole scheme. Besides the above constant guests at 
 the Hague, there were friends, visitors, and correspondents in Eng- 
 land, and amongst these the Earl of Shrewsbury, Admiral Herbert, 
 Mr. Herbert his cousin, Mr. Russell, Lord Mordaunt, and the Earl 
 of Wiltshire ; and the Earl of Danby, the first man in the good 
 work, " a man of a vast reach, and born for great attempts, who had 
 a great share in this, as he had in the marriage of the Princess of 
 Orange ;" next William Cavendish, Earl of Devonshire ; the Earl 
 of Dorset, the Lord Lovelace, Lord Delamere, the Duke of Norfolk, 
 the Marquis of Halifax, and his son Lord Eland ; the Marquis of 
 Winchester ; the Lord Pawlett, his son ; the Lord Willoughby, son 
 to the Earl of Lindsey ; Mr. Lister, Mr. Hampden, Mr. Powle, &c., 
 with several eminent citizens of London. Besides the above, there 
 were many others, wishing well to the cause, and prepared to act 
 when it might be done with safety : a numerous party this last, no 
 doubt, for it is pleasant to be fighting on the winning side ! 
 
 Poor James, frightened out of his wits, sent for the bishops the 
 very men he had committed to the Tower, and begged their assist- 
 ance ; he restored the charter to the city of London, and removed 
 the Anabaptist lord mayor, to make room for some one more accept- 
 able to the civil authorities of the metropolis ; he also proclaimed a 
 general pardon to all criminals, excepting Sir Robert Peyton, Sir 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 35 
 
 Rowland Gwyn; Dr. Gilbert Burnet, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, 
 and now chaplain at the Hague to the Prince of Orange ; Major 
 Wildman, Samuel Johnson, and others, twelve altogether, but of 
 less note. 
 
 Lord Chancellor Jeffreys, who in some measure owed his pre- 
 ferment to the gaining of the charter of London, was now forced to 
 carry it back to the place from whence it was taken. The Bishop of 
 Winchester, visitor of Magdalen College in Oxford, was ordered to 
 settle that society according to rule and statute. A proclamation 
 was issued for restoring corporations to their ancient charters, liber- 
 ties, rights, and franchises, Popish lord lieutenants, justices of the 
 peace, mayors, recorders, and other magistrates, were displaced, and 
 Protestants put in their rooms ; so that, in the space of about twelve 
 days, that formidable fabric was, in effect or in a great measure, 
 demolished, which the Romish cabal had been four years erecting. 
 But still James never heard any favourable news but he stopped his 
 measures of redress of grievances for the time, and made no further 
 advances in the promised work of restoration till some unfortunate 
 intelligence of the advance of the Prince of Orange, or fresh arrivals 
 of nobility to his camp, when James returned again to his work of 
 restitution. Lord Danby, at York, was alone a tower of strength ; 
 for this man, during the time that the Prince of Orange remained 
 at or about Exeter, ten days or more after his landing at Torbay, 1 
 and the King was uncertain what steps to take for meeting the 
 Prince in the field, had the good fortune to intercept a letter at York, 
 informing James, at Salisbury, that Lord Danby was raising friends 
 at York for the Prince of Orange, and that he had now got 4000 
 
 J The inhabitants of the clothing districts of the west of England have long been 
 noted for their zealous, independent Protestant Dissenting principles j which fact pro- 
 bably induced the Protestant Duke of Monmouth to land there, and also, three years 
 afterwards, the Prince of Orange. This district swarmed with Protestant adherents, 
 who would have gladly turned out in a body on the landing of the Prince of Orange at. 
 Torbay, had not the lively recollection of the monster Judge Jeffreys, and his hangings 
 and floggings, paralyzed all decisive action for a time ; but after the subsidence of the 
 first panic, the Prince of Orange might have collected a small army in this district, to 
 force his way to the metropolis, had he required one : so thoroughly were the whole 
 population devoted to his cause the independency of the freeholder, the protection of 
 the laws, and the vitality of Protestantism. 
 
 3* 
 
36 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 adherents. This letter was read by Lord Danby to his council of 
 war, and then was transmitted by post to James, after another ' ' " 
 had been added to the figures. This happy thought had a direful 
 effect in the council of James, producing such serious depression as 
 completely to paralyze his warlike preparations, and cause him to 
 pause, and think of returning to London and giving up all in 
 despair. Probably this letter was the cause of no action taking place 
 between the two armies, and of the final triumphant advance of 
 the Prince of Orange to Reading, there to look after Lord Fever- 
 sham's disbanded Apostolical Irish Dragoons, who had been set at 
 liberty to plunder and burn as they liked, to the number of 4000, 
 and to raise contributions upon the inhabitants of Uxbridge and 
 the neighbouring towns, villages, and hamlets. These men, wild 
 and drunk, rode from town to town threatening to burn down every 
 house, and cut the throats of the " bloody Protestants/' The coun- 
 ties of Buckingham, Oxford, and Berks, were in the greatest state 
 of consternation ; and the terrors of the "Irish night" (a night long 
 remembered in those several counties as a solemn threatening era 
 in history, worthy of being handed down to their children's children) 
 were wafted to London, Nottingham, York, Derby, and other centres 
 of organized disaffection. London and Westminster were in the 
 greatest state of alarm ; and all the City trainbands were called out 
 and kept under arms all night, to wait the flood-tide of Irish insub- 
 ordination, raging mad for arrears of pay, food, &c., with nothing but 
 a prospect of being cut up as marauders by William's troops, push- 
 ing forward by forced marches to London, to save all there from fire 
 and plunder. 
 
 It was in this state of excitement that Daniel De Foe rode to 
 Reading, to see as well as hear ; for it was reported in London that 
 Reading and the neighbouring towns and villages had been totally 
 destroyed by James's Apostolicals, disbanded and thrown destitute 
 upon the inhabitants. Here De Foe waited the arrival of the Prince 
 of Orange, with whose troops he fell in, as a volunteer, and as such 
 marched on London. 
 
 The Duke of Norfolk was at Lynne, in Norfolk, acting in his ca- 
 pacity as Earl Marshal of England, embodying the county militia ; 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE, 37 
 
 receiving addresses from the mayor and corporation on behalf of 
 f< the laws, liberties, and Protestant religion/' After a public meet- 
 ing in the town on or about the 7th of December, 1688, the Duke 
 of Norfolk and his retinue dined with the mayor, with great accla- 
 mations, the militia being ordered out ; and " our tradesmen, sea- 
 men, and mobile, have this morning generally put orange ribbons 
 on their hats, echoing huzzas to the Prince of Orange and the Duke 
 of Norfolk. All are in a hot ferment : God send us a good issue 
 of it." 
 
 This move of decisive action on the part of the Earl Marshal of 
 England gave the impulse to the county of Norfolk, which at once 
 declared for the Protestant religion and the Prince of Orange. 
 
 On the 21st of November the Earl of Devonshire took up his 
 quarters at Derby, and issued his county address to the mayor, 
 lamenting the sad state of things " by so many invasions, made of late 
 years, on our religion and laws" suggesting the calling a free Parlia- 
 ment immediately for the settling of all grievances, with a declaration 
 to the effect that the signers of this document " will, to our utmost, 
 defend the Protestant religion, the laws of the kingdom, and the rights 
 and liberties of the subject" Two days after there was a general 
 rendezvous at Nottingham, consisting of a great number of the 
 nobility and gentry, who subscribed a remarkable declaration, " in 
 which they hoped that none would be bugbeared with the opprobri- 
 ous terms of rebels, by which the court would fright them to become 
 perfect slaves to their tyrannical usurpations. They owned it rebel- 
 lion to resist a king who governed by law ; but to resist a tyrant, 
 who made his will his law, was nothing but a necessary defence" 
 
 It was to this man, William Cavendish, at Nottingham, that the 
 Princess Anne of Denmark repaired in the night of the 25th of 
 November, which the King only heard of on the following day, 
 when he entered his palace in tears, exclaiming, " God help me ! 
 my own children have forsaken me ! " 
 
 The sudden disappearance of the Princess Anne caused the ut- 
 most consternation in London, the populace taking up the cry that 
 the Papists had murdered her or confined her to a prison ; and the 
 guards joined in the excitement, and were ready to take vengeance 
 
38 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 for the outrage. Luckily, at this moment of terror, a letter from 
 the Princess to the Queen was produced, showing that she was safe 
 and alive, and had fled to Nottingham, to place herself under the 
 protection of William Cavendish, Earl of Devonshire a man who 
 was left about the throne, for this same woman's protection, by 
 William III. until the year 1710, when he was deprived of all 
 his employments at court, along with his party, to make room for 
 Harley, St. John, Charles Leslie (the writer of the Rehearsal until 
 1709), Dean Swift, Matthew Prior, Mrs. Masham, Mrs. Manley, 
 Dr. Oldsworth, and other High-Church conspirators, who took pos- 
 session, and held possession too, of this weak woman, as Queen 
 Anne, for about four years, when they heart-broke her with their 
 intrigues and contentions, all honest men having been driven away 
 from the presence of her Majesty four years before her untimely 
 decease. How true is it, that fool ground in a mill will come out 
 ground-fool ! How could this woman ever forget the position in 
 which she was placed on the night of the 25th of November, 1688, 
 when she fled to Nottingham, under the protection of Compton, 
 Bishop of London, and he disguised in his old military accoutre- 
 ments, which he had worn when in the army a profession which 
 he ought never to have left ? 
 
 This soldier-bishop did more, by his preaching and adulatory doc- 
 trines, to bring the King into his present deserted position, than any 
 other man in the kingdom. 
 
 Of this champion of the church militant De Foe thus writes, when 
 alluding to this Nottingham march : 
 
 Treason and Loyalty go hand in hand, 
 Till on the dangerous precipice they stand ; 
 Embroil } d with laws, and injur'd nation's arms, 
 Guilt breaks the circles, and dissolves the charms : 
 The wretch that fawns with hypocritick breath, 
 Deserts him l in the agonies of death ; 
 
 1 When King James was taken at Sheerness, in the county of Kent, and fell into 
 the bands of the rabble of Feversham, whether there was real danger of his person or 
 not, is not material, but the King apprehending it, his Majesty applied himself to a 
 clergyman who was there, in words to this effect : " Sir, "Tis men of your cloth who 
 have reduced me to this condition ; I desire you will use your endeavours to still and 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 39 
 
 What verse the blacknd party can expose, 
 
 Art sinks, as the infernal mischief grows ; 
 
 No words the horrid principle can tell, 
 
 'Tis born of crime, and laid too deep for hell. 
 
 Since, then, we never can the cheat explain, 
 
 Let 's quit the fact, and dwell upon the men. . 
 
 Compton, with ecclesiastick dignity, 
 
 Supports the regal power, and gives the lie * 
 
 To all the usurpations of the church, 
 
 Leaves Becket, Laud, and Sibthorp in the lurch ; 
 
 The high canonick grandeur he pulls down, 
 
 And sets the mitre underneath the throne ; 
 
 Owns the supremacy of kingly right, 
 
 And makes the crosier to the crown submit ; 
 
 Believes the jus divinum, freely swears 
 
 His passive homage to the unknown heirs ; 
 
 Lays all his senses in a misty sleep, 
 
 And took those oaths he kneic he could not keep ; 2 
 
 And as with hair-brain'd loyalty he swore, 
 
 H' had scrupl'd none had there been forty more. 
 
 Had he been faithful to his sovereign lord, 
 And fought him with the weapons of the word; 
 Had he with honest duty first appeal'd, 
 And all his sense of liberty reveal'd, 
 'T had been less crime his sovereign to instruct 
 Than first deceive the prince he would reject ; 
 
 quiet the people, and disperse them, that I may be freed from this tumult." The gen- 
 tleman's answer was cold and insignificant, and going down to the people, he returned 
 no more to the King ; and several of the gentry thereabout, and clergy, who had for- 
 merly preached and talked of this mad doctrine before, never offered the King their 
 assistance in that distress, which, as a man, whether a prince or no prince, any man 
 would have done ; which, therefore, to me renders them suspected in the integrity of 
 their design, when they pretended to an absolute submission, viz., that they meant 
 only that they expected it from their neighbours, whom they designed to oppress under 
 the protection of this notion, but resolved never to practise the least part of it them- 
 selves, if ever it should look towards them. 
 
 1 He gave the lie, by his practice, to all those former priests that had raised the 
 power of ecclesiastic authority, for he absolutely submitted it all to the regal dignity 
 and divine right of the Prince. 
 
 2 They that took this absolute oath knew, when they took it, they were not able to 
 keep what they swore, if they were put to the extremity ; and so it afterwards appeared. 
 
40 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 In 's future conduct, we should all confess, 
 H' had shown the statesman more, the villain less ; 
 Rebellion would have had some fair pretence ; 
 He might have reconcil'd it to his sense. 
 Some juster reasons then he might have shown 
 To put the mitre off, the helmet on ; 
 Law, right, and justice, would in league appear 
 To make the man of God a man of war. 
 But he 1 that had his blinder duty swore, 
 And dipp'd his hands in arbitrary power ; 
 That leagued with hell his country to betray, 
 And pull the church down first the shortest way, 
 What right bad he to liberty and law, 
 Whom neither this could drive nor that could draw ? 
 The passive priest with sword and pistol rides, 
 And for the church's safety now provides ; 
 Obedience buckles down to Preservation, 
 And quits Allegiance to secure the nation ; 
 Forgets his random oaths, consults his sense, 
 And clouds his perjury with Providence. 
 
 On the receipt of the " 0" letter of the Earl of Danby at Salis- 
 bury, his Majesty became panic-struck, bled freely from the nose, and 
 was completely overpowered in mind and body, which gave time for 
 the wavering in his camp to consider of the best means of escaping 
 from their forlorn and perilous condition. Most of them at once 
 went over to the Prince of Orange at Exeter, while poor James, the 
 dry martyr of Daniel De Foe the priestly sacrifice to sycophancy 
 and want of principle poor fellow ! deceived, misled, betrayed, and 
 neglected returned to London as he could, leaving Lord Tyrcon- 
 nePs Apostolical Dragoons, wild Irish Papists, at Reading, in Berk- 
 shire, under the command of the Earl of Feversham, as some ima- 
 ginary barrier between himself and his victorious son-in-law, now 
 at Salisbury, in the adjoining county of Wilts, and working his way 
 
 1 Had not the person whom this character belongs to supported the doctrine of abso- 
 lute obedience to the crown, his after conduct had been less liable to censure ; for, 
 though without question he was in the right of it at last, yet by his own professed doc- 
 trine, which he taught and encouraged in all people, it was downright perjury and 
 rebellion in him, whatever it would have been in another. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 41 
 
 by secure, yet rapid, strides towards the metropolis. In this dilemma, 
 poor deserted James wrote from Whitehall, December 10th, 1688, 
 a letter to the Earl of Feversham, to the effect that, as he had no 
 confidence in his army, he had come to the resolution to leave the 
 kingdom, " to endeavour to secure himself the best he could/' On 
 the receipt of this letter, the Earl of Feversham disbanded all his 
 Irish troops, and left them at free quarters on the inhabitants of 
 Reading, Henley, and the neighbouring towns, villages, and hamlets, 
 to the dismay of the inhabitants, who fled in all directions, many 
 going to London with the news that Reading was burnt down, with 
 Uxbridge, Maidenhead, Henley, &c. 
 
 The Prince hearing from the Earl of Feversham the state of the 
 King's army, disbanded by royal authority, and also from the flying 
 inhabitants of at least four counties, of the firing of towns and vil- 
 lages, and the marching on London by this disbanded apostolical 
 rabble of a soldiery without commander, officers, or pay, at once 
 issued the following proclamation from Henley-on-Tames, the 13th 
 of December, 1688 : 
 
 " BY THE PRINCE OP ORANGE. DECLARATION. 
 
 " Whereas we are informed, That divers regiments, troops, and 
 companies, have been encouraged to disperse themselves in an un- 
 usual and unwarrantable manner, whereby the public peace is very 
 much disturbed, we have thought fit hereby to require all colonels 
 and commanders- in-chief of such regiments, troops, and companies, 
 by beat of drum or otherwise, to call together the several officers 
 and soldiers belonging to their respective regiments, troops, and 
 companies, in such places as they shall find most convenient for their 
 rendezvous, and there to keep them in good order and discipline ; 
 and we do likewise direct and require all such officers and soldiers 
 forthwith to repair to such place as shall be appointed for that pur- 
 pose by the respective colonels or commanders-in-chief, whereof 
 speedy notice is to be given unto us, for our further orders. 
 
 " Given at our court at Henley, the thirteenth day of December, 
 1688. 
 
 "W. H. PRINCE OF ORANGE." 
 
42 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 During all these doubts and difficulties, in this ever-to-be-remem- 
 bered month of December, 1688, the Earl of Tyrconnel threatened 
 great opposition in Ireland, by setting the Papist population upon 
 the Protestant ; and in his measures he was heartily supported by 
 Sir William Temple, the patron of Swift and Stella, if not the father 
 of both, as has been seriously believed and affirmed by parties worthy 
 of attention as authorities. The Earl of Clarendon too, who had 
 gone over to the Prince under the expectation of succeeding the 
 Earl of Tyrconnel in the government of Ireland, became one of the 
 Prince's most bitter opponents, through mere mortification at being 
 disappointed in his ambitious designs. The English army, too, be- 
 came so jealous of the Dutch troops, that disasters threatened on 
 every hand, in England as well as Ireland, so that the Prince knew 
 not whom to trust or what to do. He dared not trust the English 
 army, and he could not spare his Dutch troops from London on any 
 demand whatever; so Ireland was left for a considerable time in 
 a most doubtful and affrighted position, the Protestant population 
 coming over to England in large numbers for security. But, of all 
 parties in this time of change, the clergy, who had preached passive 
 obedience smdjure-divino principles to such a point that they scarcely 
 knew where to put themselves, were subjected to the greatest amount 
 of contempt; for they had sworn allegiance to one king on the jure- 
 divino principle, and now they were prepared to swear allegiance to 
 another on the de-facto principle, and one of these opposed to the 
 other ; they had sworn to serve both, but their real intention was 
 to serve only one, and that James, the man whom they had decoyed 
 iuto a snare, and then sacrificed. " The prevarication of too many 
 (clergy) in so sacred a matter contributed not a little to forward the 
 growing atheism of the present age. The truth was, the greatest 
 part of the clergy had entangled themselves so far with those strange 
 conceits of the divine right of monarchy, and the unlawfulness of 
 resistance in any case, and they so engaged themselves, by asserting 
 these things so often and so publicly, that they did not know how 
 to disengage themselves in honour or conscience." So writes Bishop 
 Burnet, in his History of his Own Times : the man who, beyond all 
 other men, influenced the success of the glorious revolution of 1688 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 43 
 
 by his example, judgment, and labour in the good cause, and yet 
 was refused ordination to the bishopric of Salisbury by San croft, 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, when his sovereign had appointed him 
 to the office; and so the Bishop of Salisbury was ordained by 
 commission. 
 
 The declaration of rights was made by his Highness the Prince 
 of Orange to the people of England on his landing at Torbay in 
 November, 1688, on which compact, offered to the people by the 
 Prince (which " affirms, that the religion of the people shall be 
 maintained, and that effectual care shall be taken that the inha- 
 bitants shall neither be deprived of their religion nor of their civil 
 rights, which is so much the more necessary, because the greatness 
 and security both of kings, royal families, and of all such as are in 
 authority, as well as the happiness of their subjects and people, de- 
 pend in a most especial manner upon the exact observation and 
 maintenance of these their laws, liberties, and customs"), the great 
 mass of the dissenting population of England made common cause 
 against King James, with the clergy and members of the Church of 
 England, for the support of the Prince of Orange. Now, in the face 
 of this declaration of rights, and the support offered by the dissenting 
 population of England for the deposing, by the power of Dutch 
 troops, the representative of hereditary right in England, because 
 that representative, King James II., had ruled by his arbitrary 
 will, to the contravention of laws made by the delegated free- 
 holders of England in Parliament assembled, the Queen Anne, the 
 successor of the Prince of Orange, who owed her right to the throne 
 of these realms through the compact made at this revolution of 1688 
 between Prince and people, continued nevertheless to reign as Queen 
 of England in direct opposition to the spirit of this national compact, 
 solemnly entered into between Prince and people at that time. The 
 vitality of Protestantism is the foundation of the constitution esta- 
 blished in 1688 by Prince and people ; and any act of the court 
 tampering with that vitality, is a direct infringement on the spirit of 
 that compact, and as such is a violation of the spirit of the British 
 constitution, as by agreement settled. 
 
 May I ask what is the Privy Council scheme of education of our 
 
44 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 time ? What is its object? Is it to check the vitality of Protest- 
 antism? or is it to strengthen and extend that vitality ?' Has it 
 an object : is there any statecraft or state policy lurking below or 
 behind it ? Is it a second Church-of-England establishment, created 
 out of the taxes, in order to strengthen the patronage of the execu- 
 tive power, according to its imaginary requirements, from the healthy 
 growth of Protestant dissentism? Is the growth of Protestant 
 dissent the grand moving principle of reaction of a Privy Council 
 check ? I believe the Privy Council scheme of education to be 
 fraudulent in its object. I believe that scheme to be the old plot 
 or conspiracy of Louis XIV. and Cardinal Mazarin, his minister, 
 revived. I believe that education scheme to be a fraudulent pre- 
 tence a binding, curbing, impeding of the vitality of Protestant- 
 ism; and if I be right in this supposition, I am right also in 
 my declaration, that the Privy Council scheme of education is an 
 infringement of that compact made at the revolution of 1688 be- 
 tween William Prince of Orange and the Protestant population of 
 England a compact by which her present Majesty Queen Victoria 
 holds her right to the throne of these realms. I am right or I am 
 wrong in my declaration, that the Privy Council scheme of educa- 
 tion is a curbing of the vitality of Protestantism, and as such is 
 
 UNCONSTITUTIONAL. 
 
 Irrespective of the compact entered into between Prince and 
 people at the glorious revolution of 1688 for the support of the 
 Protestant religion, the true interest of the sovereigns of Great Britain 
 can be none other but the cherishing of the vitality of Protestantism 
 within these realms. This is the real strength of the British sove- 
 reigns ; on this they must depend on the day of continental aggres- 
 sion. The vitality of Protestantism is the responding fortification 
 to Cherbourg ; this is our fortifications at Portsmouth ; this is our 
 stronghold this is our breastwork, behind which the Protestantism 
 of Holland, Denmark, and Germany, with Switzerland, must take 
 their shelter, and abide the threatened attack. Great Britain must 
 place itself at the head of the Protestantism of Europe ; there it 
 has been placed, and there it must abide ; but it never can abide 
 there, if the Executive Government is to be allowed to tamper with 
 

 LIFE OF DE FOE. 45 
 
 the civil and religious liberties of Great Britain, under the pretence 
 of educating the people. 
 
 What right has the Church-of-England sect to take money from 
 the national exchequer to educate all sects in Church-of-England 
 principles, for the sake of increasing the patronage and influence of 
 the crown? This is a question which the freeholders of Great 
 Britain would do well to ask themselves. Is the patronage of the 
 crown so deficient in strength that a second Church of England has 
 to be created from the public taxation of the country, in order to 
 give the ministry of the day an additional power, by the distribu- 
 tion of patronage foisted upon the people, under the pretence of 
 education ? What a serious mistake for a king to allow a priesthood 
 to crawl along stealthily till the question may fairly be asked, Who 
 owns the throne ? Who is king ? Church or king which has it ? 
 Which stands first? Is not one first one church establishment 
 sufficient encumbrance for the patience, the endurance of royalty 
 to be clogged with, without adding a second clog one which may 
 be as a rope around the neck of encumbered or fettered royalty in 
 some dire, sad hour of difficulty ; and when that second clog of a 
 church is unconstitutional and dangerous to the free action of the 
 vitality of Protestantism, professed to be enjoyed unfettered and 
 unencumbered by the independent freeholders of this nation ? 
 
 Could it be possible to draw an extreme case, to show how 
 this machinery might act in some untoward hour of executive 
 embarrassment ? 
 
 Suppose this education scheme should crawl along till it had 
 completed its spider-like web or network of patronage, and should 
 stealthily obtain the power of standing as regulator between the 
 throne and the Church of England sometimes acting with one, 
 sometimes with the other, and sometimes with both, but always 
 against the vitality of the Protestantism of the freeholders of this 
 nation where is royalty then, subjected to two masters instead of 
 one ? The Church of England, in all conscience, is strong enough 
 in its lord bishops, its pluralities, its patronages, and its combina- 
 tions of working powers for good or evil, without adding a second 
 power, which may at any time be added to the first, so as to weigh 
 
46 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 down the honest independency of action in royalty. The education 
 scheme may be made one of the most powerful engines for the 
 propagation of priestly arbitrary principles that this kingdom ever 
 knew. The Church of England ruined James II., which should be 
 a warning to all future sovereigns never to allow ruin to proceed 
 from such a cause again ; and the safest way is to break up at once 
 any scheme, whatever called, which may be screwed up to subserve 
 the arbitrary power of the Church of England, enslave the throne, 
 or uproot all civil as well as religious liberty within these realms. 
 The Privy Council education scheme is as unconstitutional as it is 
 dangerous to religious and civil liberty. 
 
 Poor James ! actually flattered out of his throne, to make room 
 for a stranger ! What a warning to kings this should be and to 
 people too ! for this flattery, if pushed forward by all the slow pro- 
 gression of the tortoise, might end in utter ruin to both king and 
 people. The priest flatters for what? For power; power second, 
 if not sufficiently strong to obtain power first ; or, as Locke says, 
 " that prince and priest may, like Castor and Pollux, be worshipped 
 together as divine in the same temple by us poor lay subjects; and 
 that sense and reason, law, properties, rights, and liberties, shall be 
 understood as the oracles of those deities shall interpret or give 
 signification to them, and never be made use of in the world to 
 oppose the absolute and free will of either of them." 
 
 De Foe, in his Review, vol. vii. p. 304, states, that " It was for 
 many years together, and I am witness to it, that the pulpit sounded 
 nothing but the duty of absolute submission, obedience without re- 
 serve, subjection to princes as God's vicegerents, accountable to none, 
 to be withstood in nothing, and by no person. I have heard it pub- 
 licly preached that if the King commanded my head, and sent his 
 messengers to fetch it, I was bound to submit, and stand still while 
 it was cut off. I forbear to repeat the foolish extravagances that 
 these things ran up to. There are too many books still extant of 
 the same kind. Let any man but read a few of L'Estrange's Ob- 
 servators, Toleration Discussed, Thompson's Rule of Allegiance, the 
 History of Divine Right, and many other volumes of that age, and 
 particularly the addresses of the corporations, &c.,in those days called 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 47 
 
 loyal, and he shall find the absurdest and the most ridiculous notions 
 that ever Protestant nation was wheedled into. And what was the 
 effect of this? The cheat was fatal two ways. Had those that 
 preached it been sincere had they been the fools they made the 
 King believe they would be we had all been undone, our liberties 
 had been sacrificed, our laws made to truckle to the will of the most 
 arbitrary tyrant, and our parliaments made tools to the pleasure of 
 the Prince, like the Protestants of France ; for the elections, by the 
 new modelling the corporations, were all coming into his own hand. 
 These were the steps one side drove at, but the mistake lay another 
 way : the thing was a cheat, and the King fell into the snare. He 
 thought he had brought them to his beck, and the first touch he 
 gave them of the practice, they flew in his face, called in foreign help, 
 took arms against God's vicegerent, unswore all their allegiance to 
 him, and drove him out of the kingdom. This they now hand- 
 somely expressed by vigorous and successful withstanding arbitrary 
 r; and the words are copious indeed in their meaning fully 
 expressive of all that happened between the landing of the Prince 
 of Orange and the Revolution." 
 
 The High- Church party always considered Charles I. to be a 
 martyr, and what De Foe allowed and termed a wet martyr; James 
 being a martyr too, and for distinction's sake termed a dry martyr. 
 Henrietta, the Queen of the first, might be the principal cause of 
 the one martyrdom, while the unprincipled conduct of the clergy 
 of the Church of England was certainly the cause of the other. 
 
 After a good deal of squaring of consciences to make different 
 sorts of oaths fit, such as de-facto allegiance oaths, and jure-divino 
 allegiance oaths, the poor mortified clergy set themselves to consider 
 what should square with their interests in the monopoly of all the 
 good things of this life, to the exclusion of this or that brother, 
 who thought this or that on certain tenets of doctrine or disci- 
 pline. So the old feeling of persecution of Dissenters revived in all 
 its vigour ; and although the Bill of Rights, founded upon the 
 Prince of Orange's Declaration of Rights, afforded all the prin- 
 ciples of freedom of action in religious matters, yet the spirit of 
 religious equality was absent from the breasts of the clergy of the 
 
48 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 Established Church. The vitality of Protestantism the great 
 bulwark of national England was absent ; there was still left the 
 spirit of persecution in the breasts of the clergy. 
 
 The Bill of Rights passed in the first session of William and 
 Mary, 1689, and is the Magna Charta of our religious equalities. 
 De Foe, speaking of this measure in his Review (vol. ii. 147), says, 
 " The Declaration of Rights of the people of England has stabbed 
 all sorts of civil tyranny to the heart ; and the English monarchy, 
 under the present just and legal administration, is perfectly purged 
 and abstracted from all that ever the Dissenters complained of. I 
 know but one thing left that we have to ask of the government 
 the abolition of tests, sacraments, and religious obligations at our 
 admission to trusts in the government." 
 
 The Bill of Rights is the grand charter by which the sovereigns 
 of this country should take their rule ; and stir up and keep alive 
 through the length and breadth of this empire, for the sake of the 
 national safety; vigorously to be kept in working health by the* 
 vitality of Protestantism a vitality which can alone be supported 
 by the strict observance of a principle of religious equality. 
 
 Any infringement of the rights of equality in Protestantism is a 
 weakening of the resisting force ; to be applied, if necessary, against 
 the inroads of the arbitrary powers of continental Europe. There are 
 pluralities in our church this is a robbing of the parish for the sake 
 of the parson where is the Bill of Eights ? Away with this ! for 
 it is a great source of weakness in the vitality of Protestantism. 
 
 After the heterogeneous mass of opposing interests, those of the 
 real patriots on the one hand, and the affrighted vested interests on the 
 other, things began to fall into their old channel ; and so, on the 29th 
 of October, 1689, their Majesties accepted an invitation given by the 
 citizens of London at the Guildhall, when Sir Thomas Pilkington, 
 a great champion for the people's rights and liberties, was knighted. 
 On this occasion great efforts were made by certain well-wishers to 
 their Majesties to give every support to the demonstration ; a guard 
 of honour was formed for the occasion, which was placed under the 
 command of the Earl of Peterborough, and was especially a royal 
 body-guard of honour to their Majesties' persons, and was composed, 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 49 
 
 for the most part, of Protestant dissenters, they being, in heart and 
 soul, the honest supporters and abettors of the glorious Revolution 
 of 1688. 
 
 Amongst these mounted champions of revolution, and not far 
 from the King's person, was espied by the keen-eyed Oldmixon, 
 Foe, the hosier of Freeman's Court, Cornhill. Oldmixon, looking 
 for a flaw in this new development of regal power and pomp, could 
 not allow the procession to wend its slow length along the crowded 
 streets, but he must spy out the weakest point, and proclaim it to 
 the world in his next weekly paper, the Observator, and show by his 
 detracting pen the low company royalty had been seen allied with, 
 when proceeding to these civic metropolitan festivities. 
 
 It may safely be declared that there was not one man in the whole 
 British empire more enthusiastically devoted to the letter and the 
 spirit of the glorious Revolution of 1688 than Daniel De Foe; for 
 during the whole process of this political birth he was as one demented 
 with joy and expectation : he supported the movement by his pen 
 and by his person ; he was a constant attendant upon the House of 
 Commons on all important discussions, and, as opportunity offered, 
 poured out, as few but himself could pour out, monthly, weekly, or 
 daily, if required, the fundamental principles of the British constitu- 
 tion, and demonstrated the hollowness of preaching a doctrine of 
 adulation and obsequiousness, the doctrine of passive obedience to all 
 kings a doctrine based upon self, for the supplying the growing wants 
 and desires of pride. Self and pride lay at the bottom of all the jure- 
 divino doctrines preached to confiding mortals from the church pulpits 
 at this time; for the jure-divmo text was only applicable to prosper- 
 ous times, or so long as we and ours stood all well with royalty. 
 
 De Foe at this time again and again pointed out that the Church 
 of England was passive obedient altogether, only so long as James 
 the Second did not attempt to interfere with its revenues ; but when 
 the pluralities and endowments were threatened by a royal inter- 
 ference, passive-obedience principles and devotion to the house of 
 Stuart were wafted into nothingness at once they ceased to exist ; 
 and the result was, that the rotten, unprincipled clerical support was 
 thrown into the scale of the glorious-revolution advocacy for the 
 
 4 
 
50 LIFE OF I)E FOE. 
 
 time, but only for the time, for the support was rotten in principle : 
 it was only a support founded upon panic and disappointment. But 
 such as it was, it was temporarily at William's service, and he availed 
 himself of it ; and thus the adulatory supporters of the base house 
 of Stuart became the main instruments in the hands of William 
 Prince of Orange for getting rid of James II., the corrupt tool 
 and pensioner of Louis XIV. of France, and his minister, Cardinal 
 Mazarin. 
 
 Poor James II. ! his father married a fool, and, as poor Ebenezer 
 Elliott would say, "all t* childer braided after t' mother," The 
 French-Italian connection, Henrietta, the daughter of Henry IV. 
 of France, was a serious misfortune to the house of Stuart a match 
 which imported into the royal family of Britain the most tyrannical, 
 profligate blood of the worst family of Italy, the Medici of Florence^ 
 making James II., Charles II., and the Duchess of Orleans, great- 
 grandchildren of Catherine de Medici of Florence, and afterwards 
 of France the worst woman that this world ever knew since the 
 times of the Roman emperors ; for there were few empresses of Rome 
 equal to Catherine de Medici of Paris, both for murder and lust. 
 
 Although the Henrietta importation was disastrous to the Stuarts, 
 I have the impression that another match made by the Stuarts pre- 
 vious to the time of Henrietta, had much to do with the self-will, 
 instability, rashness, want of caution, and courage without prudence, 
 of this family. This is my impression, taken from the picture gallery 
 at Hampton Court, and taken from there only. I allude to Ann of 
 Denmark, the wife of James I., and mother of Charles I. 
 
 It would be rather a curious and interesting study in the picture 
 galleries of Italy, Denmark, and France to trace the origin of the 
 external forms of body of Charles I., Charles II., and James II. 
 Perhaps Denmark and Florence might divide the honours between 
 them. I believe Italy would claim the second Charles and the 
 second James, as her own, without any disputing. On James L's 
 prospect of forming respectable matches for his children, he must 
 show himself worthy of the connection ; for to the Roman Catholic 
 Spain he must sacrifice the whole power of principle and thought, 
 lay and clerical, in the Church of England, by ordering a foolish, silly 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 51 
 
 book, regulating games on the village green after morning service at 
 church on Sunday. This was done, as one of James's clerical apolo- 
 gists has declared, to bring young folks together at ale-drinkings 
 and dancings, for the encouragement of matrimony, and the increase 
 of population, as though our northern climate required a fillip to 
 bring young folks forward, and give them confidence to face the 
 labyrinth of matrimony. 
 
 From a very early period the games and pastimes of the people 
 have been a subject of regulation for kings and parliaments, mostly 
 with the view of restraining or checking those which were useless, and 
 forwarding such athletic exercises as might be useful qualifications for 
 the arts and endurances of war; but James I. stands alone as the 
 King of England who encouraged the sports of the people in order 
 to debase them ; and he did this to please the Roman Catholic power 
 of Spain, when Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, was in England 
 proposing the second daughter of the King of Spain as a match 
 for his son Charles, afterwards Charles I. What a contrast here 
 with his predecessor, Elizabeth, who harboured 50,000 Flemish and 
 Dutch Protestants, and protected them in London against the tyranny 
 of a Roman Catholic oppressor Spain ! How short-sighted James 
 the First must have been, to raise within his dominions that power 
 of organized dissent in religious matters which afterwards went far 
 to sever the head from the body of his son Charles on the scaffold 
 at Whitehall ! What a sacrifice to make ! what a paying for the 
 whistle ! a kingdom severed to its centre for a match with a second 
 daughter of the persecuting King of Spain ! James was a weak 
 man, who could ride after a stag or a fox, and drink ale ; he was a 
 slobbering, coarse man, but no king. 
 
 As though the Stuarts could derive nothing from disaster, Charles 
 the First reprinted this same book for the regulating Sunday games ; 
 and this he did as a sop to the Roman Catholic power of France, 
 about eighteen months before Henrietta landed in England as her 
 future Queen. Why! this is Italy all over ; for Catherine could not 
 leave Florence for France without taking along with her an Italian 
 marriage settlement, providing for the persecution of Protestants 
 in France. 
 
 4* 
 
52 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 In order to look a little into the regulation of the games and 
 sports of the people, to show the spirit of previous legislation, and 
 compare it with that of the Stuarts, I will give an extract or two 
 on the subject from a sporting work of considerable antiquity. 
 
 In the ninth year of Edward III., A.D. 1386, royal proclamation 
 (the act of Parliament for such matters in that day) was made, com- 
 manding the exercise of archery and artillery, and prohibiting the 
 exercise of casting stones, bars, hand and foot balls, cock-fighting, 
 et alios varios ludos. This proclamation was renewed in the nine- 
 teenth year of the same reign, but without effect, till divers of these 
 games were prohibited, under penalties, by act of Parliament of 
 12th Richard II. and llth Henry IV., and in the twelfth year of 
 Edward IV., and again in the thirty-ninth year of Henry VIII. 
 
 In the third year of Edward IV. foreign cards were prohibited to 
 be imported, for the benefit of the poor card-makers of England, for 
 divers poor families were maintained by it; and therefore it was 
 resolved, in the said case of monopolies, that the Queen may not 
 suppress the making of cards within the realm, no more than making 
 of dice, bowls, balls, hawks-hoods, bells, dog-couples, or other-like, 
 which are works of labour and industry, though they serve for 
 pleasure, recreation, or pastime, and cannot be suppressed but by 
 Parliament. 
 
 It would appear that the Queen, though an Englishwoman, was 
 prohibiting the manufacture of the above articles in England, in 
 order that she might profit by the monopoly of the importations 
 which she enjoyed from the King, her husband, as royal allowance 
 or pinmoney. 
 
 " I consider," adds the author above quoted, " King James I. 
 was not well advised, A.D. 1618 (the very time when Gondomar, the 
 Spanish ambassador, was in England proposing the second daughter 
 of the King of Spain as a match for his son Charles), when he 
 declared to his subjects, these recreations undermentioned to be 
 lawful, viz., dancing of men and women, archery, leaping, vaulting, 
 May-games, Whitsun-ales, morris-dancing, setting up may-poles, 
 and other sports therewith used; and commanded that no such 
 honest mirth or recreation should be forbidden to his subjects upon 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 53 
 
 Sunday or holyday after divine service ended, which was confirmed 
 by King Charles I., A.D. 1633, allowing further, the feasts of dedi- 
 cations of churches, commonly called wakes, and all manly exercises, 
 to be there used with all freedom, But, tempora mutantur" adds 
 our author, "our gracious Queen (Anne, 1711), and our reverend 
 bishops, will not patronize any such custom or allowance. And that 
 the ignorant people were misled, and thought such pastimes inno- 
 cent sort of mirth, appears by this story of a Welsh parson. John 
 (a poor boy) was bred at school, and, being a plodding lad at his 
 books, used to assist some gentlemen's sons that went to the same 
 school. Afterwards John took a trip to the university, and got a 
 degree and orders. He, in process of time, upon some occasion, 
 comes for London in a tattered gown. One day a gentleman that 
 had gone to school with him meets him, and knew him. ' Jack/ 
 saith the gentleman, ' I am glad to see thee; how do'st do?' 'I 
 thank you, noble squire/ replied Jack. The gentleman invited him 
 to the tavern, and after some discourse of their school, and former 
 conversation, the gentleman asked him where he lived. Jack 
 answered, ' In Wales/ The gentleman asked him if he were mar- 
 ried. The parson replied he was, and that he had a wife and seven 
 children. Then the gentleman inquired of the value of his benefice. 
 The parson answered it was worth 9 per annum. ' Pugh ! ' quoth 
 the gentleman, f how canst thou maintain thy wife and children 
 with that ?' ' Oh ! sir/ quoth Jack, shrugging his shoulders, ' we 
 live by the churchyard; my wife sells ale, and I keep a bear, and 
 after evening service (my parishioners being so kind as to bring 
 their dogs to church) I bring out the bear, and bate him ; and for 
 about two hours we are all heave and shove, staff and tail, Hill we 
 are all very hot and thirsty, and then we step into our Joan, and 
 drink stoutly of her nut-brown ale ; and I protest, squire,' saith he, 
 ' we make a very pretty business of it.' ' 
 
 Such would be the state of things in England at the time when 
 James I. contemplated a Spanish match for his son; and such 
 would be the state of England when Charles, that son, contemplated 
 a French-Italian match for himself. The whole foreign- connection 
 influence went to desecrate the Christian sabbath, debase the people, 
 
54 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 and corrupt the clergy, and all for the riding rough-shod by royalty 
 over a servile, debased people, thoughtless and drunken, carrying 
 the colours of arbitrary power. The whole Sunday-debasing influence 
 was a political trap of royalty to ensnare the people ; the people too 
 saw this, and refused the bait ; the project generally was unpopular, 
 except with the extreme lower flat of civilization, the dregs of the 
 populace. 
 
 The above may be considered to be rather a lengthy digression, 
 but the reading sport-books by royal authority in the parish church 
 in the Sunday morning's service will require a little margin for a 
 digression; for the whole subject, or nearly so, will have its origin 
 in that book-reading order. Dissent took its position rank and file, 
 in regimental or brigade order, on that day. That day organized 
 the dissenters of England ; that organization, increasing in its course, 
 cut off the head of one king, and sent another, a penniless vaga- 
 bond and wanderer, to St. Germain's, there to live a life of exile 
 a receiver of the bread of charity from the hard hand of Louis XIV. 
 of France. Yes ! and his grandson, Charles Stuart, of the memorable 
 year of '45, had a price fixed for the deliverance of his head the 
 head of a traitor upon a charger by the British Government, 
 carried on, not by a Stuart no ! but by the Elector of Hanover. 
 The poor fallen Stuarts were advertised and hunted down as traitors 
 in their own kingdom of Scotland, through the folly of James I., 
 their ancestor. The traitor that he was ! he tried to betray England 
 and Protestantism to Spain, and he lost his kingdom to his posterity 
 by the attempt. 
 
 This house of Stuart spent tens of thousands of pounds sterling, 
 and murdered thousands too I think 8000 in gaol or otherwise, 
 in one single reign, that of James II. : they sowed the wind ; and 
 Pym, Oliver Cromwell, Sydney, Prynne, Hampden, and others, by 
 scores, with William III. of glorious memory, spent their millions 
 and tens of millions of pounds sterling, with hundreds of thou- 
 sands of precious human lives, to counteract the evils inflicted 
 by this unprincipled race of kings, the house of Stuart ; and only 
 half the work has been accomplished, even up to this day. My 
 digression on this accursed race is voluminous; but I make no 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 55 
 
 apology, but leave my subject and its requirements to make apologies 
 as we go along. 1 
 
 It is stated in a vindication of Lord Shaftesbury who was tried, 
 as all the leading men of the reign of Charles II. were tried, for 
 some plot or other, real or pretended, Roman Catholic or Presby- 
 terian as the oppressor Charles or his brother James had the power 
 of pulling the strings Lord Shaftesbury's real offence being the 
 uncompromising open opposition he gave in his place in Parliament 
 to the succession to the throne of these realms by James Duke 
 of York. He was tried A.D. 1681, and acquitted, to the great joy 
 of the nation, who testified their feelings in court by cheers and 
 acclamations, and by bonfires at night through the country ; the 
 witnesses for the crown, on their way to the court at West- 
 minster, having to be guarded through the city by the sheriffs 
 with a strong guard to the limit of the jurisdiction of the city of 
 London, Temple Bar. It is stated in this vindication what was the 
 class of witnesses produced by the crown on these sham Roman- 
 Catholic-plot trials; for most of the plots were shams trumped 
 up by the royal brothers and their abettors, the sycophants and 
 prostitutes of the court. 
 
 " They had such a medley of evidence as is almost comical to 
 consider : there were the Macks and the Mounsieurs, the midwife 
 and the priest, the skip-kennel and the Newgate birds, the justice 
 and the bog-trotter, the countess and the kitchen wench. No 
 discourse was heard among them but captains' places, deaneries, 
 rewards, gratuities, preferments, and as much money as you will. 
 They were advanced from bonny-clabber to claret and frontiniack ; 
 from turnips and oat-cakes to oysters and pheasants ; from brogues 
 and handle (a cow-band) to velvet and cloth of silver. They discoursed 
 
 1 Examples of the way in which the Stuarts exercised arbitrary power are but too 
 abundant ; but the following may be quoted : " At this time (1635, or thereabout), 
 Sir Edward Coke, Sir Thomas Wentworth, and Sir Kobert Philips, were pricked to 
 be high sheriffs for Buckingham, York, and Somersetshire, to incapacitate them to 
 be members of this Commons' House ; whereunto the Bishop (Williams, late Lord 
 Keeper and Bishop of Lincoln, and made Archbishop of York by poor infatuated 
 Charles I., when up to the chin in national and personal difficulties his own bringing 
 on) alluded when he was told that he should be restrained from the House of Peers. 
 c What !' said he, * am I made high sheriff of Huntingdonshire ?' " 
 
56 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 of his Majesty as if they had been of his council, and of his ministers 
 as if they had been their confederates." In this vindication there is 
 a sentiment of Lord Shaftesbury on Popery, the mainspring of all 
 these plots, which is worthy of being handed down to the latest 
 posterity. " That Popery and slavery, like two sisters, go hand in 
 hand; sometimes the one goes first, sometimes the other, in at doors, 
 but the other is always following close at hand. 
 
 " In England Popery was to have brought in slavery; in Scotland 
 slavery went before, and Popery was to follow" 
 
 To show how heartily De Foe entered into the movement of the 
 Revolution, and his admiration of William III., the hero of it, it 
 may be stated, that he annually kept or commemorated the 4th of 
 November, in token of our deliverance, as a day of thanksgiving, 
 for it was the day of the landing of William III. " a day/ 7 says 
 he, " famous on various accounts, and every one of them dear to 
 Britons who love their country, value the Protestant interest, or 
 have an aversion to tyranny and oppression. On this day William 
 the Third was born; on this day he married the daughter of 
 England ; and on this day he rescued the nation from a bondage 
 worse than that of Egypt a bondage of soul as well as bodily 
 servitude a slavery to the ambition and raging lust of a generation 
 set on fire by pride, avarice, cruelty, and blood." 
 
 Bravo ! De Foe ! Never had Britain a subject more devoted, 
 more loyal, and more religiously thankful for the glorious revolution 
 of 1688 than thou. It was a movement after thine own heart, 
 Daniel ! 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 WE have said " Poor James," in having to run for his life and 
 desert the throne of his fathers ; but may we not say, with equal 
 propriety and feeling, ( ' Poor William," who married the daughter, 
 and was thus dragged into the inheritance. Which was most to be 
 pitied is a question for speculation ; but certainly William came in 
 for a hard stone seat, a Scotch throne, and a crown of thorns ; his 
 whole reign was a scene of annoyance, perplexity, and disappoint- 
 ment, which he was made to feel in a thousand forms every year of 
 his life ; for William was no sooner seated upon the throne than the 
 old Whig and Tory jealousies at once broke out to disturb his peace, 
 and all parties appeared to act as though William had been sup- 
 ported in a church -in- danger panic ; but now, when time had been 
 given for cool reflection, all, both Whig and Tory, regretted what 
 they had done, and heartily wished their old King back again, for- . 
 he was a "true-born Englishman." The Whigs acted with the 
 greatest jealousy towards their new sovereign, and thus forced 
 William into the arms of the Tories, who held out hopes that they 
 would accomplish everything ; but they were powerless, for they had 
 a Tory House of Commons, devoted to the late King, and they 
 would advance no money, even for the most necessary demands of 
 the government. The Tories, devoted to their James II., repealed the 
 Septennial Act of Charles II. in the Commons; and they did this to 
 annoy William, which forced him to dissolve the Parliament. The 
 Whigs annoying the Tories, and the Tories embarrassing the Whigs, 
 and both loving the Pretender, forced William to pass through his 
 troublesome reign as he could ; he borrowed money, to be paid out 
 of the estate some time or other ; he borrowed thirteen millions, 
 and left it as a legacy ; and with it he also left the legacy of borrow- 
 ing, which was the secret of the funding system and of our national 
 
58 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 debt. Whigs and Tories contending for place and power, forced 
 William on the system, and thanks to them for it. In derision I 
 say it, thanks to them for it ! There was not a single aspirant for 
 preferment under his government who, when he met with disappoint- 
 ment, did not return to the support of the abdicated James, and 
 give as a reason that he was a "true-born Englishman." Poor 
 William's Dutch origin was thrown in his face by every disap- 
 pointed expectant of place or office. His Parliament thwarted and 
 annoyed him in every way ; and really, if he had been a vagrant 
 bastard instead of a legitimate-born man and son-in-law of a King 
 of England, they could not have treated him with more jealousy or 
 suspicion. They behaved scurvily to him, after his noble risks and 
 behaviour to them. These men had acted as sycophants to James, 
 and they acted as bullies to William ; they were like slaves set free 
 insolent in their possession of freedom, as all slaves are and will 
 be. Who ever knew a crawling lick-the-dust sycophant that was 
 not a bully when in power ? I never did. I have always observed 
 through my life, that these two characters are only halves of one 
 whole, for they both rest together invariably in one breast. 
 
 Low writers were employed to write doggerel verses or ballads on 
 foreigners, Dutchmen, &c., with the view of annoying royalty. In- 
 sulted to the last degree by the Commons, in being forced to disband 
 his army to that insignificant standard as to render the King con- 
 temptible in the eyes of the powers of Europe, so thoroughly dis- 
 gusted was William with the ruling powers of this kingdom, that 
 he heartily wished himself back again in Holland, and clear from 
 all the troubles and perplexities of governing so ungrateful a 
 people. At this juncture, to answer the scurrilous attacks upon 
 William's Dutch Presbyterian origin, and, if possible, to check the 
 national ingratitude, so constantly expressed in the national cant of 
 " He was a true-born Englishman," De Foe was induced to write 
 his poem with this title, to show what was a true-born Englishman ; 
 and the work was very successful. I will give a few extracts, for 
 the sentiments are true to the letter, how little soever they may be 
 flattering to the ideas of our national vanity for distinctness or 
 antiquity of breed as Englishmen. He observes, in his Preface : 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 59 
 
 " When I see the town full of lampoons and invectives against 
 Dutchmen, only because they are foreigners, and the King re- 
 proached and insulted by insolent pedants and ballad-making poets, 
 for employing foreigners, and for being a foreigner himself, I con- 
 fess myself moved by it to remind our nation of their own original, 
 thereby to let them see what a banter is put upon ourselves in it ; 
 since, speaking of Englishmen ab origme } we are really all foreigners 
 ourselves." 
 
 " As for answers, banters, true English Billingsgate, I expect 
 them till nobody will buy, and then the shop will be shut. Had I 
 wrote it for the gain of the press, I should have been concerned at 
 its being printed again and again by PIRATES, as they call them, 
 and PARAGRAPHMEN : but if they do justice, and print it true, ac- 
 cording to the copy, they are welcome to sell it for a penny, if they 
 please : the pence, indeed, is the end of their works." 
 
 Again : " Possibly somebody may take me for a Dutchman, in 
 which they are mistaken ; but I am one that would be glad to see 
 Englishmen behave themselves better to strangers and to governours 
 also, that one might not be reproached in foreign countries for 
 belonging to a nation that wants manners." 
 
 " As to vices, who can dispute our INTEMPERANCE, while an 
 honest drunken fellow is a character in a man's praise? All our 
 reformations are banters, and will be so, till our magistrates and 
 gentry reform themselves by way of example." 
 
 From the Introduction : 
 
 Speak, Satire, for there 's none can tell like thee, 
 Whether 'tis folly, pride, or knavery, 
 That makes this discontented land appear 
 Less happy now in times of peace than war ; 
 "Why civil feuds disturb the nation more 
 Than all our bloody wars have done before. 
 
 Fools out of favour grudge at knaves in place, 
 And men are always honest in disgrace : 
 The court preferments make men knaves in course, 
 But they which would be in them would be worse. 
 
60 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 'Tis not at foreigners that we repine, 
 Would foreigners their perquisites resign ; 
 The grand contention 's plainly to be seen, 
 To get some men put out, and some put in. 
 For this our senators make long harangues, 
 And florid members whet their polish'd tongues. 
 Statesmen are always sick of one disease, 
 And a good pension gives them present ease ; 
 That 's a specific makes them all content 
 With any king and any government. 
 
 Whet thy just anger at the nation's pride, 
 
 And with keen phrase repel the vicious tide. 
 
 To Englishmen their own beginnings show, 
 
 And ask them why they slight their neighbours so. 
 
 Go back to elder times and ages past, 
 
 And nations into long oblivion cast ; 
 
 To old Britannia's youthful days retire, 
 
 And there for true-born Englishmen enquire. 
 
 Britannia freely will disown the name, 
 
 And hardly knows herself from whence they came ; 
 
 Wonders that they of all men should pretend 
 
 To birth and blood, and fo* a name contend. 
 
 Go back to causes where our follies dwell, 
 
 Arid fetch the dark original from hell : 
 
 Speak, Satire, for there 's none like thee can tell. 
 
 The Romans first with Julius Csesar came, 
 
 Including all the nations of that name, 
 
 Gauls, Greeks, and Lombards ; and by computation, 
 
 Auxiliaries, or slaves of ev'ry nation ; 
 
 With Hengist, Saxons ; Danes with Sueno came, 
 
 In search of plunder, not in search of fame ; 
 
 Scots, Picts, and Irish from the Hibernian shore ; 
 
 And conqu'ring William brought the Normans o'er. 
 
 All these their barb'rous offspring left behind, 
 
 The dregs of armies, they of all mankind ; 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 61 
 
 Blended with Britons who before were here, 
 Of whom the Welsh ha' blest the character. 
 From this amphibious, ill-born mob began 
 That vain, ill-natur'd thing, an Englishman. 
 
 These are the heroes who despise the Dutch, 
 
 And rail at new-come foreigners so much, 
 
 Forgetting that themselves are all derived 
 
 From the most scoundrel race that ever lived : 
 
 A horrid crowd of rambling thieves and drones, 
 
 Who ransacked kingdoms and dispeopled towns ; 
 
 The Pict and painted Briton, treacherous Scot, 
 
 By hunger, theft, and rapine, hither brought ; 
 
 Norwegian pirates, buccaneering Danes, 
 
 Whose red-hair'd oifspring ev'rywhere remains ; 
 
 Who, join'd with Norman-French, compound the breed 
 
 From whence your true-born Englishmen proceed ; 
 
 Dutch, Walloons, Fleinmings, Irishmen, and Scots. 
 
 Vaudois and Valtolins, and Hugonots, 
 
 In good Queen Bess's charitable reign, 
 
 Supplied us with three hundred thousand men. 
 
 Religion God, we thank thee sent them hither, 
 
 Priests, Protestants, and Devil, all together ; 
 
 Of all professions, and of every trade, 
 
 All that were persecuted or afraid ; 
 
 Whether for debt or other crimes they^Red, 
 
 David at Hackelah was still their head. 
 
 The offspring of this miscellaneous crowd 
 
 Had not their new plantations long enjoy'd, 
 
 But they grew Englishmen, and rais'd their votes 
 
 At foreign shoals of interloping Scots. 
 
 The royal branch 1 from Pictland did succeed 
 
 With troops of Scots and scabs from North-by-Tweed ; 
 
 The seven first years of his pacific reign 
 
 Made him and half his nation Englishmen. 
 
 Scots from the northern frozen banks of Tay, 
 
 With packs and plods, came whigging all away, 
 
 1 James I. 
 
 
62 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 9 
 
 Thick as the locusts which in Egypt swarm 'd, 
 With pride and hungry hopes completely arm'd ; 
 With native truth, diseases, and no money, 
 Plunder'd our Canaan of the milk and honey. 
 Here they grew quickly lords and gentlemen, 
 And all their race are true-born Englishmen. 
 
 In English ale their dear enjoyment lies, 
 
 For which they '11 starve themselves and families. 
 
 An Englishman will fairly drink as much 
 
 As will maintain two families of Dutch ; 
 
 Subjecting all their labour to their pots, 
 
 The greatest artists are the greatest sots. 
 
 The country poor do by example live ; 
 
 The gentry lead them, and the clergy drive. 
 
 What may we not from such examples hope ? 
 
 The landlord is their god y the priest their pope. 
 
 A drunken clergy and a swearing bench 
 
 Has giv'n the Eeformation such a drench, 
 
 As wise men think there is some cause to doubt, 
 
 Will purge good manners and religion out. 
 
 These few extracts from the work afford a fair sample of the 
 True-born Englishman a work which must have been highly 
 grateful to the insulted King, who was run down and attacked by 
 every puppy of a bal^d-writer or ballad-singer as the adventurer 
 Dutchman ; but after De Foe's work appeared the words " true-born 
 Englishman " were never heard of again, either in prose or poetry. 
 Whether William ever rewarded De Foe, especially for this perform- 
 ance, is not known, but I believe he did ; and, moreover, cultivated 
 his acquaintance so as to receive him frequently, when De Foe was 
 projecting something new for William's benefit, such as urging on the 
 union with Scotland ; suggesting the raising of taxes so as to press 
 little upon the perceptions of the people ; the making peace with 
 France, and carrying out a system of free trade with that country: 
 for Daniel Foe of 1689 was, as far as his knowledge would carry 
 him, as much a free-trader as ever Richard Cobden or John Bright 
 or George Wilson has been at a later period. De Foe's grand project 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 63 
 
 with William was stopping the Spanish-plate fleet, with all its 
 bullion on board, in the West Indian seas, on its way home ; and, 
 besides this, manning the navy so as not to outrage British liberty ; 
 and victualling the navy, too; these were all favourite projects with 
 him, and frequently brought him to personal interviews with his sove- 
 reign, and with the Queen too, who once showed him her new flower- 
 garden, with its improvements and alteratons, at Kensington. DeFoe 
 often saw William in private, and always spoke of him as the best 
 of friends, the best of masters, and the most patriotic of kings. 
 
 From a Satire against Hypocrites, published in 1689 anonymously, 
 against some congregation of Protestant dissenters perhaps Dr. 
 Burgess in which one " Daniel" appears to be the principal object 
 of attack, if not the only one, it would appear that this " Daniel," 
 whom I readily accept as our hero, was in trouble and confinement 
 in Newgate. I will give one or two specimens to show the animus 
 of the author, and the importance of this " Daniel " in the opinion 
 of this scurrilous libeller perhaps L'Estrange, Ned Ward, or Tom 
 Browne, afterwards Dr. Browne 1 
 
 " Beloved, I shall here crave leave to speak 
 
 A word," he cries, and winks unto the weak. 
 
 " The words are these : Make haste, and do not tarry t 
 
 But unto Babylon thy dinner carry ; 
 
 There dotli young Daniel want in the den, 
 
 Thrown among lions by hard-hearted men. 
 
 Here, my beloved ;" and then he reaches down 
 
 His hand, as if he 'd catch the clerk by th' crown. 
 
 Not to explain this precious text amiss, 
 
 Daniel's the subject, hunger th' object is. 
 
 1 Whether the Daniel alluded to means Daniel Burgess or Daniel De Foe, is not 
 quite clear ; for both were persecuted by the same writers and for the same reason, 
 and both were in trouble in money matters at one time or other during their lives. A 
 specimen of the political writers in verse may not be unacceptable, for we shall have 
 prose enough before we have done with our subject. Butler, with his Hudibras, was 
 the great pattern in this line, which we might emphatically call " light reading," and 
 Ned Ward perhaps was the champion pen in the style ; while in prose, where coarse 
 asseveration was more in request than delicacy of feeling or truth, Oldmixon would 
 decidedly carry off the pahn of victory against all competitors. As a liar in prose, 
 Oldmixon was unrivalled. 
 
64 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 Again : 
 
 Where the black dog of Newgate you have seen, 
 Hair'd like the Turk, with eyes like Antichrist, 
 He doth and hath the brethren long entic't ; 
 Claws like a Star-Chamber bishop, black as hell, 
 And doubtless he was one of those that fell. 
 Judisra, I say, is uglier than this cur, 
 Though there were nothing could be uglier. 
 Thrown among lions by hard-hearted men, 
 Here Daniel is the church, the world 's the den. 
 By lions are meant monarchs, kings of nations, 
 Those worse than heathenish abominations. 
 
 I am not aware that any of Daniel De Foe's biographers place 
 him in Newgate in confinement at so early a period as 1689, the 
 year after the landing of William III. of glorious memory ; but 
 certain it is that some " Daniel" connected with a religious com- 
 munity, sect, or congregation, was in Newgate at that time for some 
 offence, most likely political. It is admitted by De Foe's biographers 
 that at this time he was quiet in the political strife ; if this be so, 
 the probability is that the verses above were written upon him, and 
 not on Dr. Daniel Burgess. It is certain, also, that he was absent 
 on his Spanish trade and Portuguese adventures, which do not 
 speak much for the home trade formerly carried on at Freeman's 
 Court, Cornhill, the hosiery concern. I fear the closing the hosiery 
 business put Daniel, the body-guardsman, into confinement a fact 
 known, perhaps, to Ned Ward or others of that class at the time ; 
 and, moreover, it might be in this time of retirement when he 
 repaired to Bristol, and resided there some months, and soon 
 attracted the notice of the quiet citizens by appearing only on Sun- 
 days, and then dressed, after the fashion of the times, as a gentle- 
 man, with fine flowing wig, lace ruffles, and a sword. This Sunday 
 exhibition obtained for him the appellation of " the Sunday gentle- 
 man." If he had appeared on an ordinary week-day, he probably 
 would have been arrested ; but the law allowed him the liberty of 
 his sabbath, and freedom from arrest on that sacred day. If this 
 Bristol story be true, it shows the man of genius, who must maintain 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 65 
 
 the appearance of the gentleman under any or every circumstance, 
 however painful. I once heard of a successful man of this class, 
 who always worked upon the principle of humouring the world by 
 truckling to its foibles, and placed great value upon a good exterior; 
 his motto was, " Appearances must be kept up, for to be poor and 
 seem poor was the devil all over." This man was a great man in 
 his way, and was the father of a son still greater, though in another 
 sphere. 
 
 De Foe, along with other honest traders, suffered greatly from the 
 tricks of fraudulent creditors, which tricks he assiduously exposed, 
 occasionally at this time, but at a future period, 1704, from week 
 to week and from month to month, in his Review, and also in his 
 Essay on Projects. His reiterated warnings and attacks upon the 
 system had the desired effect at last, and induced Parliament to 
 redress the nuisance, by " An Act for the more effectual Relief of 
 Creditors in cases of Excesses, and for preventing Abuses in Prisons 
 and pretended Privileged Places," which act scoured out the Mint 
 and the Whitefriars places notorious as sanctuaries for all the 
 broken, desperate characters of the metropolis. This act passed in 
 the eighth and ninth of William III. Thanks to Daniel De Foe 
 for this amendment of the laws of bankruptcy ; for it was principally 
 his doing, by his writings on the subject. 
 
 About this period he was sent for, without any application on his 
 part, when seventy miles from London, to be accountant to the 
 commissioners of the glass duty, in which service he continued till 
 the termination of their commission. The appointment was made 
 in 1695, probably through the intervention of his friend Dal by 
 Thomas, afterwards Sir Dalby Thomas, one of the commissioners ; 
 and it ceased, as just stated, upon the suppression of the tax by act 
 of Parliament, August 1, 1699. 
 
 On the suppression of the glass duty in 1699, or a little afterwards, 
 De Foe became secretary to a tileyard concern a pantile business, 
 at Tilbury, in Essex; and this office he filled for several years. 
 His political detractors used to compare his potworks at Tilbury to 
 the potworks in Egypt; but said that Daniel was not so much deficient 
 in straw as wages. The Dutch were his competitors, and they beat 
 
66 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 him out of the market ; for his pantiles were not liked by the public. 
 The whole concern was a failure, and poor De Foe lost .383000 by 
 the breaking up of the concern. The Dutch had supplied the London 
 market for generations, and knew the pattern, for there is such a 
 thing as a pattern in pantiles. The Dutch could stiffen or weaken 
 their clay at pleasure, by the introduction of sand or marl ; but De 
 Foe's company would probably take the Thames silt at Tilbury, and 
 look to nothing but saving coals in the burning, by mixing the clay 
 with coal-ashes or small cinders, which would make the tiles very 
 porous, and so not fitted for turning the wet. I have been a tile- 
 maker myself, and about as successful as De Foe, but the Dutch did 
 not ruin my trade. I have surrounding my tilery ten thousand acres 
 of rich land, wanting draining, and I sell in one year as many tiles 
 as will drain seventy or eighty acres. I make three hundred thou- 
 sand draining tiles, and I may be three years in selling them. I have 
 been in trade fifteen years, and I have made one return ; and what 
 is it ? A fixed impression that Parliament should appoint a com- 
 mission for inquiring into the state of landed property in England. 
 
 The present laws affecting landed property in England are as 
 great a nuisance to the British public, as the placing a couple or 
 more of barges in the middle of Regent Street, London, would be 
 to the carriages and pedestrians using that street. There is a 
 locking-up of the resources of the powers of the soil in England 
 by bankrupt pride. 
 
 As this period was, beyond all others, a " projecting age," De Foe, 
 to encourage the mania, I suppose, wrote an essay on the subject, 
 to which he must have devoted considerable time and pains ; for his 
 several divisions of the subject are gone into with great minuteness 
 of calculations, and his work was dedicated to Dalby Thomas, Esq., 
 his former patron in the Glass-duty Office a man who deserves to 
 be known ; for he alone had the courage and manliness to patronize 
 our hero publicly, and give him an office under government. The 
 History of Projects, with theTower of Babel andNoah'sArk for exam- 
 ples, takes the first place or opening chapter. Projectors follow next, 
 of whom De Foe says : " A mere projector, then, is a contemptible 
 thing, driven by his own desperate fortune to such a strait that he 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 67 
 
 must be delivered by a miracle, or starve ; and when he has beaten 
 his brains for some such miracle in vain, he finds no remedy but to 
 paint up some bubble or other, as players make puppets talk big, to 
 show like a strange thing, and then cry it up for a new invention, 
 gets a patent for it, divides it into shares, and they must be sold ; 
 ways and means are not wanting to swell the new whim to a vast 
 magnitude ; thousands and hundreds of thousands are the least of 
 his discourse, and sometimes millions ; till the ambition of some 
 honest coxcomb is wheedled to part with his money for it; and 
 
 then 
 
 Nascitur ridiculus mus 
 
 the adventurer is left to carry on the project, and the projector 
 laughs at him." Joint-stock banks, on a grand national scale, 
 come next; then, highways repairing, widening, &c., on a scale for 
 magnitude equal to the banks, follows ; then assurance companies ; 
 and next friendly societies, or sick clubs. A society or insurance 
 club for seamen; and then one for widows, each widow to receive 
 500 on burying her husband ; but discretion was to be observed in 
 admitting the members ; for a young girl of nineteen marrying an 
 old man of seventy, would not do for their club ; this is a funeral 
 club on a large scale. A pension office comes next ; this is a sick 
 club again on a larger scale, almost equal in its ramifications to the 
 bank or turnpike-road scheme. Then succeed betting-offices, not 
 so much on horse-racing as the gains or losses in the continental 
 wars or sieges; the sum of 200,000 having been staked on the 
 siege of Limerick. These siege bets formed a grand feature, as a 
 new business, in the Royal Exchange. Next follows an asylum for 
 fools ; and after this a charity lottery, to be set up by the authority 
 of the Lord Mayor of London and Court of Aldermen, for the sup- 
 port of the poor. Then bankrupts come, as De Foe says, " This 
 chapter has come right, to stand next to that of fools ; for, besides 
 the common acceptation of late, which makes every unfortunate 
 man a fool, I think no man so much a fool as a bankrupt." A 
 court of inquiries comes next, which appears to be a kind of Insol- 
 vent Debtors' Court. Then we have academies, showing their want 
 by the ordinary discourse of gentry of the day, with specimens of 
 
G8 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 ordinary conversation, embellished with ordinary swearing. A royal 
 academy for military exercises follows next, on a large scale ; then 
 follows an academy for women. And, as this is one of the most im- 
 portant questions that either De Foe or any other writer could go 
 into, we will give full space for all his ideas on the subject. 1 will, 
 as far as space allows, give his own words : 
 
 " I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs 
 in the world, considering us as a civilized and a Christian country, 
 that we deny the advantages of learning to our women. We reproach 
 the sex every day with folly and impertinence, while I am confident, 
 had they the advantages of education equal to us, they would be 
 guilty of less than ourselves. One would wonder indeed how it 
 should happen that women are conversible at all, since they are 
 only beholden to natural parts for all their knowledge. Their 
 youth is spent to teach them to stitch and sew, or make baubles ; 
 they are taught to read indeed, and perhaps to write their names, or 
 so, and that is the height of a woman's education; and I would 
 but ask those who slight the sex for their understanding, what is a 
 man (a gentleman I mean) good for, that is taught no more ? 
 
 " I need not give instances or examine the character of a gentle- 
 man with a good estate, of a good family, and with tolerable parts, 
 and examine what figure he makes for want of education. 
 
 " The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond, and must 
 be polished, or the lustre of it will never appear ; and 'tis manifest 
 that, as the rational soul distinguishes us from brutes, so education 
 carries on the distinction, and makes some less brutish than others. 
 This is too evident to need any demonstration. But why, then, 
 should women be denied the benefit of instruction ? If knowledge 
 and understanding had been useless additions to the sex, God 
 Almighty would never have given them capacities; for he made 
 nothing needless. Besides, I would ask any such, what they can 
 see in ignorance that they should think it a necessary ornament to 
 a woman ? Or how much worse is a wise woman than a fool ? Or 
 what has the woman done to forfeit the privilege of being taught ? 
 Does she plague us with her pride and impertinence ? Why did we 
 not let her learn, that she might have had more wit? Shall we 
 

 LIFE OF DE FOE. 69 
 
 pbraid women with folly, when 'tis only the error of this inhuman 
 custom that hindered them being made wiser? 
 
 " The capacities of women are supposed to be greater, and their 
 senses quicker, than those of the men ; and what they might have 
 been capable of being bred to, is plain from some instances of female 
 wit, which this age is not without; which upbraids us with injus- 
 tice, and looks as if we denied women the advantage of education 
 for fear they should vie with the men in their improvements. To 
 remove this objection, and that women might have at least a need- 
 ful opportunity of education in all sorts of useful learning, I propose 
 the draught of an academy for that purpose. 
 
 " I know 'tis dangerous to make public appearances of the sex : 
 they are not either to be confined or exposed ; the first will disagree 
 with their inclinations, and the last with their reputations, and 
 therefore it is somewhat difficult ; and I doubt a method proposed 
 by an ingenious lady, in a little book called Advice to the Ladies, 
 would be found impracticable ; for, saving my respect to the sex, 
 the levity, which perhaps is a little peculiar to them, at least in their 
 youth, will not bear constraint ; and I am satisfied nothing but the 
 height of bigotry can keep up a nunnery. Women are extravagantly 
 desirous of going to heaven, and will punish their pretty bodies to 
 get thither ; but nothing else will do it, and even in that case some- 
 times it falls out that Nature will prevail. 
 
 ' ' When I talk, therefore, of an academy for women, I mean both 
 the model, the teaching, and the government, different from what is 
 proposed by that ingenious lady, for whose proposal I have a very 
 great esteem, and also a great opinion of her wit ; different, too, 
 from all sorts of religious confinement, and, above all, from vows of 
 celibacy. 
 
 " Wherefore the academy I propose should differ but little from 
 public schools, wherein such ladies as were willing to study, should 
 have all the advantages of learning suitable to their genius. But 
 since some severities of discipline more than ordinary would be abso- 
 lutely necessary to preserve the reputation of the house, that persons 
 of quality and fortune might not be afraid to venture their children 
 thither, I shall venture to make a small scheme by way of essay. 
 
70 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 "The house I would have built in a form by itself, as well as in a 
 place by itself. 
 
 " The building should be of three plain fronts, without any jet- 
 tings or bearing work, that the eye might at a glance see from one 
 coin to the other ; the gardens walled in the same triangular figure, 
 with a large moat, and but one entrance. 
 
 " When thus one part of the situation was contrived as well as 
 might be for discovery, and to render intriguing dangerous, I would 
 have no guards, no eyes, no spies, set over the ladies, but shall expect 
 them to be tried by the principles of honour and strict virtue. 
 
 " And if I am asked why, I must ask pardon of my own sex for 
 giving this reason for it : 
 
 " I am so much in charity with women, and so well acquainted 
 with men, that His my opinion there needs no other care to prevent 
 intriguing than to keep the men effectually away ; for though incli- 
 nation, which we prettily call love, does sometimes move a little too 
 visibly in the sex, and frailty often follows, yet I think, verily, 
 custom, which we miscall modesty, has so far the ascendant over 
 the sex, that solicitation always goes before it. 
 
 Custom with woman, 'stead of virtue, rules ; 
 It leads the wisest and commands the fools ; 
 For this alone, when inclinations reign, 
 Tho 's virtue 's fled, will acts of vice restrain. 
 Only by custom 'tis that virtue lives, 
 And love requires to be ask'd before it gives ; 
 For that which we call modesty is pride : 
 They scorn to ask, and hate to be denied. 
 'Tis custom thus prevails upon their want, 
 They '11 never beg, what ask'd they easily grant : 
 And when the needless ceremony 's over, 
 Themselves the weakness of the sex discover. 
 If then desires are strong and nature free, 
 Keep from her meai and opportunity, 
 Else 'twill be vain to curb her by restraint ; 
 But keep the question off, you keep the saint. 
 
 " In short, let a woman have never such a coming principle, she 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 71 
 
 will let you ask before she complies, at least if she be a woman of 
 honour." 
 
 ' ' A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the additional 
 accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a creature with- 
 out comparison : her society is the emblem of sublime enjoyments ; 
 her person is angelic, and her conversation heavenly; she is all 
 softness aud sweetness, peace, love, wit, and delight ; she is every 
 way suitable to the sublimest wish ; and the man that has such a 
 one to his portion, has nothing to do but to rejoice in her, and be 
 thankful. 
 
 " On the other hand, suppose her to be the very same woman, 
 and rob her of the benefit of education, and it follows thus : If 
 her temper be good, want of education makes her soft aud easy. 
 
 " Her wit, for want of teaching, makes her impertinent and talka- 
 tive. Her knowledge, for want of judgment and experience, makes 
 her fanciful and whimsical. 
 
 "If her temper be bad, want of breeding makes her worse, and 
 she grows haughty, insolent, and loud. 
 
 " If she be passionate, want of manners makes her termagant and 
 a scold, which is much at one with lunatic. 
 
 " If she be proud, want of discretion (which still is breeding) 
 makes her conceited, fantastic, and ridiculous. 
 
 "And from these she degenerates to be turbulent, clamorous, 
 noisy, nasty, and the devil. 
 
 ' ' Methinks mankind, for their own sakes, since, say what we will 
 of the women, we all think fit one time or other to be concerned with 
 them, should take some care to breed them up to be suitable and 
 serviceable, if they expected no such thing as delight from them. 
 Bless us ! what care do we take te breed up a good horse, and to 
 break him well ! And why not a woman ? since all her ornaments 
 and beauty, without suitable behaviour, is a cheat in nature; like 
 the false tradesman, who puts the best of his goods uppermost that 
 the buyer may think the rest are of the same goodness. 
 
 " Beauty of the body, which is the woman's glory, seems to be now 
 unequally bestowed ; and Nature, or rather Providence, to lie under 
 some scandal about it, as if it was given a woman for a snare to 
 
72 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 men, and to make a kind of she devil of her. Because, they say, 
 exquisite beauty is rarely given with wit, more rarely with goodness 
 of temper, and never at all with modesty. 
 
 " Philosophers do affirm, that the understanding and memory is 
 dilated or contracted according to the accidental dimensions of the 
 organ through which it is conveyed. Then, though God has given 
 a soul as capable to me as another, yet, if I have any natural defect 
 in those parts of the body by which the soul should act, I may have 
 the same soul infused as another man, and yet he be a wise man 
 and I a very fool. For example, if a child naturally have a defect 
 in the organ of hearing, so that he could never distinguish any 
 sound, that child shall never be able to speak or read, though it 
 have a soul capable of all the accomplishments in the world. The 
 brain is the centre of the soul's actings, where all the distinguish- 
 ing faculties of it reside ; and it is observable, a man who has a 
 narrow, contracted head, in which there is not room for the due and 
 necessary operations of nature by the brain, is never a man of 
 very great judgment; and that proverb, f A great head and little 
 wit/ is not meant by nature, but is a reproof upon sloth, as if one 
 should, by way of wonder, say, ' Fie ! fie ! you, that have a great 
 head, but have little wit; that is strange ! that certainly must be 
 your own fault/ From this notion I do believe there is a great 
 matter in the breed of men and women ; not that wise men shall 
 always get wise children, but I believe strong and healthy bodies 
 have the wisest children, and sickly, weakly bodies affect the wits 
 as well as the bodies of their children. We are easily persuaded 
 to believe this in the breeds of horses, cocks, dogs, and other 
 creatures, and I believe it is as visible in men. 
 
 " But, to come closer to the business. The great distinguishing 
 difference which is seen in the world between men and women, is in 
 their education ; and this is manifested by comparing it with the 
 difference between one man or woman and another. 
 
 " And herein is it that I take upon me to make such a bold asser- 
 tion, that all the world are mistaken in their practice about women ; 
 for I cannot think that God Almighty ever made them so delicate, 
 so glorious creatures, and furnished them with such charms, so 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 73 
 
 agreeable and delightful to man, with souls capable of the same 
 accomplishments with men, and all only to be stewards of our 
 houses, cooks, and slaves. 
 
 " Not that I am for exalting the female government in the least ; 
 but, in short, I would have men take women for companions, and 
 educate them to be fit for it. 
 
 " A woman of sense and breeding will scorn as much to encroach 
 upon the prerogative of the man, as a man of sense will scorn to 
 oppress the weakness of the woman. 
 
 " But if the women's souls were refined and improved by teaching, 
 that would be lost ; to say the weakness of the sex, as to judgment, 
 would be nonsense ; for ignorance and folly would be no more to 
 be found among women than men. I remember a passage which I 
 heard from a very fine woman : she had wit and capacity enough, 
 an extraordinary shape and face, and a great fortune, but had been 
 cloistered up all her time, and, for fear of being stolen, had not had 
 the liberty of being taught the common necessary knowledge of 
 women's affairs ; and when she came to converse in the world, her 
 natural wit made her so sensible of the want of education, that she 
 gave this short reflection on herself: c I am ashamed to talk with 
 my very maids/ says she ; ' for I do not know when they do right 
 or wrong. I had more need to go to school than be married/ 
 
 " I need not enlarge on the loss the defect of education is to the 
 sex, nor argue the benefit of the contrary practice : it is a thing will 
 be more easily granted than remedied. This chapter is but an essay 
 at the thing ; and I refer the practice to those happy days, if ever 
 they shall be, when men shall be wise enough to mend it." 
 
 The above chapter for I have given nearly the whole of it may 
 appear long or tedious to the reader; but the subject is so very, 
 so all-important to the happiness and well-being of our race, and 
 delineated, too, by one of the closest observers that this country ever 
 knew of all human actions, good or bad, that I thought I should not 
 do my duty either to De Foe, or to those for whose especial benefit 
 it was written, if I did not give the whole of it verbatim. 
 
 The next chapter in this essay upon projects is " Of a Court 
 Merchant," a sort of legal court for the trying of all causes 
 
74 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 connected with commerce, to be presided over by six judges, to be 
 chosen from the most eminent merchants of the kingdom, who were 
 to reside in London, and who should, in short, form a court of law 
 for the trial of causes ; but the whole, judge, counsel, and jury, to 
 be merchants, instead of lawyers. 
 
 The next chapter is " Of Seamen." This is a patriotic effort to 
 man the navy without outraging every feeling of civilization or 
 humanity by the terrors and rascalities of the press-gang. This is 
 voluminous enough equal to the assurance companies or the 
 turnpike roads ; but, having borrowed so largely from the chapter 
 on the education of females, at the hazard of being tiresome, I 
 dare not go into it. 
 
 William III. landed in England in 1688, and was involved in a 
 war with France till 1697, when the peace of Ryswick was con- 
 cluded, which gave William an acknowledgment to his title of 
 King, by Louis XIV. of France ; in exchange for millions of money 
 foolishly spent in support of the power of Spain in Flanders, and 
 oceans of British blood. On the death of James II. at St. Germains, 
 in 1701, another folly of the same kind was perpetrated by Great 
 Britain's entering upon another war with France, because Louis 
 the Fourteenth chose to style the Pretender, or son of James II.., 
 "King of England." Every preparation was vigorously entered 
 upon by England for this war ; but William III., meeting with an 
 accident while hunting, died in 1702, and was therefore prevented 
 seeing the end of the contest, the glory, and the cost; but his 
 successor, Anne, coming to the British throne, vigorously carried 
 on this war against the Pretender and Louis XIV., until, in 1709, 
 Louis solicited peace, and offered to acknowledge the title of Queen 
 Anne to the crown of Great Britain, and to remove the Pretender 
 from France. But Marlborough and the generals had influence 
 enough with the English court and House of Commons to reject the 
 proposal ; so the war was again prosecuted with vigour, Great Britain 
 finding the necessary blood and treasure. Another attempt at peace 
 was made in a few months afterwards, in 1710 ; but the glory party 
 in the English court overruled the attempt, till A.D. 1711, when the 
 Whigs, glory, and Marlborough lost place and power, and were 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 75 
 
 succeeded by the Tories, who concluded the peace of Utrecht, A.D. 
 1713; and these Tories, Oxford and Bolingbroke, contended for 
 power and place to such a degree as to hasten the death of the 
 poor Queen the following year, A.D. 1714. Poor Queen Anne ! the 
 personification of "CHURCH IN DANGER"! she fought against the 
 Pretender during eleven years of her short reign ; and on her death 
 the Earl of Oxford, her confidential friend and minister, was 
 impeached by the Commons for favouring the Pretender; and 
 Bolingbroke ran away to the Pretender's court at St. Germains, 
 where he resided twelve years, to avoid the same impeachment 
 which had fallen on his colleague, the Earl of Oxford. Louis XIV. 
 favoured the Pretender, and so did Queen Anne; but yet tens of 
 thousands of Britons could be sacrificed, and hundreds of millions 
 of Britain's treasure squandered, on the question of time when. 
 
 So that most part of these two reigns of twenty-six years, England 
 was engaged in continental wars, connected for the most part with 
 James II. or his son; and De Foe lamented this waste of blood 
 and treasure as sincerely as any man in Great Britain. I dwell on 
 these circumstances especially, because the fact of De Foe's disliking 
 wars with France cannot be too generally known, as some of his 
 proceedings were so isolated, erratic, ambiguous, if not hostile to 
 all professed liberal men and liberal feelings of his time, as to cause 
 him to be distrusted by those who should have been fellow-workers 
 with him in the same vineyard ; and who ought to have held out 
 the right hand of fellowship to one of Britain's truest of patriots 
 and greatest of geniuses, instead of treating him with neglect and 
 hostility ; because they did not understand him, who had studied, 
 yea, lived upon, the science of politics and national questions, moral, 
 civil, and religious, for forty years. De Foe was a great moral and 
 political philosopher, and the world did not know it. They knew 
 he had been a hosier and a pantile-maker, and writer of books, but 
 he had made no money. He had run away more than once from 
 his creditors ; he had been bankrupt ; he had been in gaol ; he had 
 been a fool ; but, fool as he was, the foundation of his folly was a 
 love of peace with France, and a dislike to that system of expensive 
 continental wars which have laid this country under the obligation 
 
76 LIFE OP DE FOE. 
 
 of eight hundred millions of pounds sterling of debt. De Foe stood 
 alone against the flowing tide of national folly glory and pride 
 yes ; and was lost ! 
 
 Poor William III.'s religion was the source of great contention 
 and strife among his new subjects ; for he was, in their unthankful 
 eyes, a broad-set Dutch Presbyterian, who wished to reign over his 
 new subjects for their benefit as men, irrespective of their several 
 sects in religious matters. He did not wish to know whether a man 
 belonged to church or chapel high church, low church, or con- 
 venticle to him it was all the same; but to his subjects owning 
 church property, or seeking church preferment, it was a mortal 
 offence and disappointment ; for theirs was a strife for the life the 
 archbishoprick of Canterbury, or the meanest curacy in the land of 
 the annual value of .40. The whole church- and-state contest of 
 this whole reign was a question of money a contest for the keeping 
 one half of the people out of power, in order that the great church 
 prizes might be divided among a less number of aspirants or com- 
 petitors. During the last few years of William's reign the most 
 bitter strife was carried on between church and dissent, during 
 which contest the most violent pamphlets were published on each 
 side. The church only opposed dissent so far as it was politic or 
 safe for her to oppose it, though she had no power to keep within 
 due bounds her champions, aspiring curates of the Sacheverell class, 
 or indiscreet superannuated archdeacons and testy deans, with a 
 host of paid pamphleteers, as Leslie, I/Estrange, Drake, Swift, 
 Pope, Ned Ward, Oldmixon, and others a host of writers, from 
 the pompous folio to the penny broadsheet. She allowed a sort of 
 occasional conformity, which left some of the richest merchants 
 of the city of London, although dissenters, to accept civic offices 
 of importance in the eyes of wealthy ambition, such as alderman, 
 sheriff, or lord mayor, by their being Church-of-England men, two 
 or three Sundays in each year, when they went to receive the sacra- 
 ment or, if you like the term, " their certificate of qualification for 
 magisterial office " ; for the sacrament of the Lord's Supper was 
 nothing more nor less than a passport to office in the city of London 
 to wealthy dissenting bankers and merchants a system of " playing 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 77 
 
 bo-peep with the Almighty" which De Foe reprobates ; for it " is 
 such bantering with religion as no modest Christian can think of 
 without horror." Perhaps the great mass of the dissenters would 
 rather like this connection with the Guildhall and the Mansion 
 House, their chapel and the alderman's pew in it, and the alder- 
 man's subscription to the new organ, or new school, or gallery, or 
 the singers; chapel debt, or minister's salary; besides, there is some- 
 thing very respectable in the idea that the sheriff or lord mayor of 
 London belongs to our chapel that he is a member of the church; 
 or one of the deacons. Many dissenters would not approve of this 
 conformity for civic office ; most of them would not ; yet it might 
 be only a matter of opinion, and nothing to them, so long as they 
 minded their own business in this life, and lived near to God, to 
 prepare them for a better. The great incentive to all this strife was 
 Sir Humphrey Edwin, a Presbyterian, who was elected lord mayor 
 on September 29, 1697, and who during his mayoralty attended 
 church on one part of the day ; and Pinners' Hall, his meeting-house, 
 on the other. All this was very well, and nothing particular about 
 it, excepting that on one unlucky afternoon he took with him, as 
 lord mayor, all the regalia of his office, which was the occasion of 
 all the strife noticed above. De Foe entered the lists against occa- 
 sional conformity, and offended, by his sincerity and plainness of 
 language, all the great ones of the earth, and the ministers too, who 
 supported the great aldermen in their proceedings. When the higher 
 authorities were offended with De Foe, it is easy to perceive how 
 the lower members of the congregation could be acted upon, through 
 the deacons and leading members; so that DeFoe was not acknow- 
 ledged by th.e great body of the dissenters in the contest. De Foe 
 knew more of the dissenting machine, and its power for good or 
 evil, than all your trimming aldermen, sheriffs, and lord mayors, put 
 together; but yet he was powerless for organization on a large 
 scale. He could print one, two, or three spirited pamphlets on the 
 subject, which everybody would read, and he could reply again and 
 again to the answers ; he would carry his readers along with him, 
 for he was all-powerful as a writer ; but yet he was powerless for 
 organization. 
 
78 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 Poor De Foe ! he had been in the hosiery trade ! and had failed, 
 and perhaps had run away, and been in gaol more than either once 
 or twice ! He had written on all subjects, with the greatest ability, 
 and his name had been borrowed for the sale of other men's pro- 
 ductions; and, perhaps, even at this early period of his career, 
 hawked about the streets. He had written on dissenters, and 
 offended them by his writings; so that he was thoroughly dis- 
 gusted with their supineness or want of principle or energy. He 
 knew the power of the dissenters, as the great moneyed interest of 
 the kingdom; but he seemed to possess the knowledge for himself; 
 for he could net bring it to bear for any organization of the entire 
 body, as the moneyed interest of the nation. He, no doubt, found 
 at every turn, as we find, certain politicians of the old school. No 
 doubt he did this in 1697 ; and we find the same old-school class in 
 1859; and our great-grandchildren will, in 1930, find their old- 
 school politicians too. What are these men ? Sun- worshippers 
 cowards in politics shufflers superannuated men who, for some 
 connection with the powers that be, in one degree or other, are cut 
 out of the main ranks, and left cripples in the rear, on all important 
 advances of active principles. De Foe was a general without an 
 army, for he had quarrelled with it ; but he lived to see the day 
 when he took revenge of his cowardly troops, who would receive 
 neither his instruction nor obey his commands : he thought them 
 cowards, and he lived to see the day when he treated them as such ; 
 and called them so. 
 
 At this time, 1697, the reduction of the army was again agitated, 
 both in and out of Parliament, for the old object insulting the best 
 of kings, and serving the exiled James ; and pamphlets were pub- 
 lished in full force on both sides, Mr. Trenchard taking the lead in 
 a patriotic address, entitled An Argument, showing that a Standing 
 Army is inconsistent with a free Government, and absolutely de- 
 structive to the Constitution of the English Monarchy. This pam- 
 phlet was replied to by Lord Somers, but to little effect ; the public 
 sympathy running altogether in favour of Trenchard, his arguments 
 and principles. De Foe came to the rescue, with An Argument, 
 showing that a Standing Army, with consent of Parliament, is not 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 79 
 
 inconsistent with a free Government. Trenchard replied again; 
 and another pamphlet, attacking Trenchard's pamphlet with vio- 
 lence, appeared ; which was attributed to De Foe, though written 
 anonymously. 
 
 I find, in The Ballad, or some scurrilous Reflections in Verse, 
 written evidently by De Foe, some allusions to William's army 
 being reduced to seven thousand men by the House of Commons ; 
 it professes to be a Ballad sung by the people, and the answer sung 
 by the House of Commons : 
 
 
 22. 
 You should find out some other word 
 
 To give the crown's accepter; 
 To call him king would be absurd, 
 For though he '11 seem to wear the sword, 
 
 'Tis you have got the scepter. 
 
 ANSWER. 
 Senates think Jit, for public good, 
 
 To bridle regal power, 
 And make kings act as monarchs should 
 That spare their subjects' wealth and blood, 
 
 Not those they rule, devour. 
 
 23. 
 And now your wealth is smoaking hot 
 
 Against the Kent petition, 
 No man alive can tell for what, 
 But telling truths which pleas'd you not, 
 
 And taxing your discretion. 
 
 ANSWER. 
 If men of Kent petitions draw, 
 
 And idly vote supplies, 
 Instead of those who make the law, 
 The Gate-house, or some Bedlam straw, 
 
 Must serve to make 'em wise. 
 
80 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 24. 
 
 If you those gentlemen detain 
 By your unbounded power, 
 "Tis hop'd you '1 never more complain 
 Of bishops, in King James's reign, 
 Sent blindly to the Tower. 
 
 ANSWER. 
 The bishops were close prisoners made, 
 
 By reason of their conscience-, 
 But these impertinents, afraid 
 A war would spoil their owling l trade, 
 
 Are shut up for their nonsence. 
 
 25. 
 
 A strange memorial too there came 
 
 Your members to affront, 
 Which told you truths you dare not name, 
 And so the paper scap'd the flame, 
 Or else it had been burnt. 2 
 
 ANSWER. 
 The House had other fish to fry, 
 
 When legion's libel came, 
 Than to sit talking o'er a lie, 
 Which had been punished, by-the-by, 
 
 Had th* author sent his name. 
 
 26. 
 Some said the language was severe, 
 
 And into passion flew ; 
 Some too began to curse and swear, 
 And call'd the author mutineer ; 
 
 But all men said 'twas true. 
 
 1 Owling, exporting wool by moonlight, against the law of the land. 
 
 2 By the hands of the common hangman. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 81 
 
 ANSWER. 
 The language certainly was such 
 
 As shew'd the writer's breeding, 
 And for civility kept touch 
 With those it would defend the Dutch, 
 
 That use such rough proceeding. 
 
 27. 
 But, oh ! the consternation now 
 
 In which you all appear ! 
 'Tis plain from whence your terrors flow, 
 For had your guilt been less, you know, 
 
 So would have been your fear. 
 
 ANSWER. 
 And, since such falsehoods were givn out 
 
 By those who wislid 'em evil, 
 'Twas time for them to look about, 
 And to prevent the rabble rout; 
 
 Since mob 's the very devil. 
 
 28. 
 In fifteen articles you 're told 
 
 You have our rights betray 'd, 
 Barter'd the nation, bought and sold 
 The liberties you should uphold ; 
 
 No wonder you 're afraid. 
 
 ANSWER. 
 
 Five hundred articles might shew 
 
 What malice could devise; 
 But had those articles been true, 
 And worthy of a public view, 
 
 Their votes had made 'em lies. 
 
82 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 29. 
 And now, to make yourselves appear 
 
 The more impertinent, 
 A wise address you do prepare, 
 To have his Majesty take care, 
 
 Rebellion to prevent. 
 
 A'NSWER. 
 Addresses, at a time when those 
 
 They wisely represent 
 Are threatnd by the kingdom* s foes, 
 Who would have brethren, come to blows, 
 
 Are needful by consent. 
 
 30. 
 No doubt his Majesty will please 
 
 To take your cause in hand ; 
 Besides, the work is done with ease : 
 Full seven thousand men he has, 
 
 The nation to defend. 
 
 ANSWER. 
 His Majesty has taken care 
 
 To guard us at their motion, 
 And where we 've fleets without compare, 
 Seven thousand men are very fair, 
 
 When they command the ocean. 
 
 31. 
 
 One hundred thousand heroes more 
 
 Do our train'd bands compose ; 
 If foreign forces should come o'er, 
 Plant them and you upon the shore, 
 How bravely you '1 oppose. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 83 
 
 ANSWER. 
 
 There 's no great likelihood appears 
 
 Of foreigners' invasion, 
 Since Rooke around the Channel steers, 
 And troops enough to quell those fears, 
 
 Are ready on occasion. 
 
 After De Foe had disposed of all his powers of writing on the 
 truckling of the dissenters in using the sacrament of the Lord's 
 Supper as a qualification for office ; and offended the leading mem- 
 bers, lay and clerical, by his powers of argument on this question ; 
 and when he had written in defence of a standing army with con- 
 sent of Parliament, and also answered Mr. Trenchard's pamphlet 
 against all standing armies, when he had done all this, and found 
 a lull of repose, he turned his attention to another subject the 
 dissolute morals of the nation, and published the Poor Man's Plea, 
 commencing with " In searching for a proper cure of an epidemick 
 distemper, physicians tell us His first necessary to know the cause of 
 that distemper, from what part of the body and from what ill habit 
 it proceeds ; and when the cause is discovered, it is to be remedied, 
 that the effect may cease of itself; but, if removing the cause will 
 not work the cure, then indeed they proceed to apply proper reme- 
 dies to the disease itself, and the particular part afflicted." 
 
 Again: "In King James I/s time, the court affecting some- 
 thing more of gallantry and gaiety, luxury got footing ; and twenty 
 years of peace, together with no extraordinary examples from the 
 court, gave too great encouragement to licentiousness. If it took 
 footing in King James I.'s time, it took a deep root in the reign of 
 his son ; and the liberty given the soldiery in the civil war dispersed 
 all manner of prophaneness throughout the kingdom. That Prince 
 (James I.) , though very pious in his own person and practice, had 
 the misfortune to be the first king of England, and perhaps in the 
 world, that ever established wickedness by law. By what unhappy 
 council, or secret ill fate, he was guided to it, is hard to determine ; 
 but the Book of Sports, as it was called, tended more to the vitiating 
 
 6* 
 
84 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 the practice of this kingdom, as to keeping the Lord's Day, than all 
 the acts of Parliament, proclamations, and endeavours of future 
 princes has done, or ever will do, to reform it/' 
 
 "After the restitution of King Charles II., when drinking the 
 King's health became the distinction between a Cavalier and a 
 Roundhead, drunkenness began to reign, and it has reigned almost 
 forty years. The gentry caressed this beastly vice at such a rate, 
 that no companion, no servant, was thought proper unless he could 
 bear a quantity of wine; and to this day, 1698, 'tis added to the 
 character of a man as an additional title, when you would speak 
 well of him, He is an honest drunken fellow, as if his drunkenness 
 was a recommendation of his honesty." 
 
 Again : " The further perfection of this vice among the gentry 
 will appear in two things : that 'tis become the subject of their 
 glory, and the way of expressing their joy for any publick blessing. 
 ' Jack' said a gentleman of very high quality, when, after the debate 
 in the House of Lords, King William III. was voted into the vacant 
 throne ' Jack,' says he, ' God damn ye, Jack, go home to your lady, 
 and tell her we have got a Protestant King and Queen ; and go make 
 a bonfire as big as a throne, and bid the butler make ye all drunk, 
 ye dog.' Here was sacrificing to the devil, for a thanksgiving to 
 God." 
 
 Such was the state of public manners when De Foe wrote his 
 essay for their reformation, in the reign of William III., A.D. 
 1698. 
 
 After the conclusion of the peace of Ryswick, the Whigs and 
 Tories in the House of Commons had full leisure to turn all their 
 attention to their own domestic contentions for place, honour, and 
 power -, and, had it not been for the personal character of William, 
 the very nation of Great Britain might have been swept from the 
 map of Europe as a nation, through these political contentions. 
 Honour and principle were never at so low an ebb as at this time ; 
 so much so, that poor insulted William, stripped of his old com- 
 panions in arms, his Dutch guards, wounded in spirit and harassed 
 to distraction in body, had serious thoughts of resigning the crown 
 in disgust, and retiring to Holland, his native country. What the 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 85 
 
 manners of the country were, such were the principles \ for there 
 was scarcely an honest man, as a public character, in the king- 
 dom. The whole nation were what the Stuarts had made them 
 and left them ; and they never would have asked William to take 
 their part, but that James was helping himself, and the church was 
 in danger. 
 
 At this time the King of Spain, though under forty years of age 
 and without heirs, was likely to die; his kingdom was claimed 
 by members of the House of Austria, and also by France, and a 
 general war in Europe was threatened in consequence. William, 
 along with the Dutch, exerted themselves as they best could to ward 
 off the threatened disaster by a treaty for dividing the kingdom of 
 Spain between the two families ; and this, too, before the Spanish 
 throne was vacant by the death of the King, which of course gave 
 great offence to the whole Spanish nation. Louis XIV., who 
 wanted the whole for his grandson the Duke of Anjou, the second 
 son of the Dauphin, although a party to the partition treaty, fo- 
 mented the discontents in Spain, and induced the Spanish grandees 
 and King, with the consent of the Pope, to allow the King to leave 
 by will, the whole kingdom of Spain in Europe and in America to 
 Louis's grandson the Duke of Anjou, to the entire exclusion of 
 the house of Austria. This was done, and all was ferment and 
 contention in England, France, Spain, and Austria. Cunning- 
 ham, in his History of Gt^eat Britain, thus refers to the subject : 
 "All people spake of it in England without any guard or 
 moderation. Several dull pamphleters also attacked that treaty 
 with violence and scurrility, reproaching the King's councils, and 
 shewing the French monarch what advantage he might make of 
 the commotions in England. Among these was Dr. Davenant, 
 and other necessitous persons, without money, without hopes, and 
 who had no other view but to make their fortunes out of the 
 troubles of their country and public revolutions." Poor William 
 was traduced on all sides, as if he could prevent the kingdom of 
 Spain from being left without heirs as if he were the cause that 
 the King of Spain died without children. What could he do in the 
 matter, but attempt to divide the evil, rather than allow one power 
 
86 
 
 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 to take and keep the whole, or involve the whole of Europe in 
 the dispute, and with it in a protracted war. 
 
 In this woful state of national affairs, for the nation had been 
 plundered to a great degree by Marlborough and his party, the 
 Whigs, in the last war, which war had been carried on far too long 
 for the real or true interests of Great Britain, well, on this pros- 
 trated position of national principle, De Foe thus writes in his 
 Review, some years after this date ; for poor William's memory was 
 traduced and blackened for this partition treaty long after his death : 
 " It has been the mode of late, of both parties, to censure the wis- 
 dom and management of King William; though it is by that wisdom 
 and management that we retain the posture we are in, to censure 
 him ; and Heaven, that was witness to his sincerity, and gave him 
 wisdom above his equals, is visiting us for the insolence offered 
 to his memory, by bringing us to seek refuge in that very treaty, 
 which we would, if we could, lower the price of, and undervalue to 
 posterity." 
 
 De Foe at this time wrote a pamphlet, entitled "The Two Great 
 Questions Considered : 1 . What the French King will do with 
 respect to the Spanish Monarchy ? 2. What Measures the English 
 ought to take." As a specimen of this work we will take the 
 following passages : 
 
 " If the French get the Spanish crown, we are beaten out of the 
 field as to trade, and are besieged in our own island. And never let 
 us flatter ourselves with our safety consisting so much in our fleet ; 
 for this I presume to lay down as a fundamental axiom, at least as 
 war is carried on of late, that it is not the longest sword, but the 
 longest purse that conquers. If the French get Spain, they get the 
 greatest trade in the world into their hands ; they that have the 
 most trade, will have the most money ; and they that have the most 
 money, will have the most ships, the best fleets, and the best armies ; 
 and, if once the French master us at sea, where are we then?" 
 
 Some apology is, perhaps, required from me, for the slight notice 
 taken of the above important works of De Foe, on this great agitated 
 question the Partition Treaty : a question which caused more dis- 
 cussion and contention for years, than any other subject in De Foe's 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 87 
 
 time; for this was not an English or a Scotch question, but a 
 European one involving the interest of Spain, France, Austria, 
 Italy, and all Roman Catholic powers, small or great, on the one 
 hand; and Great Britain, Holland, and the German Protestant 
 states, on the other. For me to enter into all the spirit of these 
 national contentions after the lapse of one hundred and sixty years, 
 would be impossible, and, if possible, would be unadvisable; for, to 
 do it effectually, I must invoke the shade of Sir Walter Scott for 
 another additional labour of another twenty volumes duodecimo, on 
 De Foe. I cannot do this, therefore I must get on as I can, and 
 the public must bear with me, considering that I am not going to 
 give a new edition of Bonn's General Catalogue, with notes; to 
 devote five or more volumes to the article De Foe. There are two 
 hundred works which I ought to bring under notice, and some too 
 important for the man's reputation as a religious, moral, or political 
 writer, to be dispensed with. Some of De Foe's works never were 
 understood, for he worked alone, and on his own judgment and 
 responsibility, and so was never appreciated. But if I can quote or 
 explain any of the publications which are likely to throw light on 
 any doubtful, dark, or ambiguous conduct of this man, it is my duty 
 to do it, and I will do it ; and this will be my only reason for going 
 into some subjects, which, to the general reader, may appear dull, 
 tiresome, or prolix. 
 
 The next tract, of twenty-nine pages (which was written at this 
 time, or A.D. 1700), was The Danger of the Protestant Religion 
 from the present Prospect of a Religious War in Europe. 
 
 The object of this pamphlet was to prevent, by a combination of 
 Protestants in Europe, the union of the crowns of Spain and France 
 in one family, and that a Catholic family; to the danger of the 
 Protestant interests in Europe. 
 
 To avoid which danger, De Foe recommends supporting the 
 Emperor of Austria's claim to the crown of Spain; and this to 
 be done by the English, the Dutch, and such Protestant powers as 
 could be brought into the league, either with men or money. The 
 outcry in England was so great against a standing army, that 
 nothing could induce the English to raise one ; therefore De Foe 
 
88 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 writes, " If, therefore, we do not think it safe to trust our own 
 people, never let us desert the Protestant cause ; for Germany and 
 Swisserland are inexhaustible storehouses of men. If you will but 
 assist the Protestants with money, 'twill be the same thing, or if 
 we assist the Emperor at this time, it may be the same thing ; for 
 prevention is all one as execution, or rather the better of the two." 
 England and Holland, and part of Austria, represented the Protestant 
 interest of Europe ; while France, Spain, and certain other Italian 
 and German states, represented the Catholic powers, which powers 
 De Foe did not wish to see strengthened by Spain being united 
 with France in one family that of the Bourbons. 
 
 Again : "I have said already, our way is to crush the confede- 
 racies of the Papists ; and if I do say, that the only way to do so is 
 to prevent the crown of Spain descending by will to a prince of the 
 house of Bourbon, and that prince marrying a daughter of the 
 house of Austria, I shall believe I am in the right, till I can hear a 
 better method proposed. This union is much easier prevented than 
 it will be dissolved : treaties and alliances may disappoint it now ; 
 whereas armies and fleets will hardly defeat it afterward ; if the 
 house of Bourbon and Austria unite, and conform the interests of 
 their dominions, they can have nobody to bend their arms against 
 but the Protestants or the Mahometans." 
 
 At the dissolution of Parliament, A.D. 1700, De Foe wrote his 
 Six Distinguishing Characters of a Parliament Man ; and, among 
 other things he states, that " Former kings would stand still, and 
 see the French overrun Flanders, and ruin our Protestant neigh- 
 bours, though the Parliament and people have entreated them to 
 assist them, and save Flanders from the falling into the hands of 
 the French. Now, we have a King who solicits the people to enable 
 him to preserve Flanders from falling into the hands of the French, 
 and to stand by and assist our Protestant neighbours ; and we, on 
 the contrary, are willing to see the French and Popish powers unite 
 and possess Flanders, and everything else, and glad the Dutch are 
 in danger to be ruined ; nay, so willing are we to have the States- 
 General destroyed, that ' Damn the Dutch ! ' is become a proverb 
 among us." And, among other points to be observed, he says, 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 89 
 
 " The House of Commons is not a place for fools. The great affairs 
 of the state, the welfare of the kingdom, the public safety, the 
 religion, liberties, and trade, the wealth and honour of the nation, 
 are not things to be debated by green hands. There has always 
 been a sort of gentlemen in the House called ' the dead weight/ 
 who vote as the ignorant freeholders in the country do just as the 
 landlord, the justice, or the parson directs. So these gentlemen, 
 understanding very little of the matter, give their vote just as Sir 
 Such-a-one does, let it be how it will; or just follow such a party, 
 without judging of the matter." 
 
 In this tract De Foe gives a good deal of advice on remedies for 
 Stuart influences, which is very good, but not very clear to readers 
 who are not intimately conversant with Stuart history. Therefore 
 I will take the liberty of giving, in my own language, the influences 
 to be corrected by a Parliament working on Protestant principles, 
 and legislating for a Protestant people. 
 
 Be it understood, then, that both Charles II. and his brother, 
 James II., were pensioners of Louis XIV., and under the direct 
 influence and guidance of Cardinal Mazarin, that King's minister; 
 and were made to act in subservience to French politics in conti- 
 nental Europe. This was done till James II. began to melt down 
 church cups and spoons, and then " the church was in danger," 
 when James had to run away, and allow William Prince of Orange 
 to assume the reins of government. Then French influences, and 
 French pensions, and French dictation, in English matters, were 
 attempted to be snapped at once ; but it took William ten years of 
 bloody continental wars, with a sacrifice of 300,000 of English Pro- 
 testants, with a countless loss of treasure in ships, merchandise, or 
 goods ; general trade with continental states, taxes, bad debts, high 
 prices, bankruptcy, and destitution, always following in the wake of 
 such a state of things it took all these, before Louis XIV. could 
 be brought to acknowledge William III. as King of England. 
 
 Charles I. married a French wife, and with her adopted French 
 principles; and his son, Charles II., was supplied with a French- 
 woman (the Duchess of Portsmouth) by Madame de Maintenon, 
 the mistress of Louis XIV. and Cardinal Mazarin, the French 
 
90 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 minister; and that woman was brought to this country by the 
 Duchess of Orleans, the King's sister, for the express purpose of 
 working the English court, in subserviency to French interests; 
 which she faithfully did for her French pay, during the lifetime of 
 Charles II. 
 
 As an illustration of what Thave written above, De Foe writes 
 " Former kings have been addressed by their Parliaments to make 
 war against France, and money given by millions to carry it on ; 
 and have had their money spent, and no war could be had." No ! 
 Charles and the Duchess of Portsmouth had spent the money; and 
 when Dunkirk was sold to the French for 400,000, through this 
 influence, they also spent the money between them. 
 
 What does De Foe write of William's conduct in such circum- 
 stances ? " Now we have a King that has fought our battles in 
 person, and willingly run through all the hazards of a bloody war, and 
 has been obliged to use all the persuasions possible to bring us to 
 support him in it." Again : " Formerly we had kings who did as 
 they pleased ; now we have a King who lets us do what we please." 
 
 Speaking of the French King obtaining the Spanish crown for 
 his grandson by will and testament, in the face of the league which 
 he had ratified and exchanged, he adds, " This he would not have 
 ventured to have done had the English been in a capacity to have 
 possessed Flanders, and to have appeared at sea, to have protected 
 the Princes of Italy in their adherence to the Emperor." 
 
 Again : " In the next place, gentlemen, let your eyes be upon 
 men of religion ; choose no atheists, Socinians, hereticks, Asgithites, 
 and blasphemers. Had the original of the late war been under the 
 reign of such a body of men, England might have made a will, and 
 given her crown to the Duke de Berry ; as Spain has to the Duke 
 d'Anjou, and have sought protection from the French." 
 
 De Foe's next pamphlet was The Freeholder's Plea against Stock- 
 jobbing Elections of Parliament Men, 
 
 In this he says " Of all nations in the world, we may say, without 
 detracting from the character of our native country, that England 
 has, for some ages past, been the most distracted with divisions and 
 parties among themselves. Union and charity the one relating to 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 91 
 
 our civil, the other to religious concerns are strangers in the land ; 
 and, whether we speak of difference in opinions or differences in 
 interest, we must own that we are the most divided, quarrelsome 
 nation under the sun. Poland is the only nation of Europe which 
 can pretend to match us in this ill-natured quality; and yet, all 
 things examined, Poland cannot come near us. 'Twas a true 
 character given of us by the wisest Princess that ever governed us, 
 Queen Elizabeth, that the English were harder to be governed in 
 time of peace than war. The wisdom of late Parliaments have 
 established two great rivals in trade, the old and new East-Indian 
 Companies. The grand question asked now, when your vote is 
 required for a Parliament-man, is not, as it ought to be Is he a 
 man of sense, of religion, of honesty, and estate ? but, What com- 
 pany is he for the new or the old ? Time would fail us, and the 
 paper too, to give you a list of the shopkeepers, merchants, pedlers, 
 and stock-jobbers, who, with their hired liveries in coaches and six 
 horses who, God knows, never had coach or livery of their own 
 are come down into the counties, being detached from London by 
 either company ; to get themselves chosen Parliament-men by those 
 boroughs who are easy to be imposed upon ; and who, like well- 
 meaning men that know nothing of the matter, choose them upon 
 the recommendation of the country gentlemen that have interest in 
 the towns ; which country gentlemen are prevailed upon to quit 
 their own pretensions to advance theirs, but by what arguments 
 we cannot pretend to determine. This is Parliament jobbing, a 
 new trade, which, as we thought it the duty of English freeholders 
 thus to expose, we hope an English Parliament will think it their 
 duty to prevent/ 7 
 
 De Foe says that at this time j2000 was frequently paid for a 
 seat in Parliament ; and that even 11,000 was spent in the town of 
 Winchelsea for this purpose ; and that there were agents in London 
 who could fit you up at once, on the price being paid to them. 
 
 The next pamphlet written about this time, and in support of the 
 one just quoted, was The Villany of Stock-jobbers detected, and the 
 Causes of the late Run upon the Bank and Bankers discovered and 
 considered. De Foe appears here to be well acquainted with all 
 
92 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 the tricks of large speculators, brokers, bankers, or jobbers; who 
 could combine by clubbing capitals for the annoying a rival com- 
 pany, or the ministry of the day ; or even rendering assistance to a 
 foreign power by embarrassing the credit of the nation at home, by 
 the shutting up the trading capital of the country ; and so producing 
 a national stagnation of trade bordering upon a general bankruptcy. 
 He says, " It has more than once been foretold that si ock -jobbers 
 and brokers would ruin our trade, and several times they have bid 
 fair for the performance. But never was a greater wound given to 
 trade in general than now ; never so unhappily timed to the dis- 
 advantage both of the public revenue and the current credit of the 
 nation ; nor never was there so much barefaced villany acted in the 
 affairs of public trade, as there is now." He goes on to show what 
 trade is ; and how carried on by cash and credit, and that credit can- 
 not live long where there is no cash ; and that the two East India 
 Companies acting as rivals endangered the trade of the country ; for 
 if the candidates of one of these companies should be rejected by the 
 citizens of London, either for Parliament or for the lord mayor's 
 office, or sheriff, or any other, an immediate conspiracy was brought 
 to bear upon the Bank or the Government by a buying -up of all the 
 cash or bills in the country ; and by writings and pamphlets depre- 
 ciating foreign money, so as to render it incapable of being nego 
 tiated during the panic ; till all the large moneyed interests (out of 
 this combination) were placed in the greatest state of embarrass- 
 ment, and many of them ruined. 
 
 These speculators, holding the cash, would buy exchequer bills 
 and banknotes at ten to sixteen and twenty per centum discount ; 
 and then, when they had made a large fortune by such purchases, 
 the cash had reappeared ; and all went on as usual, till these men 
 chose to try to play the same game over again ; or a rival company 
 might have the start of them, when they in turn would be the 
 sufferers. This work on stock -jobbery extends to seventeen pages, 
 and to pick out the best paragraphs, and yet keep up the connec- 
 tion of the sense, is a task of great difficulty; for the subject is 
 vitally important to trade, and therefore very interesting. 
 
 " The Old East-India Stock, by the arts of these unaccountable 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 93 
 
 people, has, within ten years or thereabouts, without any material 
 difference in the intrinsic value, been sold from 3QQper centum to 
 37 per centum; from whence, with fluxes and refluxes as frequent 
 as the tides, it has been up at j150 per centum again ; during all 
 which differences it would puzzle a very good artist to prove that 
 their real stock (if they have any], set loss and gain together, can 
 have varied above 10 per centum upon the whole." 
 
 " If it be in the power of mercenary brokers and companies to 
 engross the current cash, so as to make a scarcity of money, it must 
 consequently be in their power, whenever they are pleased to show 
 their disesteem of the government, to prevent the advancement of 
 any sum of money for the public service. And this experiment may 
 be a trial of their skill, to let us see what they are able to do, if the 
 City does not take care to oblige them, by choosing magistrates or 
 representatives to their mind, or out of their party. 'Tis very hard 
 that this sort of men, by the power of their money and the influence 
 they have in the stocks of companies, should have it in their hands 
 to put a general stop to credit, cash, banks, and even the exchequer 
 itself. 'Tis known their affection to the government is but very 
 indifferent ; and that, generally speaking, both those two great men 
 we have mentioned, and almost the whole party, who espouse the 
 old company' s quarrel, have put themselves in direct opposition to 
 the friends of the government, and always run retrograde to the 
 king and the nation's interest. That they have designed ill is 
 manifest by the event; because they have done what lay in their 
 power to ruin the nation's credit, in order to affect the general 
 trade as well as the persons. 
 
 " What safety can we have at home, while our peace is at the 
 mercy of such men, and 'tis in their power to job the nation into 
 feuds among ourselves, and to declare a new sort of civil war among 
 us when they please ? Nay, the war they manage is carried on with 
 worse weapons than swords and muskets. Bombs may fire our 
 towns, and troops overrun and plunder us; but these people can 
 ruin men silently, undermine and impoverish by a sort of impene- 
 trable artifice, like poison that works at a distance ; can wheedle 
 men to ruin themselves, and fiddle them out of their money by 
 
94 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 the strange unheard-of engines of interests, discounts, transfers 
 tallies, debentures, shares, projects, and the devil-an'-all of figure 
 and hard names. They can draw up their armies, and levy troops 
 set stock against stock, company against company, alderman agains 
 alderman ; and the poor passive tradesmen, like the peasants i 
 Flanders, are plundered by both sides, and hardly know who hui 
 them. What will become of the honour of the English nation, ; 
 the principal affairs relating to the credit both of the public an 
 private funds are dependent upon such vile people, who care nc 
 whom they ruin, nor whom they advance, though one be th 
 nation's friends, and the other its enemies, and exposed to thei 
 particular resentments ? 
 
 " He is a worthy patriot, and fitly qualified for a representative 
 who would join his strength to overthrow the credit of the City, am 
 ruin trade, only to shew his private resentment for not being chose 
 as he thought fit to expect ! " 
 
 " These methods, with the additions of such as the wisdom of th 
 nation will find out, would effectually suppress this pernicious 
 growing party, whose dangerous practices are of such a nature tha 
 no man can say where they will end. Then we shall trade square 
 honesty and industry will be the method of thriving, and plai] 
 trade be the general business of the exchange. Bankrupts am 
 beggars have advanced the misery of stock-jobbing, and we ca] 
 now reckon up a black list of fifty-seven persons, who, within thes 
 ten years past, have raised themselves to vast estates ; most of then 
 from mechanics, and some of them from broken and desperate for 
 tunes, by the sharping, tricking, intriguing, scandalous employmen 
 of stock-jobbing. Who have been the losers, or what the genera 
 stock of the nation has been benefited by them, is a mystery to< 
 hard to be explained. Now, they ride in their coaches, kee] 
 splendid equipages, and thrust themselves into business ; set up fo 
 deputies, aldermen, sheriffs, or mayors ; but, above all, for Parlia 
 ment men, of which (with the mischievous consequences that ar< 
 like to attend it) enough is said in the Freeholders' Plea, which ] 
 noted before, and to which I refer, and shall conclude with this 
 short note : 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 95 
 
 " That I think, with submission, all honest men ought to know 
 their names, in order to shun their dangerous acquaintance ; and 
 the government has nothing before them but effectually to suppress 
 and ease the nation of so intolerable a grievance/'' 
 
 The Address on Occasional Conformity, which De Foe had issued 
 in 1697, on Sir Humphrey Edwin taking the insignia of the mayor- 
 alty to Pinners' Hall Meeting-house, he again republished in 1701, 
 with a preface added, and addressed to the Rev. Mr. How, the 
 eminent dissenting minister, because another lord mayor, one of 
 Mr. How's church or congregation, had complied with the form of 
 receiving the Lord's Supper, as a qualification to his civic distinc- 
 tions. De Foe is very plain and faithful, as his subject required, 
 yet temperate in spirit and language; only he requests Mr. How 
 to declare publicly to the world, whether this practice of alternate 
 communion be allowed, either by his congregation in particular, or 
 by the dissenters in general; and that Mr. John How should 
 either censure the delinquent, though wearing gay clothing and a 
 gold ring, or defend the custom by such arguments as he might 
 think convenient; but if he did neither of these, the world must 
 believe that dissenters do allow themselves to practise what they 
 cannot defend. 
 
 Now, in noticing this preface and address, and another address 
 on the same subject, by De Foe, I feel increased difficulty in con- 
 densing the subject into a reasonable space; for forty pages of 
 divinity is no trifling subject to grapple with, if any attention is 
 to be paid to the reader of what would be hoped to be an entertain- 
 ing book. To copy forty pages of contention on church and chapel, 
 or even ten, will not do. I must condense into less space than 
 that; or, at least, make an effort. Well, then, two lord mayors 
 of London had used the sacrament of the Lord's Supper as a quali- 
 fication for civic honours, and the second belonging to Mr. How's 
 church, for which De Foe attacks Mr. How publicly, though anony- 
 mously, and in such terms as to place the Rev. Mr. How in a very 
 unpleasant dilemma a regular fix. 
 
 " The whole ecclesiastical history, from the first century of the 
 Christian Church, is full of instances to confirm this that perse- 
 
96 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 cution made few professed Christians, but fashion made many 
 painted hypocrites ; that the prosperity of the Church of Christ 
 has been more fatal to it than all the persecutions of its enemies." 
 
 " Religion is the sacred profession of the name of God serving 
 him, believing him, expecting from him ; and, like the God it refers 
 to, 'tis in one and the same object; one and the same thing, per- 
 fectly indivisible, and inseparable; there is in it no neuter gender, 
 no ambiguous article, God or Baal : mediums are impossible. 
 
 ' ' There is but one best (way of serving God) , and he that gives 
 God two bests, gives him the best and the worst : the one spoils the 
 other, 'till both are good for nothing. 
 
 " He who dissents from the Established Church on any account 
 but from a real principle of conscience, is a politick, not a religious, 
 Hissenter." 
 
 " If I shall dissent, and yet at the same time conform, by con- 
 forming I deny my dissent being lawful ; or, by my dissenting, I 
 damn my conforming as sinful." 
 
 " Nothing can be lawful and unlawful at the same time. If it be 
 not lawful for me to dissent, I ought to conform ; but if it be un- 
 lawful for me to conform, I must dissent : several opinions may at 
 the same time consist in a country, in a city, in a family, but not in 
 one entire person ; that is impossible." 
 
 De Foe maintains, again and again, page after page, that the 
 ordinance of the Lord's Supper cannot be converted into a civil 
 action, by any end, will, or design of man whatsoever ; and that the 
 minister's offering you the bread, with the words, the body of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, &c., and you kneeling with reverence at the time, 
 and saying Amen to the prayer, cannot be a civil action. He says, 
 " It is nothing but a bantering with religion, and playing at bo-peep 
 with God Almighty ; and that these lord mayors and sheriffs may 
 be necessary for the preservation of the state ; but that they are 
 such patriots as will damn their souls to save their country." 
 
 The penalty of the law for not accepting public employment is 
 wholly pecuniary, and the amount 500; and yet, to save this sum, 
 these lord mayors will run the risk of losing their souls. De Foe 
 says, " A man, if he have any conscience of religion at all, it must 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 97 
 
 be of some religion or other : if of this, it cannot be of that ; and 
 if of that, it cannot be of this. As for a man being of both, he 
 might as well be of neither ; and as for religion, when a man pro- 
 stitutes it to interest, he might as well be Turk, Jew, Papist, or 
 anything." 
 
 De Foe was thoroughly master of his subject in all its bearings, 
 and, as might be expected, received no answer from Mr. How; though 
 a supercilious, impertinent reply was made, where wit, sarcasm, 
 scorn, neglect, and contempt, were substituted for good sense and 
 calm discussion a very convenient refuge for established reputation 
 to take shelter under ; though not very safe with such an antago- 
 nist as De Foe could prove himself to be. The Rev. Mr. How was 
 a popular dissenting minister, of great reputation for learning; 
 he considered it beneath his dignity to reply with civility to a 
 writer like De Foe; and therefore he treated him with mirth aod 
 contempt. 
 
 After Mr. How had replied to De Foe's preface to the preceding 
 pamphlet for the preface alone was new, the work itself having 
 been written three years before, when Sir Humphrey Edwin, the 
 Lord Mayor, took the sword of state to Pinners' Hall Meeting- 
 house De Foe wonders that a man so absorbed in recluse studies 
 should so far forsake his accustomed pursuits to attack a poor 
 prefacer, and quit the argument to lash the author with his severe 
 wit, for the world's amusement ; and feels sure that not only him- 
 self bat the whole town felt disappointment that Mr. How, who con- 
 sidered the subject beneath his notice, should spend his time on the 
 impertinence of a sorry preface. 
 
 When he addressed the preface to Mr. How, he considered that 
 he had so carefully revised both it and the book, that no offence 
 could possibly be taken at either; in this he had been very par- 
 ticular, considering the person to whom he wrote, and of whom he 
 wrote, all known and valued by him ; and he felt confident he either 
 should have no reply at all, or one becoming the charity of a 
 Christian, the civility of a gentleman, and the force and vigour of a 
 scholar. 
 
 But as Mr. How had so far descended as to quit the dispute, and 
 
 7 
 
98 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 fall upon him personally, mixing raillery and reproach with his 
 argument, which he knew would not better the cause ; this must 
 be the excuse offered by De Foe for being freer with him than he 
 otherwise should have been ; for he should not have presumed to 
 engage even in self-defence with such an antagonist as Mr. How, 
 possessed as he was ol such a character for learning, had he not 
 seen his book differ so much from that reputation, and in many 
 places from the truth. 
 
 De Foe, with diffidence (called upon to animadvert upon his 
 superiors in learning and office), begs to correct several mistakes 
 into which Mr. How must have fallen, as to the person y tem- 
 per, profession, and intention of the author; which mistakes 
 alone could induce Mr. How to treat his adversary with such 
 contempt. 
 
 As to De Foe's person and temper, these he scrupulously con- 
 cealed ; because it is so common in the world to answer argument 
 with recrimination instead of reasoning, that this case should not 
 be clogged with the meanness or imperfections of the author; he 
 says, moreover, " that he need not go back for an instance to our 
 Saviour, whose arguments were confronted with Is not this the car- 
 penter's son ? for Mr. How himself would have searched his cha- 
 racter, to have completed his remarks with personal reflections;" 
 and De Foe adds, that " his name could offer little strength to the 
 argument, beyond the furnishing something for reproach; and what 
 would this be to the point, for the occasional conformity of dis- 
 senters is not condemned or defended by the names of the authors, 
 but by truth, scripture, and reason." 
 
 " Thou wast altogether born in sin, said the high priest and elders 
 to the poor man whom Christ healed, and dost thou teach us ? And 
 yet this poor man was right ? and if / was right, though the most 
 scandalous of libellers, is my argument the worse ? " 
 
 He again added, that he was willing to give all particulars of 
 himself, and then his name would be at Mr. How's service. First, 
 he possessed a strong aversion to double dealing and shifting in 
 points of religion, and in consequence wrote for information, and to 
 explode the practice; secondly, if Mr. How's book had afforded 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 99 
 
 that information, he should have acknowledged it with humility, in 
 proportion to the pride of opposing charged against him. 
 
 As for his personal miscarriages and misfortunes, poor De Foe 
 lamented that no man had had more; which might weaken his repu- 
 tation as an author, but certainly not his argument ; and he could 
 affirm that God, in his merciful providence, had healed the last, and 
 he hoped had pardoned the first; and thus he was on equal terms 
 in the reasoning with his opponent. 
 
 He could perceive the beam in his own eye, and had for some 
 years been a great penitent on that account ; yet even on that ac- 
 count he could not consider himself excluded from inquiring into a 
 scandalous proceeding in a society of which he, though unworthy, was 
 a member. 
 
 He does not presume to judge another man's conduct, where the 
 case is so plain as to let that conduct speak for itself; for he calls to 
 remembrance the command, that we have no more right to call good 
 evil, or evil good, than we have to judge one another. 
 
 He had thus gone over his own character, and he claims that 
 truth and honesty on his side shall not be despised through his being 
 so unworthy an instrument ; and he complains that Mr. How should 
 censure him severely, and wrongfully too, for judging, yet presume 
 to judge him. 
 
 De Foe could not forbear entering his caveat against personal 
 reflections till the argument had been disposed of, but, once rid of 
 the argument, then may be the time for wit and satire upon the 
 follies and afflictions of the author. Having stated these, his con- 
 victions, he proceeds to Mr. How's third mistake about him, viz., 
 his profession ; on which he had been treated in several pages for 
 an Independent, Mr. How evidently being a Presbyterian ; but what 
 had Mr. How's disputes between himself and the Independents to do 
 with this question ? 
 
 In pages 30, 31, and 32, De Foe is treated as a fifth-monarchy 
 man and a leveller a fact which could not be found in the argument ; 
 and as for the scrupulous Independent kneeling at the sacrament, 
 and the fifth-monarchy man seizing all property for a common stock 
 for the saints, and things like these ; what are they in an inquiry 
 
100 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 about occasional promiscuous conformity ? an antecedent which De 
 Foe cannot find to this relative. 
 
 De Foe affirms that he is no Independent, neither & fifth -monarchy 
 man, nor a leveller; and compliments his antagonist on his learning 
 on these errors, so inconsistent with civil society ; but this display 
 of learning on these subjects had no more to do with the case in 
 dispute than a lecture on the Alcoran by Mr. How, he supposing 
 him to be a Mahometan a thing just as probable as his being a 
 fifth-monarchy man, so far as his book would indicate him to 
 belong to either. Poor De Foe replied, that since he was led to 
 give an account of his profession, which he always hoped to be 
 ready to do, he would do it in few words. He was of the same class, 
 and in the same denomination of dissenters, as Mr. How, his office 
 excepted ; and he was willing to be guided by, and to practise, the 
 great rule of Christian charity in all its extents ; indeed, he had more 
 need of the practice than Mr. How, because he had less than others, 
 on account of the causes already named ; and however Mr. How, 
 by wresting his words and mistaking his intentions, had pleased 
 to see nothing of it, yet he was not convinced that he had broken 
 the great Christian rule of charity in anything he had written. 
 
 We come now to the fourth thing which Mr. How again mistook 
 his intentions: in rashfully and wrongfully judging him, how- 
 ever cautious he had been in judging others : but, humanum est 
 errare, Mr. How fell into the very error he had reproved in him 
 with such severity, by judging that the principal design in De Foe's 
 Preface was to reflect upon a worthy gentleman (the present Lord 
 Mayor, Sir Thomas Abney) who was named therein. 
 
 All Mr, How's assumptions were groundless, and such only as 
 temper could lead him into; for the Enquiry was written three years 
 before ; when Sir Humphrey Edwin was Lord Mayor, and not this 
 year, when Sir Thomas Abney was Lord Mayor, and therefore could 
 not be written against him. The Preface merely adds, that " the 
 cause being repeated, the reprinting the Enquiry was only designed 
 as a reproof to the practice, as for persons he felt quite indifferent : 
 if the coat fits any body, let them wear it." 
 
 " Secondly, if of any party, I am, and ever was, for the English 
 
LIFE OF 18 -FOE. 101 
 
 liberty, and for putting suitable men into the magistracy ; and no 
 man more likely for such a post of trust and honour ; and for such 
 men I voted when voting for Sir Thomas Abney; and should again, 
 if I had ten thousand voices. I respect the man for his honesty 
 and ability, but I do not wish to natter him, for I neither want his 
 favour, nor fear his anger. Here, too, you are mistaken ; and these 
 errors have led you to waste your time, and the reader's too, in 
 making needless remarks, and answering people who never opposed 
 you." 
 
 De Foe now comes to the part of the book which respected the 
 case in hand, which is the least part, and agrees with the title of 
 being only a consideration of the Preface, for no answer had been 
 given ; and none to give but the drawing back the curtain of words, 
 which Mr. How had spread to conceal the argument. 
 
 Having disposed of the argument, De Foe humbly requests to run 
 over his antagonist's book, with as modest animadversions as his 
 just defence would allow ; and he was willing to stand corrected 
 when he should fail in point of decency. 
 
 " First, you quarrel with me for hiding my name, while yours is 
 exposed, and you give five pages, quoting yourself in your Preface, 
 to shew how indifferent you are to controverted disputes, and your 
 unwillingness to engage in this ; but, if you had answered the book 
 which has been three years before the public, your name might have 
 been as much concealed as my own; but this inquiry being un- 
 answered, gave some people more prejudice against the dissenters 
 than I could have wished ; and in bringing it again before the pub- 
 lic, I knew no man more concerned, nor more capable of answering 
 it, than yourself. As for my disappointment at your answering as 
 you are pleased to mention, I certainly feel it ; but the disappoint- 
 ment is more with your attempting the task, and doing it to so little 
 purpose, than anything else I could have met with in this business. 
 You boast of your indifference on these matters, but whether that 
 indifference be congruous to your profession as a gospel minister, J 
 shall not examine; nor shall I examine the propriety of your allow- 
 ing members of your church to conform or not to conform to the 
 Established Church as they think fit ; though I am sure that, if I 
 
102 I ITI OF OE FOE. 
 
 had arrived at that coldnesss in the matter myself, I should con- 
 form immediately ; for I hold that schism from a true established 
 church of Christ is a great sin ; and if I could conform, I ought to 
 conform." 
 
 This kind of controversy on occasional conformity for civic ho- 
 nours is carried on for several pages more, between De Foe and the 
 minister, Mr. How : De Foe sticking close to the argument, and 
 the minister as anxious to shake off both him and his argument, 
 and treat both as a matter of no concern to any one. De Foe com- 
 plains of the coarse treatment he had received at the reverend 
 gentleman's hands; and he complains of being threatened with 
 personal violence by some friend of Mr. How, to which he coolly 
 replies, "That, if he thinks himself capable to give me personal 
 correction, he knows me well enough, and need never want an 
 opportunity to be welcome." 
 
 I have gone into this contention between De Foe and Mr. How 
 very fully, to show that De Foe was placing himself in direct anta- 
 gonism to all the leading or influential Protestant dissenters of his 
 day ; he evidently was quarrelling with the whole fraternity in a 
 body ; which may account for the position De Foe held with the 
 dissenters at a later period of his life. 
 
 About this time, 1701, William's health visibly declining through 
 the contentions of his Parliament as heterogeneous a mass of 
 political roguery as French influences and French money, and old 
 Stuart recollections and Tory speculations, could bring together 
 in one assemblage as a British House of Commons all parties, 
 Whig, Tory, patriot, and sycophant, looked around for a suc- 
 cessor. Some were for Anne ; some were for her pretended half- 
 brother, James, commonly called the Pretender ; while others advo- 
 cated the immediate introduction of the house of Hanover, to 
 the total and immediate exclusion of all and everything connected 
 with the house of Stuart. De Foe stood forward as the advocate 
 of the son of the Duke of Monmouth, the legitimate son (as he 
 believed) of Charles II. Charles II. had declared that his son, the 
 Duke of Monmouth, was not legitimate; but De Foe took the 
 King's word for nothing, and proposed an investigation into the 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 103 
 
 marriage,, or reputed marriage, of Charles II. and Lucy Walters, 
 the mother of the Duke of Monmouth. The Duke of Monmouth 
 being dead, and most of his adherents being drawn into plots and 
 destroyed by James II, and his instruments of the law, of the 
 Jeffrey class, such legal documents were left by Charles for James's 
 security, and these duly signed, sealed, registered, and delivered 
 to the law officers of the crown, that De Foe's project was never 
 entertained by the nation for one moment. 
 
 This mass of political villainy in a House of Commons forced 
 forward into maturity by the money of Louis XIV. of France ; for 
 now that there was no Charles II. or his brother James, and no 
 French prostitute at the English court to receive French money, as 
 pension or bribe, for the carrying out French objects by British 
 influences, Louis was driven to tamper with the freemen and pot- 
 wallopers of England, and by their means purchase a majority in 
 the House of Commons, which should be subservient to French 
 influences and French dictation. Such a House of Commons was 
 returned ; and the grand leading attraction there was Jack How 
 a man of great ferocity of disposition and general brutality of cha- 
 racter a man pronounced by De Foe, in his Legion Memorial, to 
 be a " scandal of Parliaments." This House, so elected and so 
 constituted, set about the limiting of the prerogatives of the sove- 
 reign, to annoy William, then on the throne, or his late ministers, 
 or the house of Hanover, or any body or thing obnoxious to French 
 influences ; but, in their malignity of feeling, they stumbled upon 
 the celebrated " Succession Bill " a bill which, thrown about for 
 three months, and shirked by every one, was at last palmed upon a 
 Tory-madman sort of a member, such as we generally find to exist in 
 the proportion of one in 650 members of the House of Commons 
 a sort of merry-andrew, fitted up by national taste for the diversion 
 of the House. Well ! such was Sir John Bowles, the proposer of 
 this act ; and one Tory approving of one point of revenge contained 
 in it, and another approving of another for it was all fury and 
 revenge together the thing, I say, so well fitting such several points 
 of Tory taste, that the bill passed through the House of Commons 
 without amendment, and was sent up to the Lords, where certain 
 
104 LIFE Or DE FOE. 
 
 young members, wide awake to the rich points of malice, would 
 hear of no amendments, and so the bill passed the Lords. The bill 
 was returned to the Commons as passed without any amendment, 
 to the astonishment and disappointment of the House; for the 
 great majority who voted for that bill, and carried it, were only 
 voting spite or revenge upon their King, William III., his Dutch 
 friends and supporters, or his ministry and the Whigs. 
 
 The whole act was a piece of impertinence and malignity thrown 
 at William, and intended to be quashed in the House of Lords. 
 This member Bowles was selected for bringing in the bill, because 
 only a madman-member would be seen in such a display of malig- 
 nity against royalty. The bill passed by mistake; and was the 
 most important measure of William's reign for the securing of Bri- 
 tish liberty. 
 
 Such is liberty constitutional ! Passed ! and the law of the land, 
 and by the most corrupt Parliament that ever sat in England, formed 
 as it was of stock-jobbers in French pay, Tories of the old school, 
 disappointed placemen, with Sir John Bowles, the merry-andrew of 
 the House; and Jack How! and all under the generalship of Harley, 
 the Speaker of the House, who had made friends from all discarded 
 politicians and disappointed men, and had organized these materials 
 to that fine point, by dinners, &c., that he was master of the House, 
 the Whigs, and the throne. 
 
 This bill, important beyond most other bills, should not be 
 passed over with a slight notice. No matter who were its authors 
 or objects no matter whether French or English the bill passed ; 
 and, thanks to Torydom, there it remains ! 
 
 It provided, first, "That the future sovereign should join in 
 communion with the Church of England/' which was the thrust 
 at William's Dutch-Presbyterian-conventicle principles : this was 
 High Church ! 
 
 Secondly, " That, in the event of a foreigner "succeeding to the 
 throne, the nation should not be involved in a war for the defence 
 of his foreign dominions without consent of Parliament." This was 
 a blow at William again, the Whigs, and the Duke of Marlborough, 
 who had certainly carried on the last war all over Europe, and, for 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 105 
 
 the most part, with English and Dutch funds, to the great dissatis- 
 faction of the mass of the people of England, who had paid the cost ; 
 but had not yet seen the result. This war was looked upon as a 
 great Dutch job, carried on by William for his own private feelings, 
 if not interests. This is what the people who had to pay thought ; 
 though there might be politicians who might think that the French 
 principles imported with Henrietta in Charles I/s time, and again 
 imported in the lifetime of his son, Charles II., along with the 
 Duchess of Portsmouth, could not be thrown off at once without a 
 great national effort, destruction and taxation. 
 
 The third provision was, " That the same consent should be 
 necessary to his leaving the kingdom." This was a blow aimed at 
 William again, for his retreating to Holland for quietness from the 
 contentions of British politics. 
 
 The fourth provision was, "That all matters transacted in the 
 Privy Council should be signed by those who advised them." 
 This was a reproof to the ministers; now in a minority in the 
 Commons. 
 
 The fifth provision was, " That no person born out of the kingdom 
 should be of the Privy Council, or a member of Parliament, or enjoy 
 any office, or have grants of land from the crown." This was a 
 lash at the friend and councillor of William, Bentinck, one of 
 William's Dutch countrymen ; the same who was made the Duke 
 of Portland. 
 
 The sixth provision was, "That no person enjoying place or 
 pension from the crown should sit in the House of Commons." 
 What a capital provision this for the protection of the liberties of 
 England ! and what a pity such a provision should be repealed ! 
 for it has been repealed but yet it is never too late to mend our 
 ways, and re-enact the provision again. I hope to see it; but 
 whether re-enacted by Palmerston or Disraeli I would not care one 
 straw ; but re-enacted, by the blessing of God, it must be ; and, if 
 possible, in our time. 
 
 The seventh provision enacted, " That the judges should hold their 
 places during good behaviour." This would be an attack on some 
 judge-appointment of William's ministry offensive to the Tories. 
 
106 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 The eighth provision was, "That no pardon under the great 
 seal should be pleadable to an impeachment of the Commons." 
 This would be an attack on William ; as interfering with his royal 
 prerogative. 
 
 Such were the restrictions in the Bill of Settlement passed by the 
 Parliament of 1701; and these restrictions on royalty were at the 
 time considered so outrageous, that the greatest scarecrow in the 
 House had to be chosen, after a three months' seeking-up, to find 
 the requisite amount of face for the work. 
 
 Such is, and such has been, the groundwork and progress of 
 British liberty and British constitution, from the time of Simon de 
 Montfort, Earl of Leicester, to the present time. This revengeful 
 bill for such it really was could not exhaust the vials of Tory 
 wrath and spleen upon the fallen Whigs ; therefore articles of im- 
 peachment were prepared against the Earls of Portland and Oxford, 
 and Lords Somers and Halifax, the ministers, or, rather, some of 
 them, for the share they had taken in the Partition Treaty. 
 
 This was, perhaps, the most factious and iniquitous proceeding 
 that could have been adopted by any House of Commons ; for these 
 ministers only took such measures in the Partition Treaty as circum- 
 stances allowed them to take. Of two evils, they chose the less ; 
 for, in dividing Spain between France and Austria, they did better 
 for Great Britain than by allowing either of these powers to seize 
 the whole. I cannot conceive it possible for the ministry of 
 William to have acted in any other way ; for, if they had allowed 
 Austria to possess the whole, the English Parliament would have 
 censured such a preserving of the balance of power in Europe ; and 
 if France, already too powerful, had been allowed to take the whole, 
 that never would have been sanctioned by the House of Commons ; 
 and if Great Britain and Holland had attempted to place some 
 third party on the throne of Spain, so long as both France and 
 Austria laid claim to that kingdom by right of succession, no 
 sanction from either of these last-named parties could have been 
 expected to such an arrangement ; they being, each of them, the 
 supposed heir to the kingdom. For this Partition Treaty, Lord 
 Somers was tried by the Lords, and acquitted ; and the other trials 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 107 
 
 were dismissed on the last day of the session. What a state of 
 things ! France had seized the whole Spanish kingdom, as a legacy 
 left by the last King, and had returned such a majority in the 
 House of Commons of Great Britain, by means of French gold 
 being distributed as bribes among the electors, that four of the 
 most honourable and talented men in the kingdom were impeached 
 by the British House of Commons for restricting (by treaty) France 
 to one half of the kingdom of Spain, instead of the whole of it. 
 
 Louis, with such a bought House of Commons, was enabled to 
 place his grandson the Duke of Anjou on the throne of Spain : he 
 did this unopposed, and by the means explained above. So long as 
 the spendthrift Stuarts were on the throne of Great Britain, Louis 
 the Fourteenth tampered with them ; but when a man superior to 
 Louis's money (William III.) occupied the British throne, then 
 Louis was driven to other game the freemen and potwallopers of 
 England for the corrupting the House of Commons; and so sapping 
 William's power in his own capital. This tampering of Louis XIV. 
 with English voters ought to have been a warning to British patriots 
 through all time. It has not been such ; but from this time may 
 it become a matter for grave reflection to our legislators, when 
 attempting to reform the House of Commons may I add, by ex- 
 tending the electoral franchise as widely as possible ; so as to make 
 the electors too numerous to purchase ? 
 
 Affairs being in a very unsettled state in the British Parliament, 
 Louis took advantage of the circumstance to march a French army 
 into Flanders, to take and hold those Spanish provinces for his 
 grandson the Duke of Anjou; and now King of Spain through the 
 late King's will ; under pretence that no Spanish troops were ready 
 for the service ; and by these forces a considerable number of the 
 Dutch garrisons had been taken prisoners of war ; because Holland 
 had not yet owned the grandson of Louis as King of Spain. The 
 English Parliament just returned was full of Tories; and the English 
 nation as full of French money louis-d'ors and pistoles, the price 
 paid to the electors for returning a House of Commons corrupt to 
 the last degree ; though, of course, not organized for any preme- 
 ditated French support ; but worthless in principle, and fit tools for 
 
108 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 any service skilful leaders might put them to. But, as it happened, 
 this pack of scoundrelism fell upon the Succession Bill ; provided 
 that Sophia Duchess Dowager of Hanover, grand- daughter of the 
 unfortunate Queen of Bohemia, daughter of James I., should suc- 
 ceed to the throne on the death of the Princess Anne, daughter of 
 James II. ; and fortified that bill with such a string of provisions 
 or restrictions as no patriots, however British, could have improved 
 upon for the securing of British interests. Most of this happy 
 legislation proceeded from malignant discontent in the breasts of 
 the devoted supporters of the exiled family a pack of rabbledom 
 for good ; but all-powerful for mischief, especially if that mischief 
 were likely to fall upon Dutch or Hanoverian heads. Well, in this 
 state of things no forces raised to protect the coasts ; and no wish 
 on the part of Parliament to allow money for the raising these 
 troops to resist an invasion from France, which might take place at 
 any time something must be done by some one. By what means 
 I know not, but the county of Kent was fully roused to a sense of 
 its insecurity; even the ordinary farmers declaring at their markets, 
 that they had sown their crops, and they expected the French would 
 reap the harvest. 
 
 Whether De Foe had any hand in raising this panic is not known ; 
 but certainly he was always ready with his advice, and that always 
 of a truly decisive character, for the King's benefit. De Foe did 
 occasionally act confidentially in this and the following reign ; but 
 whether he and somebody else might devise the scheme and carry 
 it out, never will be known ; but certain it is that De Foe was inti- 
 mately known to Colepeper, the principal actor in this scene of 
 panic and confusion. 
 
 That a war with France was imminent for it had already com- 
 menced in Flanders, and with Holland, our great Protestant ally 
 was clear, and yet no steps were taken in Great Britain to meet the 
 threatened difficulty. All was panic and confusion on the coast of 
 Kent; till the principal freeholders of the county brought the matter 
 before the justices and grand jury, then assembled at the sessions 
 at Maidstone, on the 29th of April. A petition to the House of 
 Commons was at once resolved upon, drawn up with as little delay 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 109 
 
 as possible, and signed by the grand jury, the chairman of the ses- 
 sions and twenty-three justices, and a large number of freeholders. 
 This petition was then entrusted to the care of Mr. Colepeper, the 
 chairman, for presentation to the House of Commons. 
 
 On the 6th of May, Mr. Colepeper arrived in London, accom- 
 panied by his relation, Thomas Colepeper, David Polhill, Justinian 
 Champneys, and William Hamilton, Esquires, all gentlemen of 
 family and consideration in the county; who volunteered for 
 this service. On the following day they took their petition to the 
 House of Commons, where they saw one of their county members, 
 Sir Thomas Hales, who at once refused to present this petition to 
 the House. 
 
 On this refusal they took the petition to the other county mem- 
 ber, Mr. Meredith ; who undertook to present it, if the violence of 
 the House would allow of it ; for the knowledge of this petition, its 
 subject and spirit, had already produced some discussions or con- 
 tentions, and was a matter of public conversation and censure, open 
 and loud, among the members. 
 
 On the mere report of such a petition being in the House, a 
 stormy debate of words and loud recrimination ensued ; the whole 
 bitterness and violence of which fell upon the King, and I suppose 
 his Dutch Presbyterian partialities for war in Flanders against the 
 French; the poor deputies from Maid stone were scarcely to be left 
 alive ; and a total confiscation of all their property was loudly in- 
 sisted upon by several speakers, in the contention. But all this 
 bluster and violence availed nothing in the way of intimidation. 
 The petition should be presented to the House; for violence had pre- 
 vented that step being taken already ; in fact, an attempt was made 
 by certain members to prevent the form of presentation. William 
 Colepeper in particular vowed and protested that the petition should 
 be presented to the House; and "that if none of the members 
 would do their country so much service as to present their grievances 
 to Parliament in a legal petition, they would knock at the door 
 of the House, and deliver it themselves." On this fearless deter- 
 mination being persisted in, Mr. Meredith consented to present the 
 petition ; which he did on the 8th of May. 
 
 As intimidation availed nothing, cajolery was tried; but to as little 
 
110 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 effect, for the petitioners were Kentish freeholders, and were pre- 
 pared to throw themselves upon the laws of the land for protection, 
 This ever-celebrated petition from the county of Kent, of the 
 8th of May, 1701, ran as follows : 
 
 " To the Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses, in Parliament assembled, 
 
 " The humble Petition of the Gentlemen, Justices of the Peace, 
 Grand Jury, and other Freeholders, at the General Quarter 
 Sessions of the Peace, holden at Maidstone, the 29th of April, 
 in the thirteenth year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord, King 
 William the Third, over England, &c. ; 
 
 " We, the Gentlemen, Justices of the Peace, Grand Jury, and 
 other Freeholders, at the General Quarter Sessions at Maidstone, in 
 Kent, deeply concerned at the dangerous estate of this kingdom 
 and of all Europe, and considering that the fate of us and our pos- 
 terity depends upon the wisdom of our representatives in Parlia- 
 ment, think ourselves bound in duty humbly to lay before this 
 Honourable House the consequences, in this conjuncture, of your 
 speedy resolutions and most sincere endeavours to answer the great 
 trust reposed in you by your country. And in regard that, from 
 the experience of all ages, it is manifest no nation can be happy 
 without union, we hope that no pretence whatsoever shall be able 
 to create a misunderstanding between ourselves, or the least dis- 
 trust of his Majesty ; whose great actions for this nation are writ in 
 the hearts of his subjects, and can never, without the blackest in- 
 gratitude, be forgot. 
 
 "We most humbly implore this Honourable House to have 
 regard to the voice of the people, that our religion and safety may 
 be effectually provided for ; that your loyal addresses may be turned 
 into bills of supply; and that his most sacred Majesty (whose pro- 
 pitious and unblemished reign over us we pray God long to con- 
 tinue) may be enabled powerfully to assist his allies before it be 
 too late. And your petitioners shall ever pray, &c." 
 
 (Signed by all the Deputy Lieutenants then present, above 
 twenty Justices of the Peace, all the Grand Jury, and other 
 Freeholders then there.) 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. Ill 
 
 This petition, so truthful, so full of gratitude to the best and 
 most patriotic of kings, and so full of reproof to the members of 
 the British House of Commons, excited, on its being read to the 
 House, the greatest rage and hostility to the petitioners, and to the 
 five deputies who had been sent up to London to represent the 
 county at the bar of the House, if necessary. 
 
 The five deputies were ordered to appear at the bar of the House. 
 They did so ; and were addressed by the Speaker (Harley) in a 
 haughty, imperious tone, and then ordered to withdraw for the 
 present. This was done; and contention fell into order, and a 
 debate of five hours was the consequence ; the whole violence of 
 which, as before, fell upon the head of the best and most patriotic 
 of kings, William III., of glorious memory, and his Dutch Presby- 
 terian allies. 
 
 Intimidation and cajolery were again attempted, in private, with 
 the five deputies, but to no purpose ; they being determined, as 
 Kentish freeholders, to throw themselves upon the law of the land 
 for protection, regardless alike to either threats or promises. On 
 the close of this ever-memorable debate, the Commons voted, 
 (e That the petition was scandalous, insolent, and seditious ; tending 
 to destroy the constitution of Parliament, and subvert the esta- 
 blished government of this realm." 
 
 The five deputies were then taken into the custody of the serjeant- 
 at-arms, from whom they received violent, haughty, and insolent 
 treatment ; and were debarred the use of such necessaries or conve- 
 niences as they, county gentlemen, magistrates, deputy lieutenants 
 of the county of Kent, had a right to expect. In this man's custody 
 they remained till the 13th of May, when he (contrary to the 
 Habeas Corpus Act), by an order of the House of Commons and 
 Speaker's warrant, delivered them prisoners to his Majesty's prison 
 at the Gate-house. What a pity ! that men, bedecked with the 
 livery of the House of Commons, waiting-men, porters, constables, 
 and valets, cannot be kept within the ordinary bounds of common 
 civility ; but must so emulate the folly of the poor imbecile frog 
 blow itself out to a bursting point because a bullock happened 
 to be feeding in an adjoining pasture. Poor Be Foe was fond of 
 
112 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 quoting ^Esop^s Fables ; and that of the swimming apples was a 
 great favourite with him. 
 
 At the Gate-house Prison they were placed under the custody of 
 Captain Taylor, a man possessed of the feelings and sympathies of 
 a gentleman; a perfect contrast to the man-in-office of the House of 
 Commons ; and from him they received every kindness and accom- 
 modation which lay in his power to afford. What a contrast ! 
 pomposity of office on the one hand, and the urbanity of the gentle- 
 man on the other. 
 
 Besides all this imprisonment and barbarous treatment, the 
 House of Commons addressed his Majesty, to put out of the com- 
 mission of the peace and the lieutenancy of the county of Kent 
 these five deputies or bearers of the Kentish petition. This tyran- 
 nical proceeding of the House of Commons raised throughout the 
 country the question of right of arrest by the House. The prisoners 
 were visited by large numbers of distinguished patriots ; and, from 
 private Kentish gentlemen, they soon found themselves elevated into 
 British martyrs and patriots. Their likenesses were engraved and 
 circulated through the country ; verses were written and sung as 
 ballads in their praise in the streets; and even Nahum Tate, the 
 poet-laureate, was ordered to write a laudatory poem, entitled the 
 Kentish Worthies; plainly indicating that the court sympathized with 
 the prisoners. 
 
 No sooner had the Kentish petitioners been committed prisoners 
 to the Gate-house, than another incident occurred to strengthen the 
 current of political agitation then raging through the land ; and this 
 was, that as the Speaker of the House of Commons was entering 
 the House, a woman in the street, and near the door, presented to 
 him a paper, letter, or small parcel, which he received at the woman's 
 hands, and passed on, without his paying such particular attention 
 to her dress, stature, features, or general personal appearance, as to 
 enable him to recognize her again, or lead to her recognition and 
 apprehension. It was a memorial from 200,000 Englishmen, ad- 
 dressed to the House of Commons, enclosed in a note to the Speaker 
 himself, and threatening him with serious consequences, if he did 
 not present the memorial as directed ; for the people had a right 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 113 
 
 to present petitions to the House through the Speaker ; and that 
 they, numerous as they were, could have presented the memorial 
 themselves had they not been afraid of tumult, and embroiling their 
 country in disorder. 
 
 This memorial was presented to the House as directed, and of 
 course created a serious sensation ; and Oldmixon, the historian, 
 affirmed, in his detracting journal of the day, that Foe, the hosier, 
 was the author ; but it was very fortunate for De Foe that this 
 Oldmixon was so constantly walking on the boundary line of truth, 
 that his word went for nothing; which might be one reason why 
 De Foe was not at once arrested as the author, by the redoubted 
 serjeant-at-arms of the imperious Commons. 
 
 This memorial to the House of Commons ran thus : 
 
 " Gentlemen, It were to be wished you were men of that temper, 
 and possessed of so much honour, as to bear with the truth, though 
 it be against you ; especially from us, who have so much right to tell 
 it you. But since even petitions to you from your masters (for 
 such are the people who chose you) are so haughtily received, as 
 with the committing the authors to illegal custody, you must give 
 us leave to give you this fair notice of your misbehaviour, without 
 exposing our names. If you think fit to rectify your error, you will 
 do weJ, and possibly may hear no more of us ; but if not, assure 
 yourselves the nation will not long hide their resentment. And, 
 though there are no stated proceedings to bring you to your duty, 
 yet the great law of reason says, and all nations allow, that what- 
 ever power is above law is burthensome and tyrannical, and may be 
 reduced by extra- judicial methods. You are not above the people's 
 resentment. They that made you members may reduce you to the 
 same rank from whence they chose you, and may give you a taste 
 of their abused kindness, in terms you may not be pleased with. 
 
 "When the peopk of England, assembled in convention, presented 
 the crown to his present Majesty, they annexed a declaration of the 
 rights of the people ; in which was expressed, what was illegal and 
 arbitrary in the former reign, and was claimed as of right to be 
 done by succeeding kings of England. In like manner, here follows^ 
 
 8 
 
114 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 gentlemen, a short abridgment of the nation's grievances, and of 
 your illegal and unwarrantable practices and a claim of right which 
 we make in the name of ourselves, and such of the good people of 
 England as are justly alarmed at your proceedings. 
 
 "1. To raise funds of money, and declare by borrowing clauses, 
 that whosoever advances money on those funds shall be reimbursed 
 out of the next aid, if the funds fall short ; and then give subsequent 
 funds, without transferring the deficiency of the former, is a horrible 
 cheat on the subject who lent the money, a breach of public faith, 
 and destructive to the honour and credit of Parliaments. 
 
 "2. To imprison men who are not your own members, by no 
 proceedings but a vote of the House, and to continue them in custody 
 sine die, is illegal ; a notorious breach of the liberty of the people ; 
 setting up a dispensing power in the House of Commons, which 
 your fathers never pretended to ; bidding defiance to the Habeas 
 Corpus Act, which is the bulwark of personal liberty ; destructive of 
 the laws, and betraying the trust reposed in you ; the King, at the 
 same time, being obliged to ask your leave to continue in custody 
 the horrid assassinators of his person. 
 
 "3. Committing to custody those gentlemen, who, at the com- 
 mand of the people (whose servants you are), did, in a peaceable 
 way, put you in mind of your duty, is illegal and injurious ; destruc- 
 tive of the subject's right of petitioning for redress of grievances 
 which has, by all Parliaments before you, been acknowledged to be 
 their undoubted right. 
 
 " 4. Your voting a petition from the gentlemen of Kent insolent, 
 is ridiculous and impertinent, because the freeholders of England are 
 your superiors; and is a contradiction in itself, and a contempt of the 
 English freedom, and contrary to the nature of parliamentary power. 
 
 " 5 . Voting people guilty of bribery and ill practices, and com- 
 mitting them, as aforesaid, without bail, and then, upon submission 
 and kneeling to your House, discharging them, exacting exorbitant 
 fees by your officers, is illegal ; betraying the justice of the nation, 
 selling the liberty of the subject, encouraging the extortion and 
 villany of gaolers and officers, and discontinuing the Irgal prosecu- 
 tion of offenders in the ordinary course of law. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 115 
 
 " 6. Prosecuting the crime of bribery in some, to serve a 
 party, and then proceed no further, though proof lay before 
 you, is partial and unjust, and a scandal upon the honour of 
 Parliaments. 
 
 " 7. Voting the Treaty of Partition fatal to Europe, because it 
 gave so much of the Spanish dominions to the French, and not con- 
 cerning yourselves to prevent their taking possession of it all; 
 deserting the Dutch when the French are at their doors, till it be 
 almost too late to help them ; is unjust to our treaties, and unkind 
 to our confederates, dishonourable to the English nation, and shews 
 you very negligent of the safety of England, and of our Protestant 
 neighbours. 
 
 " 8. Ordering immediate hearings to trifling petitions, to please 
 parties in elections ; and postponing the petition of a widow for the 
 blood of her murdered daughter without giving it a reading ; is an 
 illegal delay of justice, and dishonourable to the public justice of 
 the nation. 
 
 " 9. Addressing the King to displace his friends upon bare sur- 
 mises, before a legal trial, or article proved, is illegal, and inverting 
 the laws, and making execution go before judgment ; contrary to 
 the true sense of the law, which esteems every man a good man till 
 something appears to the contrary. 
 
 " 10. Delaying the proceedings upon capital impeachments, to 
 blast the reputation of the persons, without proving the fact, is illegal 
 and oppressive, destructive of the liberty of Englishmen, a delay of 
 justice, and a reproach of Parliaments. 
 
 "11. Suffering saucy and indecent reproaches upon his Majesty's 
 person to be publicly made in your House, particularly by that im- 
 pudent scandal of Parliaments, John Howe, without shewing such 
 resentments as you ought to do ; the said John Howe saying openly, 
 ' that his Majesty had made a felonious treaty to rob his neighbours;' 
 insinuating that the Partition Treaty (which was every way as just 
 as blowing up one man's house to save another's) was a combination 
 to rob the King of Spain of his due. This is making a Billings- 
 gate of the House, and setting up to bully your sovereign, contrary 
 to the intent and meaning of that freedom of speech, which you 
 
 8* 
 
116 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 claim as a right, is scandalous to Parliaments, undutiful and 
 unmanly, and a reproach to the whole nation. 
 
 "12. Your Speaker exacting the exorbitant rate of 10 per diem 
 for the votes, and giving the printer encouragement to raise it on 
 the people by selling them at fourpence per sheet, is illegal and 
 arbitrary exaction, dishonourable to the House, and burthensome 
 to the people. 
 
 "13. Neglecting still to pay the nation's debts, compounding for 
 interest, and postponing petitions, is illegal, dishonourable, and 
 destructive of the public faith. 
 
 " 14. Publicly neglecting the great work of reformation of manners, 
 though often pressed to it by the King, to the great dishonour of God 
 and encouragement of vice, is a neglect of your duty, and an abuse 
 of the trust reposed in you by God, his Majesty, and the people. 
 
 "15. Being scandalously wicked yourselves, both in your morals 
 and religion; lewd in life and erroneous in doctrine; having public 
 blasphemers and impudent deniers of the divinity of our Saviour 
 amongst you, and suffering them, unreproved and unpunished, to 
 the infinite regret of all good Christians, and the just abhorrence of 
 the whole nation. 
 
 " Wherefore, in the said prospect of the impending ruin of our 
 native country, while Parliaments (which ought to be the security 
 and defence of our laws and constitution) betray their trust and 
 abuse the people whom they should protect; and no other way 
 being left us but that force which we are very loath to make use of ; 
 that posterity may know we did not insensibly fall under the tyranny 
 of a prevailing party, we do hereby claim and declare : 
 
 "1. That it is the undoubted right of the people of England, in case 
 their representatives in Parliament do not proceed according to their 
 duty and the people's interest, to inform them of their dislike, disown 
 their actions, and direct them to such things as they think fit, either 
 by petition, address, proposal, memorial, or any other peaceable way. 
 
 " 2. That the House of Commons, separately, and otherwise than 
 by bill legally passed into an act, have no legal power to suspend or 
 dispense with the laws of the land, any more than the King has by 
 his prerogative. 
 
 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 117 
 
 "3. That the House of Commons has no legal power to im- 
 prison any person, or commit them to the custody of Serjeants or 
 otherwise (their own members excepted), but ought to address 
 the King, to cause any person on good grounds to be apprehended ; 
 which person, so apprehended, ought to have the benefit of the 
 Habeas Corpus Act, and be fairly brought to trial by due course 
 of law. 
 
 " That if the House of Commons, in breach of the laws and liber- 
 ties of the people, do betray the trust reposed in them, and act 
 negligently, or arbitrarily and illegally, it is the undoubted right of 
 the people of England to call them to an account for the same, and 
 by convention, assembly, or force, may proceed against them as 
 traitors and betrayers of their country. 
 
 " These things we think proper to declare as the unquestioned 
 right of the people of England, whom you serve, and in pursuance 
 of that right (avoiding the ceremony of petitioning our inferiors, for 
 such you are by your present circumstances, as the person sent is 
 less than the sender), we do publicly protest against all your afore- 
 said illegal actions, and in the name of ourselves, and of all the 
 good people of England, do require and demand : 
 
 " 1. That all the public just debts of the nation be forthwith paid 
 and discharged. 
 
 " 2. That all persons illegally imprisoned, as aforesaid, be either 
 immediately discharged, or admitted to bail, as by law they ought 
 to be, and the liberty of the subject recognized and restored. 
 
 " 3. That John Howe aforesaid be obliged to ask his Majesty's 
 pardon for his vile reflections, or be immediately expelled the 
 House. 
 
 ' ' 4. That the growing power of France be taken into considera- 
 tion, the succession of the Emperor to the crown of Spain supported, 
 our Protestant neighbours protected, as the interest of England and 
 the Protestant religion requires. 
 
 "5. That the French King be obliged to quit Flanders, or his 
 Majesty be addressed to declare war against him. 
 
 " 6. That suitable supplies be granted to his Majesty for the 
 putting all these necessary things in execution, and that care be 
 
118 LIFE OF DK FOE. 
 
 taken that such taxes as are raised may be more equally assessed 
 and collected, and scandalous deficiencies prevented. 
 
 " 7. That the thanks of this House be given to those gentlemen 
 who so gallantly appeared in the behalf of their country with the 
 Kentish petition, and have been so scandalously used for it. 
 
 " Thus, gentlemen, you have your duty laid before you, which 'tis 
 hoped you will think of; but, if you continue to neglect it, you may 
 expect to be treated according to the resentment of an injured nation; 
 for Englishmen are no more to be slaves to Parliament than to kings. 
 
 " Our name is Legion, for we are many. 
 
 " Postscript. If you require to have this memorial signed with 
 our names, it shall be done on your first order, and personally 
 presented." 
 
 On referring to Hume's History of England for more particulars 
 on this memorial, I find nothing but the following scanty notice of 
 so important a document this Legion Memorial : "The Commons 
 were equally provoked and intimidated by this libel, which was the 
 production of one Daniel De Foe, a scurrilous party writer in very 
 little estimation." This is history of England ! copied no doubt 
 from Oldmixon, the historian of England, and detractor of Daniel 
 De Foe, the patriot. When Hume wrote history second-hand from 
 Oldmixon's volumes, he little thought that his own History of 
 England, then collecting from such authorities, would stink in the 
 nostrils of all God-seeking and God-loving people, because it was 
 the work of a dangerous man, an infidel ! Why ! a section headed 
 Pluralities in the Church of England dispassionately considered, 
 would hand down a writer as a son of Belial for fifteen British gene- 
 rations. Oh! Do you read him? he is an infidel ! Yes! an infidel ! 
 " Do the duty in one parish, and receive the emoluments of two," 
 would blast the memory of a writer, not only through the generations 
 of all time, but also of all eternity. Such is history, when that his- 
 tory happens to touch upon the supposed vested privileges, rights, 
 or customs of an established endowed priesthood. 
 
 These stormy wrangles or debates in the Commons, numerous 
 and protracted, afforded nothing but a violent altercation between 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 119 
 
 Sir William Strickland, probably member for Yorkshire at the 
 time, and the audacious ruffian before mentioned, Jack Howe, who 
 declared "that William III. had made a felonious treaty to rob 
 his neighbours." 
 
 On the close of the session, June 24, the five Kentish petitioners 
 were legally discharged, and on their discharge accepted a public 
 invitation to a public entertainment at Mercers' Hall, Cheapside ; 
 where upwards of two hundred guests of the first respectability, as 
 ex-lord mayors, sheriffs, &c., connected with the corporation of the 
 city of London, as well as individuals connected with the highest 
 and most patriotic families in the land, sat down to a noble enter- 
 tainment or dinner. Of course the Tories had their scouts looking 
 out for disasters at this revolutionary banquet, and Oldmixon and 
 other paid scribes were ready to report such disasters in their trashy 
 journals of the following week. 
 
 All went off well, and nothing worthy of record occurred during 
 the evening to wound the sensitive nerves of rascaldom ; for such 
 was, emphatically, the quality of the opposition party in the country 
 at that time ; excepting the fact that Daniel De Foe was placed at 
 table next the petitioners, the especial guests of the evening, as an 
 invited guest of the citizens of London. He alone, the author of the 
 Legion Letter, was thought worthy of public notice by these lam- 
 pooners ; one of whom described him as acting as their secretary of 
 state for the evening, and as appearing so delighted with the revo- 
 lutionary movement, " that one might have read the downfall of 
 Parliaments in his very countenance." 
 
 A scurrilous, unscrupulous, and unprincipled writer is a great 
 assistance on such a point as this ; for by his raking among the rub- 
 bish of events, to fish for scandal and food for detraction, De Foe 
 is thrown upon the surface just where his best friends and greatest 
 admirers would wish to find him on this very memorable occasion. 
 De Foe's share in the Monmouth invasion is rejected by me as im- 
 probable, for want of this Oldmixon sort of evidence, to support the 
 fact at the time with venom and malignity. If L'Estrange, Ned 
 Ward, Tom Browne, or Oldmixon, had at the time affirmed that Foe, 
 the hosier, was a captain or general in Monmouth' s force, I should 
 
120 LIFE OP DE FOE. 
 
 have rejoiced to record the fact. Here, Daniel De Foe was cer- 
 tainly mixed up with the Kentish petitioners, and was acknow- 
 ledged as one of the party on the 24th day of June, 1701, when he 
 was invited by the citizens of London, along with them, to a public 
 dinner at Mercers' Hall, in Cheapside; and thanks to Oldmixon or 
 Lesley for the information. Lampooning was the order of the 
 day ; and Daniel De Foe was the chief object of attack, along with 
 the Kentish petitioners, William III., Lord Somers, the Earl of 
 Halifax, the Earl of Orford, and the Earl of Portland, four of the 
 late ministry ; with all and every man or thing honest and illustrious 
 in the United Kingdom. 
 
 But to return to the dinner party at Mercers' Hall, which had 
 been such an important affair as to bring together as many lookers- 
 on and street-followers as a lord mayor's show ; for the petitioners 
 had been escorted in triumph from the gaol of Newgate, through 
 the streets of London, cheered by the acclamations of exulting thou- 
 sands ; and, as the party had to return to their own homes in Kent, 
 the citizens offered to accompany them in procession out of the 
 town, which would be over London Bridge and through the Borough. 
 But this honour was prudently declined, from fear of tumult; there- 
 fore the party returned some miles by water ; their carriages having 
 been sent away empty. But all these precautions availed nothing, 
 for the populace would turn out wherever there was a chance of 
 obtaining a sight of the petitioners ; the first opportunity for which 
 occurring at Blackheath, where Mr. Polhill, one of the five, having 
 to take a different route to the rest to reach his house at Ottford, 
 was met by five hundred horsemen, who surrounded his coach with 
 shouts of joy, as a testimony of their satisfaction at his return 
 amongst them, and escorted him home in triumph. The other 
 gentlemen proceeded to Rochester, where they were met by the 
 mayor and half the county. From Rochester they proceeded to 
 Maidstone, where the population came out to welcome them; some 
 in coaches, some on horseback, and many on foot. In this grand 
 county procession, flowers were strewed in the way, the church bells 
 were rung, and such rejoicings were manifested as had not been 
 seen or known in Kent since the restoration of Charles II. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE, 1#1 
 
 Publications swarmed on all hands ; and amongst the first 
 appeared the History of the Kentish Petition, which Oldmixon 
 proclaimed to the world as coming from the ready pen of Daniel 
 De Foe. 1 
 
 This was truly a period of great national political excitement, 
 partly from the death of James II., when his son was acknowledged 
 King of England by the French court, and, consequently, the 
 Spanish court for these two were as one in respect to all European 
 political matters and partly on account of De Foe's Legion Memo- 
 rial; which brought into existence a host of pamphlets and ballads 
 of all qualities, though many of these Tory productions were, ac- 
 cording to Bishop Burnet, very poorly written. 2 
 
 The next effort of De Foe's pen was on the war with France, a 
 work entitled Reasons against a War with France ; or, an Argu- 
 ment shewing that the French King's Owning the Prince of Wales 
 as King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, is no sufficient Ground 
 of War. This tract was justly considered at the time to be one of 
 the finest productions of the pen that ever appeared in the English 
 language fine, because true to the letter ; and useful as a guide to 
 
 1 Then appeared Jura Populi Anglicani ; or, the Subject's Eight of Petitioning set 
 forth, with some Thoughts on the Seasons which induced those Gentlemen to Petition^ 
 
 and of the Commons' Right of Imprisoning ; and from the legal knowledge displayed, 
 and the amount of high education brought to bear on the subject, it was generally 
 allowed to be the production of one of the most accomplished gentlemen and scholars 
 in England Lord Somers, one of the impeached ministers. After going into the power 
 of the House of Commons, the right of subjects to petition, and the reasons influencing 
 the county of Kent to petition, he takes a survey of Whig and Tory, and compares 
 these with the ruling party in the House of Commons, such as was never seen before ; 
 for "in this party are all those whom either the love of money, or of the St. Germain 
 family (the Pretender's), or Popery, has reconciled to the French interest ;" and he 
 believes, as was the general belief in the kingdom at the time, that Louis XIY. had 
 used French money to turn the English elections ; for this Parliament was neither Whig 
 nor Tory, but French. A French Parliament sitting in Westminster, obtained by 
 bribery and corruption among the electors ! 
 
 2 This Legion Memorial was attacked in its turn by an author in England's Enemies 
 Exposed, and its true Friends and Patriots Defended, by a True Englishman; and 
 this author was again attacked in the Preface of the Present Disposition of England 
 Considered. 
 
 The author of Jura Populi Anglicani (Lord Somers) defends Legion Memorial, and 
 pays a very high compliment to him a trifling set-off to Pope, Swift, Drake, Old- 
 mixon, L'Estrange, Hume, John How the minister, Ned Ward, Thomas Browne, and 
 others. 
 
122 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 the British public in this time of want of public principle. Many 
 of his writings at this time never came before the public eye; but 
 were written expressly for William III., as state papers on carrying 
 on any Spanish war, rather in the West Indies, or even on the con- 
 tinent of America, than in Europe. De Foe had certain fixed notions 
 on seizing the Spanish-bullion fleets before they had left the West- 
 Indian waters ; for he always maintained that American silver and 
 other produce were the real means of carrying on the war, both by 
 France and Spain. 
 
 The next production from the ready pen of De Foe came out at 
 this time, as a support of the Kentish Petition and Legion Memorial, 
 a very useful tract of thirty pages, with two prefaces one to the 
 King and the other to the Lords and Commons. I cannot pretend 
 to do justice to this very valuable production in a few scattered 
 extracts, which I may have taken at random ; but if those extracts 
 should be spun out to an undue length, may I ask pardon for the 
 transgression, on the ground that the pamphlet is one of the most 
 valuable now extant in the English language, on the subject of the 
 Original Power of the Collective Body of the People of England ? 
 We live in such an age of whining cant and Jerry-Sneak, that if I 
 should transgress the bounds of an ordinary quotation, provided 
 I make the best selections in my power of a work truly good, may 
 I be pardoned? 
 
 I will now quote from the Preface to the King : 
 
 " Your Majesty knows too well the nature of government, to 
 think it at all less honourable, or the more precarious, for being 
 devolved from, and centred in, the consent of your people. 
 
 " The pretence of patriarchal authority, had it really an uninter- 
 rupted succession, can never be supported against the demonstrated 
 practice of all nations ; but being also divested of the chief support 
 it might have had, if that succession could have been proved, the 
 authority of governors jure divino has sunk ignominiously to the 
 ground as a preposterous and inconsistent forgery. 
 
 " And yet, if vox populi be, as 'tis generally allowed, vox Dei, your 
 Majesty's right to these kingdoms jure divino is more plain than 
 any of your predecessors. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 123 
 
 " How vain are the attempts of a neighbouring Prince to nurse 
 up a contemptible impostor, upon the pretence of forming a claim on 
 the foundation of but a pretended succession, against the consent of 
 the general suffrage of the nation ! 
 
 ' ( To what purpose shall all the proofs of his legitimacy be, sup- 
 posing it could be made out, when the universal voice of the people, 
 already expressed in enacted laws, shall answer, * We will not have 
 this man to reign over us ' ? " 
 
 From the Preface to the Lords and Commons, I will take some 
 extracts, as follows : 
 
 " You [the Lords] sit in Parliament as a branch of our constitu- 
 tion being part of the collective body, representing no body but your- 
 selves; and as a testimony that the original of all power centres 
 in the whole. 
 
 " The rest of the freeholders have originally a right to sit there 
 with you ; but being too numerous a body, they have long since 
 agreed, that whenever the King thinks fit to advise with his people, 
 they will choose a certain few out of their great body to meet 
 together with your Lordships. 
 
 ' ' Here, in short, is the original of Parliaments ; and here, if 
 power at any time meets with a cess if government and thrones 
 become vacant to this original all power of course returns. This 
 is the happy centre in the great circle of politic order. 
 
 "From hence, at the late Revolution, when the King deserted 
 his administration, and his present Majesty was in arms in Eng- 
 land, nature directed the people to have recourse to your Lordships, 
 and to desire your appearance as the heads of the great collective 
 body; and all the champions for the great arguments of divine 
 right could not in that exigence have recourse to one precedent, 
 nor to one rule of proceeding, but what nature would have dictated 
 to the meanest judgment, viz., that the nation being left without a 
 governor, the proprietors should meet to consider of another. 
 
 " And you, gentlemen of the House of Commons, who are the 
 representatives of your country, you are this great collective body 
 in miniature ; you are an abridgment of the many volumes of the 
 English nation. 
 
124 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 " To you they have trusted, jointly with the King and the Lords, 
 the power of making laws, raising taxes, and impeaching criminals. 
 But how ? 'Tis in the name of all the Commons of England, whose 
 representatives you are. 
 
 "All your power is yours, as you are a full and free representa- 
 tive. I nowhere attempt to prove what POWERS you have not ; 
 possibly the extent of your legal authority was never fully under- 
 stood, nor have you ever thought fit to explain it. But this I may 
 be bold to advance, that whatever POWERS you have, or may have, 
 you cannot exercise but in the name of the COMMONS OF ENGLAND, 
 and you enjoy them as their representative, and for their use. 
 
 " All this is not said to lessen your authority ; nor can it be the 
 interest of any ENGLISH FREEHOLDER to lessen the authority of the 
 COMMONS assembled in PARLIAMENT. 
 
 " You are the conservators of our liberties, the expositors of our 
 laws, the levyers of our taxes, and the redressors of our grievances, 
 the King's best councillors, and the people's last refuge. 
 
 " But if you are dissolved, for you are not immortal ; or if you 
 are deceived, for you are not infallible ; 'twas never yet supposed, 
 till very lately, that all POWER dies with you. 
 
 " You may die, but the people remain ; you may be dissolved, and 
 all immediate right may cease ; power may have its intervals, and 
 crowns their INTERREGNUMS; but original power endures to the 
 same eternity the world endures to. And while there is people, 
 there may be a legal authority delegated, though all succession of 
 substituted power were at an end. 
 
 " Nor have I advanced any new doctrine, nothing but what is 
 as ancient as nature, and born into the world with our reason ; and 
 I think it would be a sin against the PARLIAMENT OF ENGLAND to 
 suggest, that they would be offended either with the doctrine or the 
 author, since 'tis what their own authority is built upon, and what 
 the LAWS OF ENGLAND have given their assent unto, by confirming 
 the acts of the last COLLECTIVE BODY of the people, from whence the 
 present settlement of the nation does derive. 
 
 " Wherefore I make no apology for protection or favour as to the 
 fact ; as to language, I am ready to ask pardon if I offend, declaring 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 125 
 
 my intention is neither for nor against either person or party. As 
 there is but ONE INTEREST in the nation, T wish there were but ONE 
 PARTY, and that party would adhere to unbiassed justice, and pursue 
 the honour and interest of the PROTESTANT RELIGION and the 
 ENGLISH LIBERTY." 
 
 Having done with the Preface, we will now turn our attention to 
 the work itself, and give as short extracts as bare justice to this 
 valuable work will allow. 
 
 tf The defence of the rights of the representative body of the people, 
 understood by the name of the Commons of England in Parlia- 
 ment, is a great point ; and so plain are their rights that His no extra- 
 ordinary task to defend them. But for any man to advance that 
 they are so august an assembly that no objection ought to be made 
 to their actions, nor no reflection upon their conduct, though the 
 fact be true ; and that it is not to be examined whether the thing 
 said be true, but what authority the person speaking has to say it, 
 is a doctrine wholly new, and seems to me to be a badge of more 
 slavery to our own representatives than ever the people of England 
 owes them, or than ever they themselves expected. 
 
 "This, therefore, together with some invasions of the people's 
 rights made public by several modern authors, are the reasons why 
 I have adventured, being wholly disinterested and unconcerned 
 either for persons or parties, to make a short essay at declaring the 
 rights of the people of England, not representatively but collectively 
 considered. And with due deference to the representative body of 
 the nation, I hope I may say, it can be no diminution of their rights 
 to assert the rights of that body from whom they derive the powers 
 and privileges of their House, and which are the very foundation of 
 their being. For if the original right of the people be overthrown, 
 the power of the representative, which is subsequent and sub- 
 ordinate, must die of itself. To come directly to what I design in 
 the following papers, His necessary to lay down some maxims other 
 than what a late author has furnished us with. 
 
 "1. Saluspopuli suprema lex. All government, and consequently 
 our whole constitution, was originally designed, and is maintained, 
 for the support of the people's property, who are the governed. 
 
126 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 " 2. That all the members of government whether King, Lords, 
 or Commons if they invert the great end of their institution, the 
 public good, cease to be in the same public capacity 
 And power retreats to its original. 
 
 " 3. That no collective or representative body of men whatsoever, 
 in matters of politicks any more than religion, are, or ever have 
 been, infallible. 
 
 " 4. That reason is the test and touchstone of laws ; and that all 
 law or power that is contradictory to reason is, ipso facto, void in 
 itself, and ought not to be obeyed/' 
 
 These four generals run through the whole discourse. Some other 
 maxims less general are the consequence of these, as : 
 
 "First, That such laws as are agreeable to reason and justice, 
 being once made, are binding, both to King, Lords, and Commons, 
 either separately or conjunctively, till they are actually repealed in 
 due form. 
 
 " That if either of the three powers do dispense with, suspend, or 
 otherwise break any of the known laws so made, they injure the 
 constitution ; and the person so acting, ought to be restrained by 
 the other powers not concurring, according to what is lately allowed 
 that every branch of power is designed as a check upon each other. 
 
 " The good of the people governed is the end of all government, 
 and the reason and original of governors ; and upon this foundation 
 it is that it has been the practice of all nations, and of this in par- 
 ticular, that if the maladministration of governors have extended 
 to tyranny and oppression, to the destruction and abusing the people, 
 the people have thought it lawful to reassume the right of govern- 
 ment in their own hands, and to reduce their governors to reason. 
 
 " The present happy restoring of our liberty and constitution is 
 owing to this fundamental maxim, 
 
 That Kings, when they descend to tyranny, 
 Dissolve the bond, and leave the subject free. 
 
 " If the people are justifiable in this procedure against the King, I 
 hope I shall not be censured if I say, that if any one should ask me 
 whether they have not the same right, in the same cases, against 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 127 
 
 any of the three heads of the constitution, I dare not answer in the 
 negative. 
 
 " I may be allowed to suppose anything which is possible ; and I 
 will, therefore, venture to suppose, that in the late King's reign, 
 the House of Commons, then sitting, had voted the restoration of 
 Popery in England, in compliance with the King's inclination, I 
 doubt not but it had been lawful for the grand juries, justices of the 
 peace, and freeholders of any county, or of every county, to have 
 petitioned the House of Commons not to proceed in giving up their 
 religion and laws. And in case of refusal there, they might petition 
 the House of Lords not to have passed such a bill ; and in case of 
 refusal there, they might petition the King, and put him in mind 
 of his coronation engagement ; and in case of refusal to that peti- 
 tion, they might petition the King to dissolve the Parliament, or 
 otherwise to protect their liberties and religion. 
 
 " And if all these peaceable applications failed, I doubt not but 
 they might associate for their mutual defence against any invasion 
 of their liberties and religion, and apply themselves to any neigh- 
 bouring power or potentate for assistance and protection. 
 
 " If this be not true, I can give but a slender account of our late 
 Revolution, which, nevertheless, I think to be founded upon the 
 exact principles of reason and justice. What are the different terms 
 which statesmen turn so often into fine words to serve their ends ; 
 as reason of state, public good, the commonwealth, the English 
 constitution, the government, the laws of England, the liberties of 
 England, the fleets, the armies, the militia of England, the trade, 
 the manufactures of England? All are but several terms drawn 
 from, and reducible to, the great term the People of England. 
 That's the general, which contains all the particulars, and which 
 had all power, before any of the particulars had a being ; and from 
 this consideration it is, that some who yet would be opposers of this 
 doctrine, say, when it serves their turn, that all the great offices 
 which have the title of England annexed to them, ought to be 
 nominated and approved by the people of England, as the High 
 Chancellor of England, High Admiral of England, and the like. 
 
 " The power vested in the three heads of our constitution is 
 
128 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 vested in them by the people of England ; who were a people before 
 there was such a thing as a constitution. 
 
 " And the nature of the thing is the reason of the thing ; it 
 was vested in them by the people, because the people were the 
 only original of their power, being the only power prior to the 
 constitution. 
 
 " For the public good of the people, a constitution and govern- 
 ment was originally formed; from the mutual consent of these 
 people, the powers and authorities of this constitution are derived ; 
 and for the preservation of this constitution, and enabling it to 
 answer the ends of its institution, in the best manner possible, those 
 powers were divided. 
 
 " The second maxim is a rational natural consequence of the 
 former : that at the final, casual, or any other determination of this 
 constitution, the powers are dissolved; and all authority must derive 
 de novo from the first fountain, original, and cause of all consti- 
 tutions the governed. 
 
 " Now, it cannot be supposed this original fountain should give 
 up all its waters, but that it reserves a power of supplying the 
 streams ; nor have the streams any power to turn back upon the 
 fountain, and invert its own original. All such motions are eccen- 
 trick and unnatural. 
 
 " There must always remain a supreme power in the original to 
 supply, in case of the dissolution of delegated power. 
 
 " The people of England have delegated all the executive power 
 in the King; the legislative in the King, Lords, and Commons; 
 the sovereign judicature in the Lords ; the remainder is reserved in 
 themselves, and not committed ; no, not to their representatives. 
 All powers delegated are to one great end and purpose, and no other; 
 and that is the public good. If either, or all the branches to whom 
 this power is delegated, invert the design, the end of their power, 
 the right they have to that power ceases ; and they become tyrants 
 and usurpers of a power they have no right to. 
 
 "The instance has been visible as to kings in our days; and 
 history is full of precedents in all ages and in all nations ; parti- 
 cularly in Spain, in Portugal, in Sweden, in France, and in Poland. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE, 129 
 
 " But in England the late revolution is a particular instance of 
 the exercise of this power. 
 
 " King James, on the approach of a foreign army, and the general 
 recourse of the people to arms, fled out of the kingdom. What 
 must the people of England do ? 
 
 " They had no reason to run after him ; there was nobody to call 
 a parliament ; so the constitution was entirely dissolved. 
 
 " The original of power, the people, assembled in convention, to 
 consider of delegating new powers for their future government, and 
 accordingly made a new settlement of the crown, a new declaration 
 of right, and a new representative of the people; and what if I 
 should say they ought to have given a new sanction to all pre- 
 cedent laws? 
 
 " Nor can I be sensible of offending, if I say that 'tis possible for 
 even a House of Commons to be in the wrong. 'Tis possible for a 
 House of Commons to be misled by factions and parties ; 'tis pos- 
 sible for them to be bribed by pensions and places ; and by either 
 of these extremes to betray their trust, and abuse the people who 
 entrust them ; and, if people should have no redress in such a case, 
 then would the nation be in the hazard of being ruined by their 
 own representatives. And 'tis a wonder to find it asserted, in a 
 certain treatise, that it is not to be supposed that even the House 
 of Commons can injure the people who entrust them. There can 
 be no better way to demonstrate the possibility of a thing, than by 
 proving that it has been already. 
 
 "And we need go no further back than to the reign of King 
 Charles II., in which we have seen lists of 180 members who re- 
 ceived private pensions from the court; and if anybody shall ask 
 whether that Parliament preserved the balance of power in the 
 three branches of our constitution, in the due distribution some 
 have mentioned, I am not afraid to answer in the negative. 
 
 " And why, even to this day, are gentlemen so fond of spending 
 their estates to sit in that House, that ten thousand pounds have 
 been spent at a time, to be chosen ; and, now that way of procuring 
 elections is at an end, private briberies and clandestine contrivances 
 are made use of to get into the House ? No man would give a groat 
 
130 LIFE OF BE FOE. 
 
 to sit where he cannot get a groat honestly for sitting, unless there 
 were either parties to gratify, profits to be made, or interest to 
 support. 
 
 " If it be but possible, it is not reasonable, the liberty and safety 
 of England should be exposed even to a possibility of disaster ; and 
 therefore reason and justice allow, that when all delegated powers 
 fail or expire; when governors devour the people they should protect ; 
 and when Parliaments if ever that unhappy time shall come again 
 should be either destroyed, or, which is as bad, be corrupted, and 
 betray the people they represent; the people themselves, who are 
 the original of all delegated power, have an undoubted right to de- 
 fend their lives, liberties, properties, religion, and laws, against all 
 manner of invasion or treachery, be it foreign or domestick ; the 
 constitution is dissolved, and the laws of Nature and reason, act of 
 course, according to the following system of government : 
 
 " The government 's ungirt when Justice dies, 
 And constitutions are nonentities ; 
 The nation 's all a mob : there 's no such thino- 
 
 O 
 
 As Lords and Commons, Parliament, or King. 
 A great promiscuous crowd the hydra lies, 
 Till laws revive, and mutual contract ties. 
 A chaos free to choose for their own share, 
 What case of government they please to wear. 
 If to a King they do the reins commit, 
 All men are bound in conscience to submit. 
 But then the King must by his oath assent 
 To postulatas of the government : 
 Which, if he break, he cuts off the entail, 
 And power retreats to its original." 
 
 Poor James II., after living a life of exile and contempt for twelve 
 years, died at St. Germains, near Paris, Sept. 16, 1701, in the 68th 
 year of his age : a man possessing all the cold phlegmatic dispo- 
 sition of his father, with the priest-ridden malignity of the mother. 
 James II., a bigoted monk, dead, and his son James acknowledged 
 as King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, by Louis X1Y. of 
 France, which induced William III. to declare war against France 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 131 
 
 a project in which he was heartily supported by his people ; aroused 
 to a sense of the indignity offered to him by a foreign power, 
 anxious at all hazards to keep up the old predominant influence at 
 the Court of St. James's, by any tool, however mean, poor, or con- 
 temptible. De Foe, anxious to strengthen the English interest on 
 this opening prospect of better times (when James, the acknow- 
 ledged King of the Jacobites of England, was dead, and they, freed 
 by that death from the obligation imposed upon their consciences by 
 their oaths of allegiance j a great hindrance to their acknowledging 
 William as their king, and an inducement to throw all their weight 
 into the French scale ; the French King being altogether the pro- 
 tector and supporter of the exiled family, so nearly connected with 
 himself by relationship and similarity of interest, religious as well 
 as political, the one being Roman Catholic, and the other anti- 
 Dutch, or anti-liberal), wrote his pamphlet, entitled The Present 
 State of Jacobitism Considered, in two Queries 1. What Measures 
 the French King will take with respect to the Person and Title of 
 the P. P. of Wales ? 2. WTiat the Jacobites in England ought to do 
 on the same account ? Lond. 1701. 
 
 We have seen before that the House of Commons was bought up 
 with French gold, and altogether devoted to French interests ; this 
 was not the class which De Foe was attempting to persuade into 
 English principles, because they were beyond the powers of per- 
 suasion by pamphlet reading. Such degraded tools as these read 
 no pamphlets; they read nothing but orders for French pensions or 
 French rewards : they were paid tools and servants of France, hired 
 into the English House of Commons to do French work there; 
 and it was in opposition to this French party that De Foe wrote the 
 above-named pamphlet, to the old gentry or squirarchy of England; 
 who were honestly the only true supporters of the house of Stuart, 
 through all their troubles and misfortunes. This party was numerous 
 in England, and as respectable as numerous ; scattered through the 
 land in the old baronial retreats of the olden gentry ; a class who 
 stuck to their old religion, with their old halls, their old tenantry, 
 their old servants, hounds, and horses; with the old patronage 
 of the village feast, with the May-pole anniversaries, Christma 
 
 9* 
 
132 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 revelry, and the like : a class venerable on their own estates, and 
 influential there, and in their several counties, at quarter session, 
 assize, race, or cock-fighting gatherings; according to their several 
 dispositions for urbanity or otherwise, and the extent of their estates; 
 where they for the most part resided, and kept up the festivities of 
 fine old English gentlemen. 
 
 This was the Jacobite party inEngland in the reign of William III., 
 and o this party De Foe now addressed himself; for, their old 
 sovereign James II. being dead, they were freed from their oaths of 
 allegiance to him. To these men De Foe addressed himself; for 
 them he wrote his pamphlet, but wrote to little purpose ; for they 
 were so fortified with old family associations in county and borough, 
 and religious associations too, three generations deep ; so full of 
 old prejudice and old respectability, and old fusty pride ; that he 
 might as well have addressed the nether millstone of scripture (the 
 lower thicker stone on which the quern or handmill of India, Pales- 
 tine, and Carthage, was turned) as have addressed them. As for 
 pamphlets, they read few of them ; and as for Foe the author, if 
 Daniel's name ever appeared on the surface of their book-shelves 
 who was he ? He was not Tusser on Husbandry, nor yet Gervase 
 Markham, nor Froissart who was he ? "Was he one of the quorum, 
 whose evidence was worth accepting ? 
 
 Upon this party De Foe made very little impression with book- 
 writing, for they for the most part did not care to be book-readers ; 
 with the most of them the very idea of sitting by the fireside to 
 read a book, would be about the far-end of human existence. De 
 Foe might write ! This party reasoned, and very fairly too, that as 
 James II., the relative of Louis XIV., had always been considered 
 King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, by Louis, it was but natural 
 that on the father's death the son should succeed to the inheritance ; 
 and if that inheritance were no more than an empty title, yet it 
 was his, as belonging to his father. This was the natural course of 
 argument of men who built all their creed upon the divine right of 
 kings a principle which had been sucked in by the whole party 
 with their very mother's milk ; it was the very vitality of all their 
 religion, politics, and social feelings Church and King. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 133 
 
 De Foe's pamphlet was answered by a non- juror divine, but to a 
 poor purpose ; and other writers came to the attack or defence in 
 large numbers, and of all grades of opinion. The poor Whigs, 
 out of place, and under the ban of Louis's stockjobbing Parliament, 
 took their share in the contest, and intimated, where they could, 
 that a new Parliament might be advantageous to English interests. 
 Amongst the latter was the patriotic, honest, and accomplished 
 Lord Somers, who wrote Anguis in Herba, or the Fatal Consequences 
 of a Treaty with France; wherein it is proved " that the principles 
 whereby the French King governs himself, will not allow him to 
 observe any treaty longer than it is for his interest to break it ; 
 that he has always aimed at the union of the crowns of France and 
 Spain since the Pyrennean Treaty ; that, notwithstanding his pre- 
 tences to the contrary, such is his design at this day; and that 
 nothing can prevent it, but to reduce his power to such a degree as 
 may perfectly break his measures." Lond. 1701. This important 
 and well- written pamphlet made such an impression on the nation 
 as to turn the feeling for peace, imposed upon the ruling powers of 
 this nation, by the French party in power, and commanding the 
 national purse ; and a general and national cry of indignation was 
 raised against the French King, and a demand for war with France 
 universally proclaimed throughout the nation ; by the Whig party 
 especially, now rousing itself from its prostrated position. All was 
 tumult and exultation in the political world, and De Foe must be 
 among the strife of course, and come out with another pamphlet, 
 entitled Reasons against a War with France; or, an Argument, 
 shewing that the French King's owning the Prince of Wales as King 
 of England, Scotland, and Ireland, is no sufficient Ground of a War. 
 Lond. 1701. De Foe was not averse to a war with France, provided 
 that the war could be justified to the English nation, on just as well 
 as public grounds ; but he had a decided objection to this nation 
 being plunged into a war with France for no better object than to 
 thwart or annoy the Tory party, and reinstate the Whigs in power. 
 He very properly objected to this country being plunged into a war 
 with France, because the French King chose to bestow an empty 
 title on the Pretender, out of some pretended respect for his father 
 
134 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 and family. De Foe admitted the insult to William to be great ; 
 but yet, insult as it was, there could be no reason why Great Britain 
 should be plunged into a war with France on account of it. It was, 
 moreover, his opinion, that "whoever desires that we should end 
 the war honourably, ought to desire also that we begin it fairly. 
 Natural antipathies are no just ground of a war between nations ; 
 neither popular opinions ; nor is every invasion of a right a good 
 reason for a war ; at least until redress has first been demanded in a 
 peaceable way." De Foe appeared to think that a war in Europe 
 against Spain, so as to rid the Netherlands of Spanish sovereignty, 
 would be far more for the interest of civilisation in Europe. 
 
 This pamphlet only disgusted the Whigs, the great advocates of 
 the war, as might be supposed ; for they wanted to wage war on per- 
 sonal feelings for party revenge ; but De Foe, who had nothing in 
 common with them, wished the nation to undertake nothing but on 
 purely national grounds, for the readjusting the balance of power 
 in Europe. De Foe was right. What had the nation to do with 
 the Smith, Jubb, Snob, or Muggs families, ringing changes on the 
 national bells of England for their own individual family aggran- 
 disement, and to the total neglect of all God's created universe be- 
 sides ? What is the concentrated essence of all true Whiggery ? 
 Is it not " Me and my brother, and our two nephews, and a cousin" ? 
 Is this Whiggery ? De Foe's pamphlet was not relished by the 
 W T higs, for it was national, instead of being party ; but yet that 
 pamphlet was one of the most patriotic productions that ever ap- 
 peared in the English language; and Dr. Towers, the writer of his 
 life in the Biographica Britannica, says : " In this piece, De Foe 
 wrote against the views and conduct of the court, and against what 
 then seemed to be the prevailing sense of the nation. He appears, 
 however, to have been perfectly right ; to have exhibited on this 
 occasion great political discernment, and to have been influenced 
 by no motives but those of public spirit." Two or more writers 
 attacked him again, but without producing any reply from him ; he 
 having already written the most weighty pamphlet of the day, by 
 far, upon the subject. How the Whigs would blame De Foe at this 
 time ! How they would call him a Tory, and a pensioner of France ! 
 
LIFE OF DE FOK. 135 
 
 How they would consider him as most injurious to their party ! I 
 know them well ; and I could fancy all the abuse they would heap 
 upon his devoted head, because he did not lick the dust at their 
 bidding, and write them into office again. 1 No ! De Foe knew 
 better. He took his own stand, as an independent, honest man; 
 and he did right. Why should he be a tool of their selectabilities ? 
 I have been a corn-law repealer, and I have seen in Whiggery the 
 very same political materials that De Foe had to deal with. As he 
 valued them, so I valued them ; for I found them contemptible. If 
 De Foe had acted the mere tool of Whiggery, down the kennel of 
 oblivion, along with them, would he have been swilled; and his illus- 
 trious name would have been like theirs from the same cause. Many 
 of these names never would have come down to our time, had it not 
 been for their connection some how or other with, perhaps as perse- 
 cutors of, Daniel De Foe. I could give half a dozen leaders of both 
 parties, who would have descended long ago into the utter darkness 
 of oblivion, had it not been for the reputation of Daniel De Foe. 
 Why, the Earl of Nottingham, one of Queen Anne's ministers, 
 would have descended at once into the dark shade of nothingness, 
 had not De Foe stood three days in the pillory, and remained several 
 months in Newgate, at this man's instigation. Pillory immortalized 
 his name ! Such is human greatness ! 
 
 Poor William ! When almost harassed to death by vexation, 
 occasioned by the political contentions of his Tory ministers and his 
 Tory-French House of Commons, his health visibly declining ; when 
 he was seen by all to be fast descending to the grave, although he 
 was but a man of fifty- one years of age ; he used in his troubles to 
 retire to Holland, and there he remained several months of the sum- 
 mer of 1701. This he did for relief from annoyance the annoy- 
 ance of French interference with his government of his people of 
 England ; for, as I have said before, the House of Commons was 
 bought up with French gold. In the autumn of this year, he 
 
 1 What a mass of valuable efficiency there would have been in his pen, if he had 
 been their obedient servant, to write exclusively for them ; with three or four under 
 spur-leathers placed over him, to inform him what lie should not do, and what he should 
 do, to write this or that man into place, and serve our side! 
 
136 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 returned to this country, and, in despair, dissolved the Parliament 
 by proclamation, on Nov. 11, 1701, and attempted to change 
 his ministers at the same time, but could not do it ; for Lord 
 Somers, the most honest and capable man in the kingdom, would 
 not accept office again under William, because he had no confidence 
 in the King's firmness of purpose ; for William had fallen prostrate 
 before Tory influences once in calling them to power ; and he might 
 do it again, though he protested again and again that he never 
 would. 
 
 On the dissolution of Parliament, the Tory scribes Dr. Drake, a 
 poor physician without patients, and Dr. Davenant, perhaps a 
 Chancery lawyer without briefs took the field as Tory pamphleteers, 
 along with others, to prop up, if possible, the present French or 
 Pretender interests in the country, and especially among the electors. 
 The Whigs also had their writers in support of their party; so 
 that the whole country was inundated with pamphlets, lampoons, 
 squibs, satires, truths, and falsehoods ; in all forms of prose and verse. 
 
 By chance, the Whigs had detected Dr. Davenant, Mr. A. 
 Hammond, and Mr. John Tudenham, three members conspicuous 
 for their zeal in the French interest, supping with M. Poussin, the 
 French electioneering agent, at the Blue Posts, in the Haymarket, 
 immediately after the dissolution of Parliament had been proclaimed. 
 These three names were taken, along with 164 more members, who 
 always voted for the French or Pretender interest, and were sup- 
 posed to be in the pay of the King of France. Their names were 
 printed on a placard, and the most obnoxious in black letter ; and 
 this placard, called the Black List, was circulated by thousands 
 through the country; while M. Poussin, the Frenchman, was ordered 
 to leave the country in a few hours. 
 
 The electors were universally called upon to come to the rescue of 
 their country and their King ; for the kingdom was in danger from 
 the Pretender or the King of France meddling with the elections ; 
 and all Englishmen were called upon to turn out all the men named 
 on the black list, for they were Poussineers, or French pensioners. 
 This proscribing list, or black-list system, was justified by the cir- 
 cumstances of the times, and produced a complete panic through 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 137 
 
 the country ; but this French party lost only forty-six of their pro- 
 scribed list, among whom were Hammond, Dr. Davenant, Shower, 
 and the coarse, vulgar " scandal of Parliaments," Jack Howe. The 
 loss would have been much greater, but this French party were all- 
 powerful in the patronage of office, having the government altogether 
 in their hands. In this state of turmoil and panic appeared Legion, 
 whom the French Tory tool, Dr. Davenant, had, in a pamphlet, 
 condemned to be hanged at Tyburn ; and so they called out again 
 from his retirement De Foe, in a well-written, powerful pamphlet, 
 entitled Legion's New Paper ; being a Second Memorial to the 
 Gentlemen of a late House of Commons. With Legion's Humble 
 Address to his Majesty. 
 
 This latter Legion was addressed to the gentlemen of the Com- 
 mons, and formed a second part to that Legion Letter delivered by 
 De Foe, dressed as a woman, to the Speaker of the Commons, when 
 near the door of the House. This letter was very well timed, and 
 produced a great sensation in the country, and especially among 
 the electors, as most of De Foe's writings did, for he was more than 
 a match for the whole brotherhood of pamphleteers, whether Whig 
 or Tory ; for he grappled equally with pamphleteers and slanderers 
 of both, considering that both parties were more intent upon serving 
 their own interests, their own sides, and their own parties, than the 
 true interests of their country, their own England. This second 
 Legion Letter commences as follows : 
 
 " Gentlemen, The greatest respect which could possibly have 
 been shown to you by the people of England had been to have let 
 your actions have sunk into forgetfulness ; and, in kindness to you, 
 have let neither you nor your deeds have been named any more in 
 your native country. But since those people, who (in your House) 
 were so restless in their endeavours to ruin us, are not ashamed to 
 undertake your defence, we are obliged, in the just vindication of 
 our native right, further to expose your errors than in charity to 
 your memory we designed. We are bound to let the people know 
 that a late pamphlet, printed by your own club, and industriously 
 spread over the whole nation, entitled A Defence of the last Parlia- 
 ment, is calculated to wheedle the people to choose you again. But 
 
138 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 we hope their eyes will be opened ; and we wonder you can suggest 
 that the freeholders should so contradict the language of their 
 addresses, and be found so to mock the King and the nation, as to 
 address you out of doors, and then put you in again themselves. 
 If they should act so unaccountably, kings, for the future, will 
 the better know what English addresses signify." 
 
 Again: "Gentlemen, The same hand that presented your Speaker 
 with a certain Memorial, called the Legion Paper, written, as Mr. 
 Harley very well knows, in a hand that stood the wrong way ; that 
 paper, which came, as is said, from two hundred thousand English- 
 men; that paper, which frighted Mr. P and Mr. H 1, and 
 
 several others, into the country ; that paper, which Mr. Howe, in 
 a lamentable tone, told the House made him, from a sense of his 
 own guilt, afraid of his life ; that paper, which put you all so beside 
 yourselves, as to make a senseless address to his Majesty, to defend 
 himself against his people, which address you were afterwards 
 ashamed to present ; that paper, which you had so little wit as to 
 read, and so much modesty that is, guilt as to blush at ; that 
 paper, which made you wish you had never committed the Kentish 
 petitioners, and made you afraid to prosecute them ; that paper, 
 which made you clap up the sessions in such haste as made the 
 Lords baffle you, and all the people ashamed of you ; that paper, 
 which made you pass one good vote at parting to desire the King 
 to make alliances, &c. which some of your members called a 
 sweetener, that you might not be afraid to go home; the same 
 hand presents you with this paper, as the true sense of the nation 
 concerning you." 
 
 Again : " You are the men that have endeavoured to possess the 
 people with the fears and jealousies of slavery at home ; under the 
 protection and government of the only King in the world that ever 
 sincerely sought and effectually restored our freedom." 
 
 DeFoe charges these men with betraying the liberties of their coun- 
 try, by flattering their kings into the belief of their divine rights 
 rights which were only imaginary ; for neither God, nature, nor the 
 people, had ever given them. He tells this House of Commons this 
 most corrupt of all corrupt Houses of Commons ; for it was a French 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 139 
 
 House of Commons, purchased of the electors of England with 
 French gold, through the agency of the French ambassador in 
 London, and through the instrumentability for working up the 
 scheme of such paid writers or pamphleteers as Dr. Davenant and 
 Dr. Drake, with a body-guard of such legislators as Jack Howe to 
 bring up the rear-guard ; De Foe, in this pamphlet, comes out with 
 energy and truth equal to the demands of the occasion ; he goes 
 home to the hearts of the electors, entreating them to send such 
 honest gentlemen as will stand up for religion ; and hold the balance 
 of the state with that equality between every branch of the consti- 
 tution that neither may oppress the other, and that the whole may 
 be in its full and free exercise ; in order to bring more easily and 
 effectually to pass that which is the great original of all constitutions 
 in the world the good of the people. No man could come out more 
 patriotically and worthy of himself than De Foe did at this time ; in 
 urging the people to do justice to themselves, and set a brand or 
 mark of infamy upon this corrupt House of Commons ; or, in their 
 infatuation and blindness in failing to do this, might they deserve 
 to be betrayed to the end of the chapter, and England be left to fall 
 un pitied by all the nations of the world. This was coming to the 
 rescue of British liberty at a time when Britain required assistance 
 more than at any period, either before or since. 
 
 Dr. Davenant, in one of his anonymous productions, bears me 
 out in what I have said on De Foe's services at this time ; some 
 allowance, of course, being made for the hostile position of the 
 writer : "Legion is come out again, more impudent and inflaming 
 than he was last year ; and the authority of the House of Commons 
 is there attacked in a most audacious manner, which looks as if 
 you (De Foe) designed to throw off your mask, and fall imme- 
 diately to subverting the constitution in good earnest." These two 
 Tory writers were honoured, I think, in the following reign, by 
 having their works publicly burnt by the common hangman ; and 
 Drake died in gaol in great misery ; though neither, perhaps, graced 
 the wooden ruff, nor were they, like the detracting Tutchin, tied 
 to a cart-tail, and publicly flogged down Dorchester streets for their 
 writings. 
 
140 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 The elections being over, the Parliament assembled on Dec. 30, 
 1701, when Mr. Harley, a Tory confederate, was chosen Speaker, 
 in opposition to Sir Thomas Littleton, a court, or perhaps, more 
 properly, a King's candidate ; for the court, properly so called, was 
 as completely under the control of the Tories as the House of 
 Commons had been. The Tories still held all the offices of the 
 government, and used the power so conferred, in the small or rotten 
 boroughs, for the return of members hostile to the true interests of 
 their country ; though the Whigs carried all the large independent 
 constituencies in their favour. William opened this sixth and last 
 Parliament in his accustomed manner, in person ; and in the speech 
 from the throne lamented, in woful terms, the contentions and 
 bickerings which had disgraced the last Parliament ; and he called 
 upon all parties to forego their personal contentions and follow peace; 
 as it was his intention and desire to reign over a happy people, 
 influencing them only through their affections and better feelings. 
 This was, in truth, what it professed to be, a royal speech, a real 
 royal speech ; for most of these productions are only sham royal 
 speeches, contain set words, strung together with as little meaning 
 as possible by flippant impertinence; and given insultingly to royalty 
 to utter as his own; just as if royalty could not appear before the 
 grand council of the nation, but it must appear in full dress in per- 
 son, and as a fool in mind; to act, I suppose, as a foil to show off the 
 effulgent brightness of the minister, when he appeared. A minister 
 requiring such a foil as this, is altogether unworthy of the support 
 of the House of Commons ; and ought at once to be discarded by 
 all honest men, and sent either to Bedlam or to Billingsgate, for 
 insulting his sovereign and the people of England. 
 
 So long as the Tudors ruled this kingdom with an iron hand, this 
 cavalier treatment of the Commons of England in Parliament 
 assembled might do ; for there was 110 remedy but to submit : all 
 was tyranny and coercion then. So long as the Stuarts were pen- 
 sioners of France, and received their orders from Louis XIV., Car- 
 dinal Mazarin, Madame de Maintenon, or the Duchess of Orleans, 
 this farce of opening Parliament might do, and it was quite sufficient 
 for the occasion ; for that occasion was a mere mummery. When the 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 141 
 
 King of France could no longer bribe the King, he bought the people ; 
 and when that King of France could reckon 170 of his bought votes 
 in the House of Commons ; opening or royal speeches might have 
 been considered a farce and a mummery. But William III. did not 
 think so ; for he, even with a sold House of Commons, treated the 
 majesty of the people of England with respect. What is the House 
 of Commons ? Is it a committee of cobblers sitting in solemn con- 
 clave to decide whether the representation of the grassy mound of 
 Gatton or Old Sarum is worth the sum of 2000 or of 4000? No ! 
 the House of Commons is the check imposed by the majesty of the 
 people of England upon the royal prerogative of the throne ; and as 
 such they are entitled to that amount of respect from the minister 
 of the crown which he, flippant puppy or otherwise as he may be, 
 may at his peril dare to withhold. The House of Commons are 
 not children, and it ought to be made the act of a madman for any 
 prime minister to dare to treat that House as children. Let the 
 Commons of England look to this. This opening speech by King 
 William was such a speech as is seldom heard in the House of 
 Commons from the mouth of royalty; and was generally supposed 
 to be composed by that honest man and faithful friend, Lord 
 Somers. This speech was considered to be so important, that it 
 was printed and framed, and suspended in almost every house, both 
 in England and Holland; It made a lasting impression throughout 
 the kingdom on the subject of the war with France ; and had a 
 great effect for good in support of the national movement against 
 that country. 
 
 For the most part, kings' speeches are empty sounds, for all 
 ministers are not like Lord Somers ; neither are kings' friends like 
 him faithful, devoted, sincere even in adversity, and capable of 
 serving the nation even when out of office. 
 
 The tide of political strife appeared to be ebbing fast, French 
 influences to be discarded, and the nation becoming thoroughly 
 roused to a sense of its danger, if not degradation ; and this, in a 
 great measure, through the pamphlets of Lord Somers and De Foe. 
 Both Houses presented addresses against the King of France, the 
 late paymaster of the Commons. The Pretender also was attainted, 
 
142 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 the Protestant succession was confirmed, and large supplies voted 
 for the war. War was commenced with all vigour. De Foe was 
 (with Lord Somers I suppose ; for these two had acted together in 
 the two Legion Memorials) consulted by the King on some points 
 connected with the war ; particularly on De Foe's own scheme of 
 carrying the war into the Spanish West Indies, and there attacking 
 the Spanish plate fleet on its way to Europe, and so stop the French 
 supplies, and increase our own. De Foe's plan was approved of by 
 the King, and he, as the projector, was to have some honourable 
 and responsible appointment on board ship in the West India 
 waters. At this time also the King made an attempt at the union 
 of the crowns of England and Scotland, which was a favourite pro- 
 ject also with De Foe; who, at this time, published an octavo volume 
 on this subject, which volume is professed to be published or printed 
 in Edinburgh ; and what would be very convenient for a writer living 
 and writing in London, and not knowing Edinburgh printers even 
 by name, there is no printer's name attached to the book ; written 
 as it was in London, and published in London too, anonymously, 
 and as a Scotch book ; with a good dash ofjure-divino principles in 
 connection with our bishops in the House of Lords, and a certain 
 energy of expression as well as of uncompromising principle ; which 
 stamps the work, Scotch as it is, to be from the pen of Daniel De 
 Foe, citizen of London. At a later period of his life, De Foe became 
 familiar enough with both Edinburgh printers and Edinburgh street 
 mobs ; but this would be ten years later than the time we are writing 
 of; for it is highly probable that at this early period, De Foe had 
 undertaken no Scotch commissions for government. He was full 
 of West India projects at this time; but all were crushed by the 
 lamented and untimely death of his beloved master, friend, patron, 
 and king, William III., of blessed, and, to him, glorious memory ; 
 a name dear to De Foe ; and one which he never mentioned but 
 with high feelings of veneration and gratitude. Poor De Foe ! all 
 his prospects of taking some important command on board ship in 
 the Spanish West Indies were dashed to the ground on the death 
 of William; but nine years later, or in the year 1711, his papers, 
 prepared for King William's ministers, were handed over to Queen 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 143 
 
 Anne's government by himself, the original projector or inventor 
 of the scheme. 
 
 Poor William had a fall from his horse while hunting at Hampton 
 Court, and died from its effects at Kensington about a fortnight after- 
 wards ; to the great grief of all honest men and well-wishers of the 
 nation's prosperity, and joy and disgusting rejoicing of the French 
 rabbledom then pervading all high places within these realms; who 
 commemorated the event by such ballad- writings as the following : 
 
 Illustrious steed [the Horse], to whom a place is given, 
 Above the Lion, Bull, or Bear, in heaven. 
 
 And the following, his horse being called Sorrel, and he having 
 reigned twelve years, became a favourite Tory toast : 
 
 Well, then, my friends, since things you see, are so, 
 Let 's e'en mourn on ; 'twould lessen much our woe 
 Had Sorrel stumbled thirteen years ago. 
 
 The lamentable death of William III. was a serious blow to poor 
 De Foe ; for by that death all his hopes and prospects were blighted 
 for ever. If De Foe had lost his father, he could not have been in 
 a more forlorn condition, for he was ruined in all his prospects, and 
 his family too ; since the successor, Queen Anne, was only a weak, 
 superstitious woman, possessed of a good deal of the narrow bigotry 
 of her father, James II. On ascending the throne she should have 
 substituted the church is in danger for the Honi soil qui maly pense 
 of the royal arms ; and then she would have had her character em- 
 blazoned on the panels of her carriages. She poor, bigoted, narrow- 
 minded woman reigned twelve years, and during the whole term 
 the church was in danger. But of this in its proper place ; I only 
 mention it here to show that the forebodings of poor De Foe were 
 not imaginary. He knew well what was before him, which caused 
 him to grieve with more heartfelt sincerity for the best of friends, 
 the best of patrons, and the most patriotic of kings. De Foe lived 
 thirty years after the death of William III. ; and during those thirty 
 years he never ceased to lament the loss of the most patriotic king 
 that ever sat upon the English throne. In after-life, De Foe never 
 heard the memory of William III. treated with indignity or neglect, 
 
144 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 but he felt it with impatience and annoyance ; for his death he always 
 considered to have been a great calamity to England. If William 
 had lived, poor De Foe would never have stood on the pillory plat- 
 form, or graced Newgate with his presence. With respect to the 
 King's death, the apparent cause was a fall from his horse while 
 hunting at Hampton Court, by which fall his collar-bone was broken. 
 Every attention was paid to the fractured limb, but all in vain ; his 
 constitution was broken by the anxieties of his mind occasioned by 
 the ingratitude of the people of England ; and if ever king of Eng- 
 land died heart-broken, that king was William III. ; the cause of 
 all the disquietude of his mind, which sunk his spirits to the tomb, 
 being a corrupt House of Commons. Louis XIV. bought a majority 
 of that House from the electors, and that brought William to the 
 grave at the early age of fifty-two ; it heart-broke him. This untimely 
 death took place at Kensington Palace, on March 8, 1702, in the 
 fourteenth year of his reign may I add ? to the unseemly delight 
 of the French or Pretender party, still strong in the kingdom, 
 openly and exultingly expressed ; to such a pitch had the accursed 
 house of Stuart brought the people of England, by their accepting 
 of French bribes or pensions. 
 
 Their awkward triumphs openly they sing, 
 
 Insult the ashes of their injur'd King, 
 
 Kejoice at the disasters of his crown, 
 
 And drink the horse's health that threw him down. 
 
 A molehill was the cause of the horse stumbling, which occasioned 
 the following toast to be given at Tory dinners, " A health to the 
 little gentleman dressed in velvet." 
 
 Another brutal effusion from the French tools, for enslaving and 
 degrading England, appeared in a poem entitled the Mourners; which 
 probably gave the hint to De Foe to bring out his poem entitled 
 the Mock Mourners, which we will shortly refer to, and make large 
 extracts from. 
 
 As a contrast to the Tory villainy commonly printed at the time 
 we will take an extract from De Foe's work, the Consolidator, as 
 expressive of the feeling of all thoughtful people in the kingdom at 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE, 145 
 
 this time : " The grief of the usage he had received, the unkind 
 treatment he had met with from those very people that brought him 
 hither, had sunk so deep upon his spirit that he could never recover 
 it; but being very weak in body and mind, and joined to a slight 
 hurt he received by a fall from his horse, he died ; to the unspeakable 
 regret of all his subjects that wished well to their country." 
 
 We may here pause a little, and inquire what would have been 
 the state of England if Charles II. had left a healthy and large family 
 of legitimate children, and William III. had never come to this 
 kingdom to free us from French influences ? Could we imagine that 
 this nation would ever have been brought to the footstool of France 
 by French bribes being distributed amongst the English electors ; 
 and French pensions being supplied to our kings and members of 
 Parliament ; and French prostitutes supplied systematically, on a 
 large scale, to kings, princes, statesmen, or ministers, generals and 
 admirals; as was the case in the French court at the time of Catharine 
 de Medici, and perhaps at a later period of their history ? 
 
 What a misfortune to have a House of Commons so limited in 
 its constituency that it may be, as it once was, sold to a hostile 
 foreign power, Louis XIV., who paid 1,000,000 for 176 votes in 
 the House ; and what a misfortune to have kings so poor, through 
 improvidence, as to sell themselves and their people also for French 
 money, which was the case when the Stuarts were upon the throne 
 of these realms ! Perhaps it may be said that there is no remedy 
 for thoughtless improvidence ; for the disease may be said to lie in 
 the bone, or blood, or breed of the object afflicted with it. I believe 
 it is so ; like begets like ; like marries like, to the end of the chapter; 
 and so it must be, I know a remedy, but if I gave it, I should be 
 denounced as an atheist, and run down in the street like a mad 
 dog : " He's an infidel, that fellow ; he believes in neither God nor 
 devil." 
 
 This would be hard service for speaking the truth as an honest 
 man would it not? Then I would not speak the truth for such 
 rewards. No ! it '& nought to me ; but there is a great deal of false 
 philosophy preached from certain pulpits, as though a reckless, 
 thoughtless, spendthrift prodigality, were the very foundation of 
 
 10 
 
146 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 Christian principle. 1 I say it advisedly, but I will maintain that it 
 is the scourge of this land. One will convert the Jews, another 
 takes underhand the Gentiles; then there is the new church at 
 Jerusalem, to commemorate the mercies of the Crimean war ; then 
 there is the South Sea and the North Sea, the Lapland mission ; 
 South Africa, Interior of Africa, West Africa ; and now, with that 
 worthy man in the East of Africa, Dr. Livingston; Bibles for 
 Turkey, Bibles for Arabia, Sunday Schools at home and Sunday 
 Schools abroad ; Home Missions, Church Missions, Wesleyan Mis- 
 sions,, Baptist Missions, with Arabian Missions; and last, though 
 not least, 5,000,000 Bibles for India ! and the money to be col- 
 lected by interested paid agents. Now, all these objects, and a score 
 more, are all good, very good ; but may not the system of preach- 
 ing for this, and collecting for that as though preaching the gospel 
 were a conspiracy against the pocket till more money is given from 
 the family stock than can be spared with justice or prudence, be 
 carried too far ? It is all very well for a man who has nothing, and 
 never had anything, and never will have anything (for he saves 
 nothing), to preach up this charity, and that, Sunday by Sunday, 
 till his hearers are dragged down to the same level of poverty as him- 
 self, and the wives and children of those hearers are left at last a 
 legacy of paupers to the public ; on which that public may exercise 
 the Christian principle of giving, by maintaining the wife and rear- 
 ing the children. Many dissenting ministers are very badly paid, 
 but they have themselves in a great measure to thank for it. They 
 preach for everything, for which money can be paid in the way of 
 
 1 I have heard two eminent men in London, Mr. Spurgeon and Dr. Gumming, run 
 foul of the first principles of political economy in their pulpits. Dr. Curnming's Sermon 
 on Education was, perhaps, the very best I ever heard in my life, but the philosophy 
 was unsound ; for the reverend doctor informed his audience, that teaching a child to 
 give is the first duty of a parent : a proposition I utterly deny or dispute. It is such 
 teaching as this that brings so much prodigality and bankruptcy into the country. 
 Generosity is a very agreeable sort of feeling; but, if the individual practising the 
 virtue have nothing to bestow, what is the exercise of the principle worth ? There is 
 something rotten in the present state of British society, and I believe it proceeds from 
 this kind of preaching ; the country swarms with cant generosity, quirk, fraud, and 
 bankruptcy. Britain subscribes to everything in the world, corporeal or spiritual, and 
 yet is too poor to educate her own children ; therefore the government has to do it. 
 What does this mean? Is the conventicle likely to prove too strong for the steeple-house? 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 147 
 
 Christian charity or benevolence; and the congregation in some 
 cases becomes exhausted, and patience is run down; then, when 
 the real honest demand comes for the support of this begging minis- 
 ter, he forms a twentieth or a thirtieth share of the spare cash fund, 
 and his payment is considered too little, scrubby, mean, penurious, 
 worldly-minded, avaricious ; when vexation, disappointment, separa- 
 tion of pastor and flock, follow, all for want of common sense on the 
 part of the preacher. Thus this begging system may be a great 
 national evil, in causing respectability of station in society to be the 
 national standard, rather than the old honourable limit of what can 
 be afforded ? And if the standard in religious matters be that of 
 appearances, respectability, or position in society, worldly arrange- 
 ments will speedily follow in the same track, and then the whole 
 national measure becomes a false measure in everything, social, reli- 
 gious, and political. All is respectability in position false, hollow, 
 and rotten to the very heart : flash gentility and respectability are 
 alone thought of; and every kind of deception, in every trade and 
 profession, is practised, to keep up the game of appearances, and 
 look respectable. This respectability principle is doing sad mischief 
 at this time in British society ; and is the cause of many a decent, 
 thoughtful, well-meaning poor fellow being dragged to a gaol for debts 
 contracted by his family, in their endeavours to make him appear as 
 liberal, benevolent, and respectable as the Clarks, Smiths, Thom- 
 sons, Johnsons, and Jacksons, who reside in the same street. 
 
 So much for the improvement of the people ; now for the sove- 
 reign. What is the remedy here ? A thorough reform in the repre- 
 sentation in the House of Commons. This is a truly royal measure, 
 for it would make the ruling sovereign king of millions rather than 
 king of thousands, and would bring down the little squeezing-in im- 
 pertinences of small aristocracy, (and how very pleasant that would 
 be for royalty !) and the insufferable dictation of some three or four 
 families, who think themselves patentees of all legislation in Great 
 Britain ! When we speak of reform, we mean real, substantial, 
 honest reform, and not a quibbling shuffling of the cards of chances, 
 or calculations of how much shadow may be obtained from how 
 little substance ; for some of the reform measures are not calculated 
 
 10* 
 
148 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 by the great but by the small; for the smaller the quantity, the 
 better for the fostering the little coterie, the skilled artificers of the 
 little measure. A corrupt House of Commons killed William III.; 
 yes, wore him out, exhausted and finished in body, at the early 
 age of fifty- two ! Let this fact not be forgotten, for it is a great, 
 a mighty fact, for the people of England to reflect upon. What 
 reform is required ? The widest possible extension of the elective 
 franchise, with short parliaments, and widely extended electoral 
 districts ; and what ? a removal of placemen and pensioners 
 from the House of Commons. This is reform ; and anything less is 
 deception. Royalty is as much interested in such a measure of the 
 House of Commons, as ever the millions of Britain can be; for 
 the dealing out of favours through the Lord Chamberlain's Office, 
 to keep the wheels of legislation properly greased, can be no parti- 
 cularly grateful task to royalty. All the family of the Miss Clarks 
 must be invited, and their pert, upstart, coxcomb of a brother with 
 them ! If this is not passing royalty through a small sieve, I do 
 not know what is. The sooner this state purgatory is got rid of, the 
 better, for the domestic comfort of the sovereign ; and this cannot 
 be done but by a brushing at once all placemen and pensioners 
 from the House of Commons. This is rather a long digression ; but 
 a king of England, and the most patriotic of all kings of England, 
 to be killed, worn out, at the early age of fifty- two years, will 
 warrant the digression, long as it may appear to be. 
 
 A corrupt House of Commons killed William III. ! On the 
 death of the King, and on the vile ingratitude that accompanied it 
 from those whom William had raised to honours, and fed during his 
 lifetime, merely to be reviled and slandered when dead, De Foe came 
 out, in prose and verse, with terrific violence; and his poem, entitled 
 the Mock Mourners, taken no doubt from the vile Tory poem, en- 
 titled the Mourners, shall have a due share of attention, as it well 
 deserves : 
 
 Such has been this ill-natur'd nation's fate, 
 Always to see their friends and foes too late ; 
 By native pride and want of temper led, 
 Never to value merit till 'tis dead ; 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 149 
 
 And then immortal monuments they raise, 
 And damn their former follies by their praise ; 
 With just reproaches rail at their own vice, 
 And mourn for those they did before despise. 
 So they who Moses' government defied, 
 Sincerely sorrow'd for him when he died. i 
 And so when Britain's genius fainting lay, 
 Summon'd by death, which monarchs must obey, 
 Trembling and soulless half the nation stood, 
 Upbraided by their own ingratitude. 
 
 William the bottom of their courage found 
 False, like themselves, mere emptiness and sound ; 
 For, call'd by fate to fight for Christendom, 
 They sent their King abroad, and staid at home ; 
 Wisely declin'd the hazard of the war, 
 To nourish faction and disorders here. 
 W r rapt in luxurious plenty, they debauch, 
 And load their active monarch with reproach ; 
 Backward in deeds, but of their censures free, 
 And slight the actions which they dare not see. 
 At home they bravely teach him to command, 
 And judge of what they are afraid to mend ; 
 Against the hand that saves them they exclaim, 
 And curse the strangers, though they fight for them. 
 Though some, who would excuse the matter, say, j 
 They did not grudge their service, but their pay. 
 Where are the royal bands that now advance, 
 To spread his dreadful banners into France ? 
 Britannia's noble sons her interest fly, 
 And foreign heroes must their place supply, 
 Much for the fame of our nobility. 
 Posterity will be asham'd to hear 
 Great Britain's monarch did in arms appear, 
 And scarce an English nobleman icas there. 
 Ye sons of envy, railers at the times, 
 Be bold, like Englishmen, and own your crimes ; 
 For shame put on no black, but let us see 
 Your habit always and your tongues agree : 
 
150 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 Envy ne'er blushes. Let it not be said 
 
 You hate him living, and you mourn him dead. 
 
 No sorrow show, where you no love profess ; 
 
 There are no hypocrites in wickedness. 
 
 Great bonfires make, and tell the world y' are glad 
 
 Y' have lost the greatest blessing e'er you had. 
 
 So madmen sing in nakedness and chains, 
 
 For when the sense is gone, the song remains. 
 
 So thoughtless Israel, when they were set free, 
 
 Keproacht the author of their liberty, 
 
 And wisht themselves in Egypt back again. 
 
 What pity 'twas they wisht, or wisht in vain ! 
 
 With what contempt will Englishmen appear, 
 
 When future ages read his character ! 
 
 They '11 never bear to hear, in time to come, 
 
 How he was lov'd abroad and scorn'd at home ; 
 
 The world will scarce believe it could be true, 
 
 And vengeance must such insolence pursue. 
 
 Our nation will by all men be abhorr'd, 
 
 And William's juster fame be so restor'd. 
 
 Posterity, when histories relate 
 
 His glorious deeds, will ask What giant '* that ? 
 
 For common virtues may men's fame advance, 
 
 But an immoderate glory turns romance ; 
 
 Its real merit does itself undo, 
 
 Men talk it up so high, it can't be true. 
 
 So William's life, increased by doubling fame, 
 
 Will drown his actions to preserve his name ; 
 
 The annals of his conduct they '11 revise, 
 
 As legends of impossibilities. 
 
 'Twill all a life of miracles appear, 
 
 Too great for him to do, or them to hear. 
 
 And if some faithful writer should set down 
 
 With what uneasiness he wore the crown, 
 
 What thankless devil had the land possest ; 
 
 This will be more prodigious than the rest. 
 
 With indignation 't will their minds inspire, 
 
 And raise the glory of his actions higher. 
 
LIFE OF DK FOE. 
 
 151 
 
 The records of their fathers they '11 deface, 
 And blush to think they sprung from such a race ; 
 They '11 be asfiam'd their ancestors to own, 
 And strive their fathers' follies to atone. 
 New monuments of gratitude they '11 raise, 
 And crown his memory with thanks and praise. 
 
 But we have here an ignominious crowd, 
 That boast their native birth and English blood ; 
 Whose breasts with envy and contention burn, 
 And now rejoice when all the nations mourn ; 
 Their awkward triumphs openly they sing ; 
 Insult the ashes of their injur'd King ; 
 Rejoice at the disasters of his crown, 
 And drink the horse's health that threw him down. 
 
 Queen Anne ascended the throne on the 8th of March, 1702, and 
 from that day to the day of her death, showed herself the true 
 daughter of James II. With her the church was always falling; 
 and all aspirants to place, favour, or power, could not take more 
 effectual means for attaining their ends than follow the cry of " the 
 church is in danger." 
 
 From whence we now inform the people, 
 
 The danger of the church is from the steeple. 
 
 And we've had many a bitter stroke 
 
 From pinnacle and weather-cock ; 
 
 From whence the learned do relate, 
 
 That, to secure the church and state, 
 
 The time will come when all the town, 
 
 To save the church, will pull the steeple down. 
 
 Queen Anne was emphatically a narrow-minded, bigoted woman ; 
 the tool of ambitious priests, who wished to protect or increase 
 ecclesiastical power and ecclesiastical wealth, at the expense of the 
 great body of the community. Anne was no sooner seated upon 
 the throne than she dismissed all who were in any manner treated 
 with kindness by the late sovereign : the Lords Somers and Halifax, 
 two of William's confidential ministers and friends, were at once 
 removed from the Privy Council, and with them the whole party of 
 
152 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 Whigs were expelled from office, to make way for their opponents ; 
 and those opponents chosen from the most active antagonists of 
 William's late ministers and friends, for every department of the 
 government was filled by parties so selected selected according to 
 their hatred or opposition to the late King ; and even the lieutenancy 
 in the several counties was changed, together with the most sub- 
 altern officers in every department of government, and all thrown 
 into the scale of the Church of England altogether party; as 
 though all dissent would be completely stifled by this partial dis- 
 pensing of government patronage. This is a specimen of state 
 education; this is altogether a meddling with the religious teaching 
 of the country, when neither police-officer, excise nor qustom -house 
 officer, can be selected but on the terms " Church or chapel-- 
 steeple-house or conventicle?" "Are you Dutch Presbyterian, 
 Muggletonian, or Calvinist?" "Down with the Presbyterians" 
 became as much a feeling, if not a Tory cry, as on the restoration of 
 Charles II. ; and this, too, equally among both the clergy and the 
 laity : all was revelry and party triumph, for the conventicle would 
 go now ; for our Queen boasted before her Parliament that she had 
 " a heart entirely English." Yes, she was thoroughly church and 
 state, and no Dutch conventicle-mongered Presbyterian. Every- 
 thing seemed fast approaching to the state of the first days of 
 Charles II., when the " old religion appeared to be coming back 
 again," as was judged by the old women who saw the Maypoles 
 and Sunday revelry return. 
 
 In De Foe's Review, published some years from this time, an 
 account is given from time to time of these proceedings ; and in the 
 second volume of that scarce and valuable work the following record 
 occurs : " No sooner was King William dead, and the Queen come 
 to the crown, but the gentlemen of the High Church, mistaking her 
 Majesty in this, as well as in all the rest of her meaning, began to 
 lay the same foundation of riotous triumph as formerly : for they 
 looked on the Queen's coming to the crown as a mere restoration, 
 and were resolved it should restore the crimes as well as the person; 
 of whom they began to value themselves on account of the line, 
 and the divine right of succession : universal revels filled their 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 153 
 
 houses, and general drunkenness began to revive. And I appeal to 
 common knowledge, if in the first half-year of her present Majesty 
 almost all the Maypoles in England were not repaired and re-edified, 
 new painted, new hung with garlands, and beautified ? And whether 
 there were not more new Maypoles erected than had been in twenty 
 years before ? Let any man, as he goes through a town having a 
 fine painted Maypole, inquire when it was last repaired or set up, 
 and I hold five to one that 'tis answered in the year 1702. And 
 what was the meaning of it ? Not that they could see any hopes, 
 in the example of her Majesty, to think this vice of drunkenness 
 and revelling should receive any encouragement there. The con- 
 stant practice of the Queen must stop the mouth of such a scandal ; 
 and if they had discretion little enough to think so, her Majesty 
 has given them room enough to find their mistake. But the case 
 is plain : they thought the day their own at court, and away they 
 went with the mistake, and immediately fell to concerting measures 
 with the people. Upon this proceeding, up went the Maypoles, 
 that the church's health might be drunk, till the people not only 
 knew not what they did, but might be ready to do they knew not 
 what, to the demolishing the church's pretended enemies, the dis- 
 senters, and pulling down all manner of union in the nation. Nor 
 were the Maypoles in the towns only ; but one would have thought 
 they had had Maypoles in their heads too, for no men but such as 
 were bewildered in their understandings could have been so weak 
 as to think that when her Majesty recommended to them the care 
 of the church, of religion, and the general safety, that, therefore, 
 all the revelling, the liberty, and a loose to all manner of riot, 
 must be the first demonstration of their obedience to the Queen's 
 command. 1 " 
 
 1 While on this important subject of Maypoles, and their test of loyalty or 
 churchism as opposed to Muggletonianism or Dutchism, I will quote a mural 
 black-letter inscription placed against the wall immediately within the enclosure 
 of the communion-table or railing in a church in Yorkshire, repaired in the time of 
 James I. by Sir William Craven, Knight, a native of Applebreewick, in the above 
 county : 
 
 " Sir William Craven, London's twice lord mayor, 
 Thy deeds of charity to us most rare ; 
 
154 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 Things began to wear a very serious aspect, as they do, when a 
 weak, innocent, confiding woman falls by accident into the hands of 
 wicked and designing men. The Queen soon found her position to 
 be as dangerous as inconvenient, for by these demonstrations of 
 party triumph she was effectually alienating the affections of one 
 half of her people ; so she, as De Foe observes in the page follow- 
 ing the one just quoted, "upon the discovery of their error, her 
 Majesty found a necessity, first, gently, with her usual goodness and 
 clemency, to admonish and exhort them to peace and union, and to 
 live in amity and charity with their brethren. To remove the alarm 
 which their presumption had caused among the dissenters, who, not 
 without good grounds, began to look for a storm of persecution, as 
 well as civil oppression, her Majesty found it convenient to give the 
 dissenters a public assurance of her royal protection, and on all 
 occasions to mention her gracious resolution to preserve the tolera- 
 tion, which her Majesty saw was necessary to secure that entire 
 confidence in her general care, which wise princes 4iave found neces- 
 sary to preserve in all their subjects." 
 
 It is supposed that the Prince Consort (George Prince of Den- 
 mark), the Duke of Marlborough, and Lord Godolphin, had the whole 
 
 Our church, our school, bridges, or Maypole, 
 
 Express thy bounty to us every hour. 
 
 Pray for that noble family, whose race 
 
 May to eternity extend its space." % 
 
 The above was painted in black distemper on the whitewashed wall at the time when 
 Lord William Craven, son of the above benefactor, was living, a field-marshal, and 
 patron of one mediety of Burnsall rectory, and husband to Elizabeth, Queen of 
 Bohemia, whose interests James I. always neglected, through his divine-right-of-kings 
 principles. This Queen of Bohemia was the ancestress of the Elector of Hanover, 
 G-eorge I., a relationship which brought the house of Hanover to this kingdom on 
 the death of Queen Anne. William Lord Craven, Baron of Hampstcad, marshal, was 
 patron of the other mediety of the rectory of Burnsall. Sir William Craven built, or 
 rebuilt, a parish church, and he built and endowed a school with 40 per annum. He 
 built Burnsall Bridge, and, I suppose, Hartlington Bridge, too j for he built bridges ; 
 and, in addition to these, he erected the Maypole on the village-green, before the Eed 
 Lion ; and this erection of the Maypole was worthy of being recorded on a tablet over 
 the communion-table, where it remains to this day. Yes ; he erected the Maypole ! 
 which means, I suppose, he was loyal church and state, King James I., with the 
 Spanish ambassador, the Spanish match, and Sunday sports ; he was no white-choked, 
 psalm-singing Muggletonian : he built the Maypole. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 155 
 
 responsibility of freeing the Queen from the perilous position into 
 which the Tories of her ministry and the House of Commons were 
 urging her, to gratify their feelings of hatred to the illustrious me- 
 mory of the late King ; and to all conventicle-mongers, Calvinists, 
 Dutch Presbyterians, Muggletonians, &c., his bosom friends and 
 political supporters ; and also to gratify their love to Louis XIV. 
 and his pensioner at the court of St. Germains the Pretender. All 
 was Tory rule and Tory tyranny about the person of the Queen ; and 
 nothing but a few true friends of the Queen prevented affairs coming 
 to a serious crisis or open rupture between the High-Church party 
 and the Protestant dissenters, who were all-powerful as the moneyed 
 interest of the nation. The Partition Treaty, perhaps the wisest act 
 of William's reign, met with their especial hostility; yet, Louis 
 having supported the claims of the Pretender to the sovereignty of 
 these realms, war was declared by Great Britain against France and 
 Spain; when 14,000 men were sent against Cadiz, but returned to 
 this kingdom without effecting a landing. This expedition was 
 placed under the command of Admiral Sir George Rooke and the 
 Duke of Ormond: the admiral showing either incapacity or treachery, 
 which produced universal disgust throughout the nation, and caused 
 a good deal of lampooning to be thrown upon the public ; and among 
 the poets appeared Daniel De Foe, in the " Spanish Descent " : 
 
 Ten years we felt the dying pangs of war, 
 
 And fetch'd our griefs and miseries from far. 
 
 Our English millions foreign war maintains, 
 
 And English blood has drencht the neighbouring plains. 
 
 Nor shall we blush to boast what all men own, 
 
 Uncommon English valour has been shown ; 
 
 The forward courage of our ill-paid men 
 
 Deserves more praise than nature spares my pen. 
 
 And now the baffled enterprise grows stale ; 
 
 Their hopes decrease, and juster doubts prevail. 
 
 The unattempted town sings victory, 
 
 And acar'd with walls, and not with men, they fly. 
 
 Great conduct in our safe retreat we show, 
 
 And bravely re-embark when none pursue ; 
 
156 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 The guns, the ammunition 's put on board ; 
 And what we could not plunder we restored. 
 And thus we quit the Andalusian shores, 
 
 Drencht with the Spanish wine and Spanish w s. 
 
 With songs of scorn the Arragonians sing, 
 And loud Te Deums make the valleys ring. 
 
 Meanwhile our melancholy fleet steers home ; 
 
 Some griev'd for past, for future mischiefs some. 
 
 Disaster swells the blood, and spleen the face, 
 
 And ripens them for glorious things apace. 
 
 With deep regret they turn their eyes to Spain, 
 
 And wish they once might visit her again. 
 
 Little they dreamt that good which Heaven prepar'd ! 
 
 No merit from below, no signs from heaven appear'd ; 
 
 No hints, unless from their high ripen'd spleen, 
 
 And strange ungrounded sympathy within. 
 
 The silent Duke [Ormond] from all misconduct free, 
 
 Alone enjoys the calm of honesty : 
 
 Fears not his journal should be fairly shown, 
 
 And sighs for England's errors not his own. 
 
 His constant temper 's all serene and clear ; 
 
 First, free from guilt, and therefore free from fear. 
 
 The above poem truly represents the national feelings, loudly 
 expressed, upon the most inglorious expedition ever fitted out in 
 Great Britain at any period, either before or since ; and so great 
 was the national disgust, and so loudly expressed, that the reluctant 
 Admiral Sir George Rooke obliged to attempt something before 
 sailing for England, for he dare not face the national reception 
 awating him on his return faced about for Vigo harbour, where 
 some Spanish galleons richly laden, with some French ships, lay 
 unprepared for an attack, and in repose and security, as they sup- 
 posed. These were attacked, taken, or destroyed ; which success 
 afforded seasonable relief in glory to the admiral, and also to the 
 ministry at home, who were strongly suspected to be favourable to 
 the interests of the Pretender, supported as he was by France and 
 S,pain. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 157 
 
 All this success changed the temper of the people at home, and 
 from despair and despondency, all was changed to acclamations and 
 rejoicings, at the success of the national arms ; which caused De 
 Foe, amongst the national poets, to change his tune to a song of 
 rejoicing; as will be seen from the conclusion of the poem, as 
 follows : 
 
 And now the victory 's completely gain'd, 
 
 No ships to conquer now, no foes remain'd. 
 
 The mighty spoils exceed what e'er was known, 
 
 That vanquish'd ever lost, or victor won. 
 
 So great, if Fame shall future times remind, 
 
 They '11 think she lyes and libels all mankind. 
 
 Well may the pious Queen new anthems raise, 
 
 Sing her own fortunes, and her Maker's praise ; 
 
 Invite the nation willing thanks to pay ; 
 
 And well may all the mighty ones obey. 
 
 So may they sing, be always so preserv'd, 
 
 By grace unwished, and conquest undeserv'd. 
 
 Now let us welcome home the conquering fleet, 
 
 And all their well-aton'd mistakes forget ; 
 
 Such high success should all resentments drown'd, 
 
 Nothing but joy and welcome should be found. 
 
 No more their past miscarriages reprove ; 
 
 But bury all in gratitude and love. 
 
 Let their high conduct have a just regard, 
 
 And meaner merit meet a kind reward. 
 
 But now what fruits of victory remain ? 
 
 To Heaven what praise, what gratitude to man ! 
 
 Let France sing praise for shams of victories, 
 
 And mock their Maker with religious lies : 
 
 But England, blest with thankful hearts, shall raise 
 
 For mighty conquests mighty songs of praise. 
 
 She needs no false pretences to deceive ; 
 
 What all men see, all men must needs believe. 
 
 Our joy can hardly run into excess ; 
 
 The well-known subject all our foes confess ; 
 
 We can't desire more, they can pretend no less. 
 
158 
 
 LIFE OF BE FOE. 
 
 ANNE, like her great progenitor, sings praise; 
 
 Like her she conquers, and like her she prays : 
 
 Like her she graces and protects the throne, 
 
 And counts the land's prosperity her own ; 
 
 Like her, and long like her, be bless'd to reign, 
 
 Crown'd with new conquests, and more fleets from Spain. 
 
 See now the royal chariot comes amain 
 
 With all the willing nation in her train ; 
 
 With humble glory, and with solemn grace, 
 
 Queen in her eyes, and Christian in her face. 
 
 With her, her represented subjects join ; 
 
 And when she prays, th' whole nation says, Amen. 
 
 With her, in stalls, th' illustrious nobles sat, 
 
 The cherubims and seraphim s of state ; 
 
 ANNE, like a comet, in the centre shone, 
 
 And they like stars that circumfere the sun. 
 
 She great in them, and they as great in her, 
 
 Sure Heaven will such illustrious praises hear. 
 
 The crowding millions hearty blessings pour ; 
 
 Saint Paul ne'er saw but one such day before. 
 
 According to constitutional appointment, a new Parliament was 
 summoned within six months of the Queen's accession to the throne ; 
 and this Parliament, as might have been expected, was thoroughly 
 Tory in its composition; for every artifice was resorted to for se- 
 curing a Tory majority; and the whole weight of the court and 
 government was unscrupulously given for the attainment of this 
 end, at all hazards and costs. The first act of this unscrupulous 
 assemblage was to cast a reflection of slight upon the late King 
 William of blessed memory, the most patriotic sovereign that Eng- 
 land had ever known ; for in the address from the House, in answer 
 to the speech from the throne on the opening of this Parliament, 
 her Majesty was congratulated on her success in the Spanish inva- 
 sion ; the investing of Cadiz ! where " she had signally retrieved 
 {retrieved /] the ancient honour and glory of the English nation/' 
 Such is Tory loyalty. 
 
 This session was opened in a bad Tory spirit of meanness and 
 detraction ; for ingratitude to the memory of William III. was 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 159 
 
 about the standard of their morality. To the reigning sovereign all 
 was adulatory meanness and subserviency ; and to such a pitch was 
 ihejure-divino worship carried, that the royal touch for the King's 
 evil, or scrofula, was revived. Charles II. was the last saint who 
 had done business in this way ; he having during his reign laid 
 his saintly hand on 100,000 impotent and afflicted objects. As for 
 William, he being only a Dutch Presbyterian, and mistrusting his 
 own powers of working miracles, did not go through the imposing 
 ceremony. In the north of England, some of the old ladies believe 
 that the act of confirmation is a specific for the rheumatism. I have 
 not been able to trace the origin of this foolish superstition ; but 
 certainly, without I had good authority for so doing, I should not 
 take it further back than the superstitious reign of Queen Anne. 
 
 At the commencement of this reign the established clergy, on all 
 occasions, extolled the sacred virtues of royalty at the expense of 
 the Presbyterians and the conventicles. Every public anniversary 
 where loyalty to the sovereign could be paraded, to set off the 
 preacher as some especial defender of the faith, the occasion was 
 never missed ; and every church pulpit resounded with anathemas 
 against the Commonwealth, Cromwell, and the murderers of the 
 royal martyr, Charles I., with all chapels, preachers, and Whigs ; 
 with rapturous praises of hereditary sovereigns, and their divine 
 right to ride rough- shod, by God's appointment, over all ordinary 
 sort of people ; who had no remedy but to sit down, and to submit 
 to these happy dispensations of Providence, with placid and con- 
 tented minds; rejoicing in being called to bear testimony to God's 
 ordinances by a servile submission to hereditary rule. During all 
 this preaching, poor William, the late King, came in for a few hard 
 knocks, by way of comparison with the power then in existence, or 
 then ruling ; these 30th of January anniversary preachers always 
 keeping one principle in view, that where a bird in the hand is repre- 
 sented to be worth two in the bush. Poor Willam was done gone 
 dead and buried ; he, poor fellow, had no patronage to bestow ; no 
 deaneries no bishoprics. No ! he was only a dead Dutchman, inter- 
 loper, or usurper. Pamphlets at this time were written on all sides 
 with the greatest violence ; Leslie, Drake, L'Estrange, Sacheverell, 
 
160 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 and others, taking, as before, the lead on the side of the hereditary 
 right of kings to rule, and the duty of people to submit at all costs, 
 even with loss of property, or of life itself; while, as opponents to 
 this slavish doctrine a doctrine unworthy of men calling themselves 
 free stood out Daniel De Foe and one or two others, for at this time 
 De Foe brought out his pamphlet entitled A New Test of the Church 
 of England's Loyalty ; or, IVhiggish Loyalty and Church Loyalty 
 compared. This tract was forced into existence by the violent and 
 slavish doctrines preached in all anniversary sermons where politics 
 could by any possibility be introduced ; and these occasions were of 
 daily occurrence, in which the clergy and the Tories in power seemed 
 to take revenge upon the dissenters for all the disasters which the 
 whole house of Stuart for four generations had, in their folly for 
 they were a foolish, silly race, from James I. downwards brought 
 upon themselves. 
 
 Well, in this war of steeple-house versus conventicle, all was vio- 
 lence of such a nature as to threaten an open outbreak of persecution 
 in the nation, under pretence of the " church being in danger" ; and 
 had it not been for the Prince Consort, and one or two other sober- 
 minded people about the Queen, checking the outbreak as well as they 
 could, and keeping a tight hand upon the weak monarch, there would 
 have been an outbreak in this nation on the Church of England's 
 pretensions; and the consequence would have been for the dis- 
 senters were all-powerful as the moneyed interest in the kingdom 
 that Queen Anne would have had to run for her life to France, there 
 to end her days a pensioner of France, as her father and most of her 
 family had done before her. The clergy did their best to bring such 
 a catastrophe about ; and they would have succeeded, if the Prince 
 Consort had not possessed so much sense and influence over the 
 weak-minded, bigoted daughter of James II. as to prevent it. Anne 
 was an unwise woman ; and if she had married a fool like herself, 
 she must have left her kingdom in disgrace, and ended her days 
 an outcast, to become a pensioner on the court of Louis XIV. at 
 St. Germains, under the same roof as her brother, the Pretender. 
 
 This was about the first appearance of that firebrand of a defender 
 of a priestly domination, the notorious Sacheverell of a later period, 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 161 
 
 who preached a sermon before the University of Oxford, and after- 
 wards published it, with the sanction or imprimatur of the vice- 
 chancellor, under the title of the Political Union, in which the 
 church militant, not of Christ, but of England, was placed above the 
 power of the state. He considers it to be " the greatest reproach 
 and scandal upon our church, however others may be seduced and 
 misled, that any pretending to that sacred and inviolable character 
 of being her true sons, pillars, and defenders, should turn such apos- 
 tates and renegadoes to their oaths and professions, such false traitors 
 to their trusts and offices, as to strike sail to such a party, that is 
 such an open and avowed enemy to our communion, and against 
 whom every man that wishes its welfare ought to hang out the 
 bloody flag and banner of defiance." 
 
 Bravo ! for the vice-chancellor of Oxford ! He was playing the 
 French game with a vengeance ; and if the Prince Consort had not 
 possessed more discretion and more influence over the narrow- 
 minded woman, Queen Anne, than her other advisers, the throne 
 would have found itself to be in danger ; for, although the high- 
 priests and rabble were in partnership here, as on another memo- 
 rable occasion, yet the moneyed interest of England in 1702 being 
 altogether in the hands of the dissenters ; and concentrated in the 
 city of London, and in the other large towns of the north and west 
 of England, would have been more than a match for the vice-chan- 
 cellor of Oxford and his firebrand the preacher ; even if these two 
 had possessed the confidence and power of the court, as well as the 
 personal well-wishes of the Queen herself. A little indiscretion 
 here, and the last of the race of the Stuarts must have gone, and 
 Queen Anne fled her country an outcast. The throne was truly in 
 danger, and one man in the country saw that, and perhaps but one 
 man, and that man was Daniel De Foe ; and he placed the keystone 
 in the arch of folly, by publishing shortly after this period his 
 Shortest Way with the Dissenters. We must take the proper order 
 of events ; and, although the Shortest Way did appear in this strife 
 of parties, it was not till some few months after the point of time 
 we are now occupied upon; for the notice already given of the 
 
 11 
 
 
162 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 pamphlet on Church-of-England loyalty, and a comparison between 
 it and Whig loyalty made, must be followed up with a few quota- 
 tions, to show the nature of that work. 
 
 " In all the unhappy contentions among parties and factions in 
 this brangling nation, the champions of the Church of England, as 
 they would have themselves call'd, have laid it down as the distin- 
 guishing mark of their hierarchy, that it is her practice, and has 
 been derived from her very constitution, as well as doctrine, to fix 
 in all her members principles of unshaken loyalty to her Prince, 
 entire and undisputed obedience to all her commands, and an ab- 
 horrence of the very thoughts of those hellish principles, that it can 
 be lawful on any account whatsoever to resist the established power 
 of their kings. 
 
 " 'Twould be endless to quote the Rev. Dr. B ge, who, from the 
 text in the 13th of the Romans, and verses 1, 2, ' Resist not the 
 powers, &c., for whatsoever powers are, be ordained of God/ tells us : 
 f That if the King should by his royal command execute the greatest 
 violence upon either our persons or estate, our duty was to submit 
 by prayers and tears first to God Almighty, to turn the wrath of his 
 vicegerent from his servant, and by humble entreaty to beg his 
 Majesty's grace and pardon; but to lift up the hand against the 
 Lord's anointed, or resist the evil of punishment he thought fit to 
 inflict, this were a crime unpardonable either before God or man ; 
 and a crime (says the reverend doctor) which we bless God the very 
 principles of our ever-loyal mother, the Church of England, abhors 
 and detests/ 
 
 <( ' Let incendiaries, fanaticks, and bloody peace-breaking Whigs,' 
 says another learned divine, f nourish the viperous principles of 
 treason and rebellion ; and let them meet their due reward of their 
 factious doings in the resentments of a righteous but provoked nation. 
 But, God be praised, our mother, the Church of England, has always 
 brought up her sons in an unspotted loyalty and obedience ; none 
 have been found lifting up their hands against their sovereign, or 
 possessing the right of the anointed of God/ " &c. &c. 
 
 This tract proceeds to the extent of twenty pages in this strain ; 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE, 163 
 
 and of course no extract of a single page can do justice to the per- 
 formance ; for it is very ably written, as all De Foe's tracts were ; 
 and of course it produced a geat sensation at the time. 
 
 Upon Nov. 4, in this year, Mr. Bromley and Mr. Annesley, mem- 
 bers for the two universities, and Mr. St. John, afterwards Lord 
 Bolingbroke, brought in a bill for preventing occasional conformity 
 011 the part of Protestant dissenters, which was a Tory or High- 
 Church process for persecuting, by excluding from all offices of trust 
 or honour all Protestant dissenters ; and this act was supported by 
 all the power of the High-Church party connected with the govern- 
 ment, or in the House ; and for this act Prince George of Den- 
 mark (the Prince Consort), was obliged to vote, though at the time 
 he said to Lord Wharton, when rising to divide, " My heart is 
 vid you/' 
 
 It was with them ; for he was a Lutheran and an occasional con- 
 formist himself. Luckily for the Queen, the bishops in the House 
 of Lords were the chief cause of saving her throne by their mode- 
 ration ; for they were all moderate men, and of William's appoint- 
 ment. We rail at bishops sitting in the House of Lords ; but here 
 they saved the nation from an act which would neither have added 
 to the dignity nor perhaps the safety of the throne : for the spirit 
 of persecution on the part of the High-Church party was raised 
 to the highest pitch ; for Whigs, Presbyterians, the ministry, and 
 even the Queen herself was the object of attack from the church 
 pulpits ; with long and exciting harangues on the Cromwell times, 
 and the sufferings of Charles I. The Bishops and Lords clogged 
 this bill with amendments, in order to cause its rejection in the 
 Commons, in which they succeeded ; for the bill was lost. All was 
 excitement during the time this bill was in Parliament, and pamph- 
 lets swarmed on all hands; and among the writers of the latter 
 stood out foremost Daniel De Foe in another pamphlet, published 
 at this time, and entitled An Enquiry into Occasional Conformity, 
 shewing that the Dissenters are no way concerned in it. In taking 
 up this subject as a writer, De Foe stood nearly alone on his side of 
 the question; for he had a vast majority both of preachers and 
 writers against him ; but yet he felt satisfied, though in the mi- 
 ll* 
 
164 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 nority, as conscious of having truth on his side; for he tells his 
 opponents, that they were welcome to all the converts made by the 
 mammon of unrighteousness. 
 
 The Occasional Conformity Bill of Mr. Bromley and his party of 
 TACKEIIS, in the Commons,is given here as a specimen of the House of 
 Commons when acting under French influences, though not French 
 pay ; for we were at war with France at this time, and consequently 
 unpaid, though living and acting in hope of better times from French 
 patronage : those times to be when James III. could be reinstated 
 on the throne of his father by the power of France ; and England 
 be reduced to a French province again by French money, distributed 
 among members of the House of Commons for French interests 
 exclusively, to the exclusion of British interests a state of things 
 which had existed through a great portion of the reign of William 
 and Mary of glorious memory ; and which was anxiously expected, 
 on a return to French influences under James III., by a great 
 majority of the House of Commons of 1702, 1703, and 1704 the 
 first Parliament of Queen Anne. The bill is given as sent up to 
 the Lords, and without the amendments of the Lords, introduced as 
 softening clauses or additions, in various places. 
 
 " As nothing is more contrary to the profession of the Christian 
 religion, and particularly to the doctrine of the Church of England, 
 than persecution for conscience only; in due consideration whereof 
 an act passed in the first year of the reign of the late King William 
 and Queen Mary, entitled f An Act for exempting their Majesties' 
 Protestant subjects dissenting from the Church of England from 
 the Penalties of certain Laws/ which act ought inviolably to 
 be observed, and ease given to all consciences truly scrupulous. 
 But, nevertheless, whereas the laws do provide that every person 
 to be admitted into any office or employment should be con- 
 formable to the church, as it is by law established ; by enacting, 
 that every such person so to be admitted should receive the sacra- 
 ment of the Lord's Supper according to the rites and usage of 
 the Church of England ; yet several persons dissenting from the 
 church as it is by law established, do join with the members thereof 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 165 
 
 in receiving the Lord's Supper to qualify themselves to have and 
 enjoy such offices and employments; and do afterwards resort 
 to conventicles or meetings, for the exercise of religion in other 
 manner than according to the liturgy and practice of the Church of 
 England ; which is contrary to the intent and meaning of the laws 
 already made : Be it therefore enacted by the Queen's most excel- 
 lent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords 
 spiritual and temporal, and the Commons in Parliament assembled, 
 and by authority of the same ; that if any person or persons, after 
 the first day of March which shall be in the year of our Lord 1702, 
 either Peers or Commons, who have [Mark ! it was on Feb. 21, 
 1702, that his Majesty had the misfortune to break his collar-bone, 
 while hunting at Hampton Court; the accident which was the appa- 
 rent cause of his Majesty's death] or shall have any office or offices, 
 civil or military, or receive any pay, salary, fee, or wages, by reason 
 of any patent or grant from her Majesty, or shall have any com- 
 mand or place of trust from or under her Majesty, or from any of 
 her Majesty's predecessors, or by her or their authority, derived 
 from her or them, within the kingdom of England, dominion of 
 Wales, and town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, or in her Majesty's navy, 
 or in the several islands of Jersey and Guernsey; or shall be ad- 
 mitted into any service or employment in her Majesty's household 
 or family ; or if any mayor, alderman, recorder, bailiff, town-clerk, 
 common-councilman, or other person bearing any office of magis- 
 tracy, or places of trust, or other employment relating to and 
 concerning the government of the respective cities, corporations, 
 boroughs, cinque-ports, and their members, and other port towns, 
 within the kingdom of England, dominion of Wales, and the town 
 of Berwick-upon-Tweed, who by the laws are obliged to receive the 
 sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to the rites and usage 
 of the Church of England, shall at any time after their admission 
 into their respective offices or employments, or after having such 
 grant as aforesaid, during his or their continuance in such offices, 
 or the enjoyment of any profit or advantage from the same, 
 knowingly or willingly resort to or be present at any conventicle, 
 under colour of any exercise of religion in other manner than ac* 
 
166 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 cording to the liturgy and practice of the Church of England, in 
 any place within the kingdom of England, at which conventicle or 
 assembly there shall be five persons or more assembled together, 
 over and besides those of the same household, if it be in any house 
 or place where there is no person inhabiting, then where any five 
 persons or more are so assembled as aforesaid, or shall knowingly 
 or willingly be present at any such meeting, in such house or place, 
 although the liturgy be there used ; and in case her Majesty (whom 
 God long preserve) Katherine Queen Dowager, and the Princess 
 Sophia, or such others as shall from time to time be lawfully appointed 
 to be prayed for, and shall not be prayed for (viz., in pursuance of the 
 act passed in the first year of King William and Queen Mary, en- 
 titled ' An Act declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject, 
 and settling the Succession of the Crown ;' and the act passed in 
 the twelfth and thirteenth of King William, entitled ( An Act for 
 the further Limitation of the Crown, and better securing the Rights 
 and Liberties of the Subject'), in express words, according to the 
 liturgy of the Church of England; shall forfeit the sum of one hun- 
 dred pounds, and five pounds for every day that any such persons 
 shall continue in the execution of such office or employment after 
 they shall have been present at any such conventicle; to be recovered 
 by him or them, that shall sue for the same, by an action of debt, 
 bill, plaint, or information, in any of her Majesty's courts at West- 
 minster, wherein no essoign, protection, or wages of law shall be 
 allowed, nor more than one imparlance. 
 
 " And be it further enacted, that every person convicted in any 
 action, to be brought as aforesaid, or upon any information, pre- 
 sentment, or indictment, in any of her Majesty's courts of West- 
 minster, or at the assizes, shall be disabled from thenceforth to hold 
 such offices or employments, or to receive any profits or advantage 
 by reason of them, or of any grant as aforesaid; and shall be adjudged 
 incapable to bear any office or employment whatsoever within the 
 kingdom of England. Provided always, and be it further enacted, 
 that if any person or persons who shall be convicted as aforesaid, 
 and thereby made incapable to hold any office or employment, shall 
 after such conviction conform to the Church of England for the 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 167 
 
 space of one year without having been present at any conventicle, 
 and receive the sacrament of the Lord's Supper at least three times 
 in the year, every such person or persons shall be capable of a grant 
 of any office or employment, or of being elected into or holding any 
 the offices or employments aforesaid. Provided also, and be it 
 enacted, that every person so convicted, and afterwards conforming, 
 shall, at the next term after his admission into any such office, make 
 oath in writing, in any of her Majesty's courts at Westminster, in 
 public and open court, between the hours of nine of the clock and 
 twelve in the forenoon, or at the next quarter sessions for the county 
 or place where he shall reside, that he has conformed to the Church 
 of England for the space of one year before such his admission, 
 without having been present at any conventicle, and that he has 
 received the sacrament of the Lord's Supper ; which oath shall be 
 there enrolled, and kept upon record. Provided also, and be it 
 further enacted, that if any person after such his admission into any 
 office, shall a second time offend in manner aforesaid, and shall be 
 thereof lawfully convicted, he shall for such offence incur double the 
 penalties aforementioned; to be recovered in manner aforesaid, and 
 shall forfeit such office or employment, and shall not be capable of 
 having any office or employment until he have conformed for the 
 space of three years, in the manner aforesaid; whereof oath shall be 
 made in writing in one of her Majesty's courts at Westminster, or 
 at the quarter sessions of the county where he resides." 
 
 Such was the bill for persecuting the dissenters in the years 1702, 
 1703, and 1704, the first Parliament of Queen Anne. This bill was 
 the pet bill of the House of Commons during the whole three first 
 years of Queen Anne's reign: a bill which was carried to the 
 Lords again and again, without effect, until the device of TACKING it 
 to a money bill was resorted to by the Commons. We talk of the 
 House of Lords we talk of the bench of bishops : bishops, indeed ! 
 Who stood first in opposition to this tyrannical measure of the 
 Commons of the Mackworths and Howes and Bromleys? Who? 
 Fourteen bishops, at the head of whom stood the Lord Archbishop of 
 Canterbury. These tackers of the Commons, numbering 134 mem- 
 
168 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 bers, were the same class of members who were sold to Louis XIV. 
 of France during the previous reign, the French ambassador being 
 the purchaser; and were called POUSSINEERS, from POUSSIN, the 
 French agent employed in the purchase; and they numbered, as we 
 have previously said, 167. French members bought and paid for 
 by the French ambassador for the King of France ! This TACKING 
 plan of carrying bills through the House of Commons induced the 
 Upper House to pass a standing order, to the effect, that "the 
 annexing any clause to a money bill was contrary to the constitution 
 of the English government and the usage of Parliament." 
 
 The Lords, in their negotiations with the managers for the 
 Commons, were most strenuous for carrying a numerous string of 
 amendments or curtailments of the measure, for lightening the blow 
 about to be dealt upon the dissenters, under the form of LAW ; but 
 all in vain ; the bill must be carried, and the bill should be carried by 
 the stockjobbing TACKERS of the Commons; headed by Mr. Bromley, 
 Mr. St. John, Sir Simon Harcourt, the solicit or- general, and sup- 
 ported by all the men who had bought their seats and wished to sell 
 them at a profit, or bring about the old French times, when Louis' 
 money should again circulate in the House of Commons, from the 
 pocket of the French ambassador. These men, from Jack Howe 
 upwards, could have no personal feelings against the dissenters. 
 None ! Theirs was altogether a money calculation a rise or fall 
 of stock, East Indian or South Sea; and a brush with France or 
 Holland or Spain, or a panic on the Pretender's landing in Devon- 
 shire or anywhere else, was all the same to them, however disastrous 
 it might be to the government or nation ; for they were stockjob- 
 bing speculators ; and bears or bulls, which you like, only name the 
 stock : sell or buy, in any stock and to any amount, either for this 
 day or any other you may be pleased to name. Such was the ma- 
 jority of the House of Commons for the first three years of the reign 
 of Queen Anne. Yes ! and this villainy in the Commons had, as its 
 resisting barrier fourteen bishops, at the head of whom stood the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury ; and the lay peers were headed by the 
 Duke of Devonshire in the House of Lords. 
 
 The managers of the Commons enforced the necessity of the 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 169 
 
 measure as a support of a national church, on account of " so many 
 ill men pretending to inspiration, and so many weak men following 
 them ;" and also, because the last reign began with an act in favour 
 of dissenters, it was but fair that this should commence by an act 
 in favour of the church. Such was the argument of the managers 
 for the Commons ; while the managers for the Lords the Duke of 
 Devonshire, the Earl of Peterborough, the Bishop of Salisbury, Lord 
 Somers, and Lord Halifax maintained "that it was untrue to say of 
 the dissenters, that they never wanted the will, when they had the 
 power to destroy the church and state; since in the last and greatest 
 danger (1688) it was exposed to, they joined with her, with all 
 imaginable zeal and sincerity, against the Papists, their common 
 enemy, showing no prejudice to the church ; but the utmost respect 
 to her bishops when sent to the Tower. And that ever since they 
 have continued to show all the signs of friendship and submission to 
 the government of church and state ; that, in truth, formerly the 
 dissenters had been seditious, and in arms and opposition to the state 
 and church ; but it was the effect of persecution ; and even then they 
 were open and avowed enemies ; but that toleration and tenderness 
 had never missed of procuring peace and union, as persecution had 
 never failed of the contrary effects." 
 
 The Lords also intimated that the woollen manufacture, imported 
 in a great measure with persecuted Flemish Protestants from the 
 Spanish Netherlands in the reign of Elizabeth, could not flourish in 
 this country in matters of religion, for " the book that goes under 
 the name of Mr. De Wits, shows the Dutch reckon that the woollen 
 manufactures can never have such a settlement among us as with 
 them j because they who must work them, cannot have so entire a 
 liberty of conscience here as there. We have felt the happy effects 
 of the liberty granted them in the last reign ; and it is to be hoped 
 that nothing will be done in this to impeach that, or to raise appre- 
 hensions and fears in the minds of men that are so useful to us in the 
 most important article of our trade." The connection between the 
 woollen cloth trade and religious liberty is worthy of consideration. 
 Dorsetshire and the West of England were the great strongholds 
 of dissent when the Duke of Monmouth and the Prince of Orange 
 
170 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 landed there in 1685 and 1688; while at this time (1859), the 
 clothing districts of the West Riding of Yorkshire will be found to 
 be the grand strongholds of religious liberty, and civil liberty too ; 
 if the main points of the argument were only laid in truth and 
 faithfulness before the common-sense comprehension of the people. 
 Look at the Saddleworth freeholders in 1807 ; look there ! a Mister 
 Somebody (Armitage or Armstrong) told a Saddleworth freeholder 
 that he would never buy another piece of cloth of him if he did 
 not vote for his candidate ! Fatal declaration ! that silly threat, 
 made to one or two men, turned the election for Yorkshire and 
 against Mister Armstrong's candidate. 
 
 One would like to ask whether the taste for music came from 
 Holland with the civil and religious liberty involved in the woollen 
 trade? I should think it did. 
 
 But to return to the bill, and its advocates in the Commons. Sir 
 John Packinton observed " One would be provoked, by the late 
 behaviour of the bishops, to move for leave to bring in a bill for the 
 toleration of episcopacy ; for, since they are of the same principles 
 with the dissenters, it is but just, I think, that they should stand 
 on the same foot." 
 
 The above bill for persecuting the dissenters passed the House 
 of Commons three times in the years 1702, 1703, and 1704; and 
 was as often thrown out in the Lords ; the last time by a majority 
 of 71 the Queen being present, and taking great interest in the 
 measure against the dissenters. 
 
 Queen Anne ! How could that woman forget that awful night 
 when she stole from Whitehall, to place herself under General 
 Comptou the Bishop of London dressed up in regimentals ; and 
 had to flee under his escort to Nottingham, the headquarters of the 
 Duke of Devonshire ! Queen Anne ! a perjured woman ! who 
 held her right to the throne through the compact entered into 
 between William Prince of Orange and the freeholders of England, 
 in the Bill of Rights that Magna Charter which alone gave Queen 
 Anne any right to sit upon the throne of these realms. 
 
 What business had that woman to dictate to the people of Eng- 
 land how they should worship the God of their fathers? Who made 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 171 
 
 her a judge in such matters ? Look at her title to the throne 
 what was it what was the solemn compact ? Was it right heredi- 
 tary right to work her people as tools, goods, and chattels ? No, 
 she had no hereditary right to the throne ; her right was based upon 
 successful revolution the revolution of 1688. Her title, her char- 
 ter, was the Bill of Rights. What was the Bill of Eights ? Was 
 it a right to deprive half of her subjects of their privileges as citi- 
 zens ? No ! her claim was an usurped claim ; and had it not been 
 for the Lords and the Bishops, the creation of William III. for her 
 as trustees, she must have gone once again by night, under General 
 Compton but not to Nottingham ; no ! but to Dover for St. 
 Germains, the house of her brother and her father. 
 
 It is true that the whole race of Stuarts, from slobbering James 
 downwards, had a wonderful notion of their rights as kings of 
 England ; the whole race of them possessed this feeling ; and per- 
 haps we may be excused if we inquire into the nature of the title, 
 whether it were by conquest or by compact, bond, or charter? We 
 will look into the conquest side of the argument, and admit its 
 validity as a starting-point, and see by what unbroken chain of em- 
 blazoned pedigree, Queen Anne possessed her throne ? Henry VII. 
 was the conqueror upon whom James I, relied, and on this claim his 
 son Charles staked his head, and lost ! Where is conquest title after 
 that execution, for signing a bond with his people and breaking it ? 
 Where stood right of conquest on that awful scaffold erected before 
 one of the windows of Whitehall ? Cromwell's reign, CromwelFs 
 glorious reign ! for he, Oliver Cromwell, had as great a right, by 
 succession, to his place upon the throne, by right hereditary, as any 
 king or any queen of England from the time of Edward the Con- 
 fessor to this present moment. It may suit the sycophants to omit 
 the statue of Cromwell in the New Palace of Westminster ; but 
 yet yet, in spite of the Clarks, the Jubs, the Snubs, and the Smiths, 
 of my Lord Chamberlain's dancing-list; yet, in spite of the pout- 
 ing lip of disappointed sycophancy Oliver Cromwell was, in fact, a 
 king of England ; and a great one too ! Well, then, take his suc- 
 cessor of conquest, Charles II., the pensioner of France the man 
 who sold Dunkirk to the French for 400,000, and spent the money 
 
172 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 with the French prostitute, the Duchess of Portsmouth ; what British 
 conquest is there here ? 
 
 "Well, then, take James II., and he a prisoner in the hands of 
 boatmen and rabble, at a public-house in Rochester ; taken prisoner 
 when attempting to run away from his throne and people, in the 
 disguise of a sailor ; well, take the running away in the dead of the 
 night, by the Princess of Denmark, under the protection of the 
 Bishop of London, and he disguised as a soldier ; where was the 
 conquest here ? Well, then, William III. invading England at the 
 head of fourteen thousand Dutchmen, and holding the throne, in his 
 own name, by act of Parliament, or compact with the people, for 
 fourteen years ; where could Queen Anne's rights by conquest be, 
 here ? Her right to the throne, by any conquest of Henry VII., 
 could not be, to Queen Anne, worth one of her farthings. 
 
 We will now consider Queen Anne's title by hereditary descent. 
 James, her great-grandfather, derived his title to the throne of Eng- 
 land from Henry VII. : a bad title; perhaps the worst since the 
 time of the Confessor, and his heir the Norman bastard ; excepting, 
 perhaps, that of Edward III., the progenitor of Henry VII., seven 
 reigns back in the table of genealogy; and he, too, king by the 
 deposing of his father, and taking upon himself, in his father's life- 
 time, the government of this realm of England, by a solemn compact, 
 entered into with the people of England : his title to the throne 
 being an act-of-Parliament title only. As to hereditary succession, 
 from Henry VII., by way of Edward III., the title hereditary would 
 be so thoroughly rotten, as not to be worth, both together, in the 
 estimation of any county-court jury in England a cartload of 
 coals ! 
 
 We will first take Edward the Confessor, whose title to the throne 
 of England by hereditary right was bad bad in itself yes, builders 
 and commissioners of your New Palace of Westminster, as bad a 
 title to the throne by hereditary right as that of Oliver Cromwell, 
 King of England by election ; and of blessed memory too ; whose 
 statue you dare not place in your new building a fact when the 
 British constitution is on its trial its last trial and when British 
 interests are drifting to German centralization, which speaks volumes 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 173 
 
 for the cowardice of British legislators in the reign of Victoria. 
 A great debt of gratitude is due from this nation to a man the 
 Brewer of Huntingdon ! who proved the best of kings in the worst 
 of times, to a people debased and crushed to the earth by the French 
 influences. Let this debt be paid let J100,000 be raised by 
 national subscription for a national monument ; and let the electors 
 of Westminster and Marylebone open the subscription lists ; and 
 put my name down for 500 ; and, if you like, for I care not, let 
 Hyde Park the middle or highest point be the situation for pitch- 
 ing this testimony of a nation's gratitude to one of her kings, and 
 one of her best of kings too ; and for motto add, if you like, " No 
 German centralization here." 
 
 Well, the illegitimate sovereign, Edward the Confessor, left the 
 kingdom, by will, to the bastard William the Conqueror ; a per* 
 jured man as well as a bastard. William II. was not the legitimate 
 heir of William the Conqueror. No; Henry I., his brother, was a 
 younger brother, made King, while his elder brother was living. 
 Stephen, his successor, was placed in worse circumstances, for divine 
 right. Henry II. was no better, as a divine-right king; for he was 
 not the legitimate heir to Stephen, or anybody else. Richard I. 
 succeeded his father. John succeeded Richard illegally, in the 
 lifetime of the true heir. Henry III. succeeded John illegally. So 
 that, of seven successors after the Conqueror, but one, Richard I., 
 succeeded as heir to his father, or the Conqueror. We have heard 
 of the poor Scotch Highlander boasting of an existence in pedigree 
 before twa flood ; and we have heard of Noah descending from the 
 deck of his ark, with the pedigree of Sir Watkins Williams Wynn, 
 of Wynnstay, in Whales, under his arm, as a treasure. Sir Watkins 
 Williams Wynnes pedigree the pet volume in Noah's library! 
 Yes ; his Whole Duty of Man ; with Family Exercises on Passive 
 Obedience to the Family of Wynnstay, added by way of Appendix ! 
 Is this absurd to the English reader? Is it more absurd than 
 James Stuart setting up for King of England, as God's vicegerent, 
 through the rotten title as King, of Henry VII. ? Talk of divine 
 right of James I. ! slobbering James yes; slobbering James ! 
 whose great tongue, too large for his mouth, affected, or let down 
 
174 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 by a stroke of paralysis, was never in an easy position, except when 
 licking some lad's face either Carr's, or Villiers's, or some other 
 lad's! Jure-divino from Scotland! what De Foe terms packs andscrat 
 from beyond Tweed ! When Edward III. came in a man who was 
 a king, and ruled his people as a king, for a long and glorious reign 
 where was passive obedience, and divine right of kings? This 
 man was crowned ; and the Archbishop of Canterbury, WALTER, 
 preached his coronation sermon ; and what was his text what ? 
 Vox POPULI, Vox DEI : THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE is THE VOICE 
 OF GOD. Such was the JURE-DIVINO election to the throne of 
 England of Edward III., our glorious King ! 
 
 Edward III. was a good king of England, a very good one, and 
 so was Henry VII. ; but yet, as hereditary drivers of dissenting 
 Slaves from this conventicle to that church, at the beck or call of 
 this or that bishop, their titles were worthless ; as the execution of 
 Charles I. fully testified, when he staked his throne and his head upon 
 the venture. Charles I. broke his bond, solemnly entered into with 
 his people; and that act of perjury cost him his life, for he was 
 tried, found guilty, and executed. 
 
 But it may be said that a corrupt, rotten House of Commons 
 were to blame in allowing the executive to act the tyrant with the 
 people. This is quite true : a corrupt House of Commons, bribed 
 and corrupted by the French ambassador, with the money of Louis 
 the Fourteenth and the pensioned French -pensioned profligate, 
 Charles II., heart-broke William III. and Queen Anne. This is a 
 fact. But can no remedy be found ? Yes ! Annual Parliaments ; 
 and without the ballot, if you please ; for the ballot-box can be forged 
 by a powerful and dishonest executive, especially in boroughs snugly 
 placed by circumstances for playing the game. Parliaments in Eng- 
 land were annual, till the governing powers, for their own purposes, 
 chose to make them otherwise ; at one time they must be made tri- 
 ennial, to fix the Whigs, or serve some dark or party purpose; and 
 at another time they must be made septennial, to fix or annoy the 
 Tories ! All this would be fully rectified by Annual Parliaments 
 and widely extended electoral districts, with bribery and intimidation 
 by treating or persecution rendered FELONY; and the briber or 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 175 
 
 intimidator subjected to transportation to a penal settlement, on 
 a verdict of guilty being pronounced by a British jury at the county 
 assizes. This would be ballot-box enough ; and no juggling with 
 false bottoms or false tops, or double and false keys, with false 
 officials in the pay of the executive, prepared to make a false return 
 by the ballot-box, placed in their hands as national umpires; 
 provided it could be done with the certainty of their never being 
 detected and punished, 
 
 I would say avoid the ballot, but insist upon the duration of Par- 
 liaments being annual only, and BRIBERY and CORRUPTION, FELONY, 
 on conviction before a British assize jury. Oh! but you '11 
 you '11, indeed ! I would transport every man to a penal settlement 
 for life, on a conviction of bribery or intimidation. I would want 
 no ballot-box ; mine should emphatically be the JURY-BOX ; and if 
 necessary in the course of justice, I would place every member of 
 the government in the WITNESS-BOX. Half-a-dozen convictions for 
 bribery, with as many transportations for life, twenty, or seven 
 years, would soon clean or clear the way to the poll-booth; and 
 bribery and intimidation become unknown in Britain. 
 
 In another part of this book I have proposed, as a punishment for 
 bribery or intimidation for men high in place in this world's smiles, 
 stripping in Palace Yard, Westminster, and tying to a cart-tail and 
 flogging down the Strand to Temple Bar. This is better protection 
 to the voter than the ballot-box ; the ballot-box you might forge, 
 but there would be no forging under the lash of two drummers 
 from the Foot Guards. There is a way of protection to the voter ; 
 and that way must adopted ; and without the ballot, too. 
 
 Well ! but in all this state of turmoil and contention on the Pres- 
 byterians turning churchmen once a year for corporation honours, 
 how did De Foe act ? He wrote to the Rev. Mr. Howe for advice, 
 and got an answer, as we have seen before; and he wrote his 
 book, the Shortest Way with the Dissenters, too, and got into gaol 
 for twelve months for doing it ; he wrote against these men playing 
 dissenter to foster the pride of intelligence and credit of " thinking 
 for one's-self," and then turning churchman too, in order to be a 
 
176 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 great man on lord mayor's day, and play at long-spoon and custard 
 with City aldermen at the gate of Newgate. De Foe's advice was 
 to hang and drown the whole Presbyterian fry ; for a threat of 
 drowning to a man changing his religion in order to be Lord Mayor 
 of London, would quicken his steps in the changing march, rather 
 than be hanged or drowned for his religion. 
 
 The Presbyterians in De Foe's time (1702) were an elevating 
 class; and he thought very little of them as a religious body of 
 independent, self-relying, vigorous, healthy Christians. I fancy he 
 thought these men very genteel, but half Tories a class of men 
 who, to be lord mayor of London, would not scruple to play at 
 bo-peep with God Almighty on religious matters. Poor De Foe ! 
 he was too honest for the party. De Foe was himself a Presby- 
 terian, as we shall find elsewhere in this book ; but of this occasional 
 conformity to the church for lord mayor's show and City honours, 
 he, as a dissenter, highly disapproved. " He, as a dissenter, would 
 say, ee Do your worst at us, and take the consequences ; you have 
 done it before twice, and what was the consequence?" To the two, 
 Charles and James, father and son, he pointed mentally " Look 
 there, at the scaffold at Whitehall ; and there there the alehouse 
 prisoner at Rochester; the two martyrs, wet and dry. 
 
 De Foe had no fear at a trial of strength on religious matters 
 the contest had been tried, and the battle had been won won twice 
 in death and in banishment, to two Kings of England ! For 
 what? what? For trampling on the rights of the people, and 
 breaking their bond with that people ; on the people's rights, and 
 on the people's liberties for they have both, and will continue to 
 have; till a German centralization on Education shall prostrate every 
 man's neck in Britain below the foot of a parson. Education is the 
 weapon to be used for re-erecting the Star Chamber and the Court 
 of High Commission, and subdue us all all old and young, rich 
 and poor, to one level ; and that to be fixed by the minister of the 
 crown for court purposes. 
 
 Oxford examinations of the working classes, what are they where 
 do they lead? Privy Council turned schoolmaster, where does that 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 177 
 
 lead where does it point : to the high road of arbitrary power, 
 and a subjugation of a free people to all the tyranny of a govern- 
 mental bondage. 
 
 At this time (1702) De Foe brought out his pamphlet entitled 
 the Shortest Way with the Dissenters, or Proposals for the Esta- 
 blishment of the Church. This pamphlet was framed on the model 
 of Sacheverell, Leslie, and others ; and was, no doubt, written to 
 precipitate the catastrophe which at that time was threatening both 
 the throne and the church. De Foe knew the power in wealth, and 
 the numbers of the dissenters ; and the effect which an open rupture 
 with such a party in the kingdom would have upon the government 
 and the war with France ; only reluctantly carried on by the Tories, 
 then in power. De Foe had written so freely to and on the Rev. 
 Mr. John Howe, and his members receiving the sacrament as a 
 passport to civil honour, that he had completely closed all acquaint- 
 ance with them ; and, if he could have urged on the government to 
 irritate this respectable Presbyterian congregation into open hosti- 
 lity ,, he would have materially strengthened the dissenting party by 
 so doing. The leading dissenters of the lord-mayor class would 
 blame De Foe quite as much as the High-Church party could blame 
 him ; for the latter quite approved of his book, till they knew that 
 it was written by him, to ridicule them. 
 
 The government and the High-Church party were anxious to crush 
 the dissenters ; but this exterminating process by fire and sword 
 frightened the government ; for the government was in great danger 
 from rousing up the sleeping powers of the dissenters into actual 
 resistance. This would have brought on a contest which Queen 
 Anne's government was by no means prepared to enter upon ; for 
 in such a contest the Uueen would have been worsted, and what 
 would have been the result ? A packing-up of traps for St. Germains; 
 the last of the Stuarts gone ! It was all very well for De Foe to 
 call this pamphlet a joke, or piece of irony ; but it was no joke for 
 the government. De Foe states, that when he wrote his pamphlet, 
 {( Down with the Whigs, down with the Presbyterians, down with 
 the meeting-houses !" was such an universal cry, that nothing else 
 was to be heard in the mouths of these furies for a long time. Press, 
 
 12 
 
178 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 pulpit, coffee-house all the discourse of the kingdom was, what her 
 Majesty would do ; and then the church should triumph over her 
 enemies the dissenters ; how forty-one should now be fully revenged; 
 and all things were to be done the shortest way. Though this truth 
 was unhappily told by the author of this a little too soon, yet 
 time has made it plain it was in their design, and discovered by 
 themselves. 
 
 There was nothing in De Foe's pamphlet but what had been 
 enunciated again and again from scores of pulpits, both in London 
 and in Oxford and Cambridge ; but yet the thing was done in such 
 a way as to make a national agitation, and threaten the disturbance 
 of the government ; and this was so palpable, that the Secretary of 
 State for the Home Department spared no pains till he had discovered 
 the author, and found that author to be the most obnoxious man 
 in the kingdom fearless, and dangerous from his talents ; and that 
 man was Daniel De Foe. The Earl of Nottingham was secretary of 
 state at this time ; and he was the man who made out De Foe to 
 be the writer of this dangerous pamphlet ; and on the discovery, 
 great was the dismay of the High-Church divines, who had applauded 
 this divine production, even in their pulpits, as a work which stood 
 next to the holy scriptures in importance. 
 
 The whole party now called for vengence on the head of the author 
 hanging was too good for such a miscreant ! In the excitement, 
 more than one individual offered to officiate as hangman, rather than 
 this blasphemous author should go unpunished. In this state of 
 threatened vengence, De Foe ran away, and was advertised in the 
 London Gazette, and 50 offered for his apprehension. This took 
 place on the 10th day of January, 1703; and the advertisement 
 is as follows : 
 
 " Whereas Daniel De Foe, alias De Fooe, is charged with writing 
 a scandalous and seditious pamphlet entitled the Shortest Way with 
 the Dissenters. He is a middle-sized spare man, about forty years 
 old, of a brown complexion, and dark brown coloured hair, but wears 
 a wig ; a hooked nose, a sharp chin, grey eyes, and a large mole 
 near his mouth ; was born in London, and for many years was a 
 hose-factor in Freeman's Yard, in Cornhill ; and now is owner of 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 179 
 
 the brick and pantile works near Tilbury Fort, in Essex. Whoever 
 will discover the said Daniel De Foe to one of her Majesty's principal 
 secretaries of state, or any of her Majesty's justices of the peace, so 
 he may be apprehended, shall have the reward of fifty pounds, 
 which her Majesty has ordered immediately to be paid upon such 
 discovery." 
 
 At the same time a formal complaint was made of this publication 
 in the House of Commons, on Feb. 25, 1703; when, some of the 
 obnoxious passages being read, it was resolved " That this book, 
 being full of false and scandalous reflections on this Parliament, and 
 tending to promote sedition, be burnt by the hands of the common 
 hangman to-morrow, in New Palace Yard." 
 
 At the Old Bailey sessions, held on Feb. 24, 17 03, Sir Simon 
 Harcourt being the solicitor-general at the time, and conducting the 
 prosecution for the government, the grand jury construed his of- 
 fence for a libel ; and the trial came off on the following July : the 
 interim being occupied by agents of the government tampering with 
 the prisoner, to induce him to plead guilty under a promise of a royal 
 pardon. This would have been a most important relief for Lord 
 Nottingham, a narrow, bigoted High-Church Tory, placed upon the 
 brink of a precipice, with Harley, the popular Speaker and boon 
 companion of the House of Commons, ready at a moment's notice to 
 supplant him; which he did, within a few months of this ever- 
 memorable trial. 
 
 When the trial came on, De Foe, under the promise of pardon 
 from the Earl of Nottingham, her Majesty's secretary of state, pleaded 
 guilty ; and, to the astonishment of every one, the sentence of the 
 court upon him was, that he pay 200 marks to the Queen ; stand 
 three times in the pillory ; be imprisoned during the Queen's plea- 
 sure ; and find sureties for his good behaviour for seven years. Such 
 was the sentence; and such was it carried out; to the eternal disgrace 
 of Daniel Finch, Earl of Nottingham, the Queen's secretary of state 
 at the time. 
 
 The pillory exhibition is thus noticed in the London Gazette of 
 July 31 : 
 
 " On the 29th instant, Daniel Foe, alias De Foe, stood in the pillory 
 
 12* 
 
180 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 before the Royal Exchange in Cornhill, as he did yesterday near the 
 Conduit in Cheapside, and this day at Temple Bar; in pursuance of 
 his sentence given against him at the last sessions at the Old Bailey, 
 for writing and publishing a seditious libel, entitled the Shortest 
 Way with the Dissenters. By which sentence he is also fined 200 
 marks, to find sureties for his good behaviour for seven years ; and 
 to remain in prison till all be performed." 
 
 Such a pillory exhibition had seldom been seen in England ; for 
 exulting thousands accompanied De Foe from Newgate to the pillory 
 on each day, to protect him from hurt or insult ; and accompanied 
 him also with shouts of triumph on his return to Newgate. The 
 very pillory itself was said to have been decorated with garlands ; 
 for it was the height of summer, when there were abundance of 
 flowers ; and not only this, but refreshments were provided for him ; 
 and, as an opponent said of the crowd at the time and their 
 refreshments, 
 
 The shouting crowds their advocate proclaim, 
 And varnish over infamy with fame. 
 As round him Philistines adoring stand, 
 And keep their Dagon safe from Israel's hand ; 
 That, dirt themselves, protected him from filth, 
 And with the faction's money drank his health. 
 
 On De Foe being again lodged in the felons' room in Newgate, 
 he set to work to commemorate the event by writing a Hymn to the 
 Pillory : 
 
 Hail ! hieroglyphick state machine, 
 
 Contriv'd to punish fancy in ; 
 
 Men that are men, in thee can feel no pain, 
 
 And all thy insignificants disdain. 
 
 Contempt, that false new word for shame, 
 
 Is, without crime, an empty name : 
 
 A shadow to amuse mankind, 
 
 But never frights the wise or well-fixed mind. 
 
 Virtue despises human scorn, 
 
 And scandals innocence adorn. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 181 
 
 How have thy opening vacancies receiv'd, 
 
 In every stage, the criminals of state ! 
 And how has mankind been deceiv'd, 
 
 When they distinguish crimes by fate ! 
 Tell us, great engine > how to understand, 
 Or reconcile the justice of the land ; 
 How Bastwick, Prynne, Hunt, Hollingsby, and Pye, 
 Men of unspotted honesty, 
 Men that had learning, wit, and sense ; 
 And more than most men have had since, 
 Could equal title to thee claim 
 With Oats and Fuller, men of later fame ; 
 Even the learned Selden saw 
 A prospect of thee, through the law ; 
 He had thy lofty pinnacles in view, 
 But so much honour never was thy due. 
 Had the great Selden triumphed on thy stage 
 Selden, the honour of this age, 
 No man would ever shun thee more, 
 Or grudge to stand where Selden stood before. 
 
 Perhaps we might be allowed to ask, why De Foe, a thorough dis- 
 senter of the old Puritan school, should write a mad fire-and-faggot 
 tract against the whole body of dissenters ? De Foe's principles were 
 not the ordinary sunshine principles of prosperous mace or sword 
 bearing dissent; but were of the true old persecuted Puritan class 
 a class doomed to conquest or death in the combat. Can we wonder 
 at such a man being highly offended at the Rev. Mr. Howe defend- 
 ing such time-serving dissenters as Sir Humphrey Edwin and Sir 
 Thomas Abney, both lord mayors, and both using the sacrament of 
 the Lord's Supper as a qualification for office? to whom he refers 
 when he writes " J Tis vain to trifle in this matter. The light, 
 foolish handling of them by fines is their glory and advantage. If 
 the gallows instead of the Compter, and the gallies instead of the 
 fines, were the reward of going to a conventicle, there would not be 
 so many sufferers. The spirit of martyrdom is over. They that 
 will go to church to be chosen sheriff's and mayors, would go to forty 
 churches rather than be hanged. If one severe law was made and 
 
182 LIFE OP DE FOE. 
 
 punctually executed, that whoever was found at a conventicle should 
 be banished the nation, and the preacher be hanged, we should soon 
 see an end of the tale ; they would all come to church ; and one age 
 would make us all one again. To talk of 5s. a month for not coming 
 to the sacrament, and 1$. a week for not coming to church, is such 
 a way of converting people as never was known. This is selling 
 them a liberty to transgress, for so much money. If it be not a 
 crime, why don't we give them full license ? And if it be, no price 
 ought to compound for the committing it; for that is selling a 
 liberty to the people to sin against God and the government. We 
 hang men for trifles, and banish them for things not worth naming; 
 but an offence against God and the church, against the welfare of 
 the world and the dignity of religion, shall be bought off for 5s. 
 This is such a shame to a Christian government, that 'tis with regret 
 I transmit it to posterity." 
 
 De Foe complained, and with justice too, of these time-serving 
 dissenters, who allowed him to fight this battle of civil and religious 
 liberty for such was the contest and receive the enemy's charge 
 single-handed. De Foe's tract has always been held up for a very 
 witty performance ; it might be witty, but I cannot see the wit of 
 it, and I never could see the wit of it ; but I can conceive a man of De 
 Foe's power of discrimination perceiving the exact position of parties 
 in England ; and calculating the effect of a pushing the High- 
 Church principles to their extreme length ; he could at once per- 
 ceive that the Earl of Nottingham's administration must go at 
 once ; and he might also calculate upon rousing the whole dissenting 
 power, and producing a money crisis ; for the dissenters were the 
 moneyed interest of the kingdom at this time. A crisis at this 
 time would have seriously interfered with the French war; and 
 this, with the removal of the Earl of Nottingham from the ministry, 
 would have been objects which De Foe would have gone great 
 lengths to accomplish ; for he heartily disliked both the one and 
 the other. Besides all this, Harley, though a supporter of the 
 Revolution, was neglected by William, and had in consequence 
 commenced business, as a politician independent of royalty, by 
 making friends for himself, by his hospitality and convivial deport- 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 183 
 
 ment amongst the members of the House of Commons. He had 
 done this so effectually as to be chosen Speaker in three successive 
 Parliaments. He was talented, intriguing, proud, disappointed, and 
 ambitious ; and only waited for one single false step of the haughty, 
 priest-ridden, mistrusted Earl of Nottingham, to take his place. 
 De Foe's tract just named was to effect this; and place Harley 
 as secretary of state in the place of him. De Foe was acting 
 with and for Harley, and probably was paid by Harley for writing 
 this tract ; for Harley supplied him with money when in confine- 
 ment in Newgate for this prosecution ; and it has been affirmed on 
 good authority, that the Queen sent money to De Foe's wife and 
 family at the instigation of Harley. Harley was not in the ministry, 
 but yet he had actually more of the personal confidence of the Queen, 
 through back-stairs intriguing, than her own ministers possessed. 
 What was the point to be attained by the Queen through Harley's 
 assistance, I cannot affirm ; but probably it had something to do 
 with serving the interest of the family at St. Germains, at the 
 expense of the interests of the house of Hanover. Queen Anne's 
 position, through the greater part of her reign, was a very anomalous 
 one; she was in the hands of High-Church Tories, her friends and 
 the friends of the Stuarts ; she waged war with France against the 
 Pretender and these friends, forced into it by the Whigs ; and yet 
 she was intriguing with Harley, St. John, and others, for the Pre- 
 tender ; High-Church bigots were her ministers and her House of 
 Commons; while William Cavendish, the first Duke of Devonshire, 
 the handsomest man in the kingdom, and most liberal man too, in tho- 
 rough Protestant principles of the Revolution class, was lord steward 
 of the household ; and his son, William Cavendish, Marquis of Har- 
 tington, a bold, unflinching assertor of the liberty of the people in the 
 House of Commons, was captain of the Yeomen of the Guard. The 
 Duke of Marlborough too, one of the greatest men of his day as a 
 clear-headed statesman, was captain -general; and his duchess was lady 
 of the bedchamber to the Queen when she was Princess of Denmark, 
 for some years ; and on the Queen's accession to the throne, was 
 created groom of the stole, and keeper of the privy purse. Now, 
 I believe that to the Duchess of Marlborough a national debt of 
 
184 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 gratitude is due for the manner in which she exercised her influence 
 over Queen Anne during the greater portion of her reign ; and when 
 she ceased to have that influence, it was when Harley perceived the 
 church was falling, and the Duchess of Marlborough could not per- 
 ceive it. She paid the penalty of her blindness for the church was 
 in danger and retired from court, to make way for Mrs. Masham, 
 the creature and relative of Harley and St. John, and perhaps the 
 Pretender. The High-Church Tories removed all liberals from the 
 Queen as well, or as fast, as they could ; yet there was some power 
 behind the throne which saved the Queen from speedy destruction, 
 by keeping some of the first men in Europe about her person, either 
 as ministers or friends ; and that power, with reverence I write it, 
 was Sarah Duchess of Marlborough one of the greatest stateswomen 
 that England has ever known. She saved Queen Anne by her advice ; 
 and is, therefore, entitled to our gratitude. I believe history has 
 wronged this woman, and robbed her of our gratitude. She was a 
 great woman, and saved England from revolution in the reign of 
 Anne; a weak, bigoted woman, who had but one idea ; and that was 
 that the church was falling. 
 
 And this Sarah Duchess of Marlborough was an adviser and con- 
 stant companion of the Queen for years ; and with her the Earl of 
 Sunderland, her son-in-law, a man of sense ; and Charles Duke of 
 Somerset, who was master of the horse, and was of the same choice 
 class of clear-headed statesmen. This was a band of men collected 
 about the throne by William III., and left as a legacy of advisers 
 to his successor. The Tory rabbledom of the House of Commons 
 displaced as many of William's statesmen as they could ; but these, 
 by some power or other (that referred to above), maintained their 
 places about the Queen, and perhaps were the means of keeping her 
 on the throne ; for if she had succeeded her father, James II., with- 
 out the intervention of William and these picked men ; and had 
 William's judgment in the choice selection of bishops in the House 
 of Lords been wanting; the Queen would have been left at the mercy 
 of High-Church and French-interested advisers, with Jack Howe, 
 and others of his stamp, to carry on the government in the House 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 185 
 
 of Commons ; when there would have been a third Stuart revolution, 
 by the Queen running away in disgrace, and placing herself under 
 the protection of France; as another Stuart pensioner of that throne. 
 This I have affirmed before : I repeat it here. 
 
 We will now return to Newgate, where De Foe was confined, on 
 Nov. 27, 1703; when there arose the greatest storm of wind ever 
 known in England, on which he wrote a poem, from which I will 
 give an extract or two : 
 
 Think it not strange, I heard it here ; 
 
 No place is so remote but when he speaks they hear. 
 
 Besides, though I am dead to fame, 
 
 I never told you where I am. 
 
 Though I have lost poetic breath, 
 
 I 'm not in perfect state of death ; 
 
 From whence this Popish consequence I draw, 
 
 I 'm in the limbus of the law. 
 
 Let me be where I will, I heard the storm, 
 
 From every blast it echoed thus EEFORM ! 
 
 Rise, Satire, from thy sleep of legal death, 
 
 And reassume satyric breath ; 
 
 What though to seven years' sleep thou art confin'd, 
 
 Thou well may'st wake with such a wind. 
 
 They say this was a High-Church storm, 
 
 Sent out the nation to reform ; 
 
 But th' emblem left the moral in the lurch, 
 
 For 't blew the steeple down upon the church ; 
 
 From whence we now inform the people, 
 
 The danger of the church is from the steeple ; 
 
 And we 've had many a bitter stroke 
 
 From pinnacle and weathercock. 
 
 From whence the learned do relate, 
 
 That to secure the church and state, 
 
 The time will come when all the town, 
 
 To save the church, will pull the steeple down. 
 
186 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 This church-in-danger prosecution and pillory exhibition, with 
 Newgate confinement for several months, made sad havoc with poor 
 De Foe's mercantile pursuits ; especially the pantile business at Til- 
 bury Fort. Pantiles, to be good, should be composed of flint, and 
 clay or alumen ; but for the warp of the Thames, from London street 
 deposits of vegetable and animal matter, to be expected to stand the 
 fire, is absurd. De Foe failed, and he blamed the government pro- 
 secution for breaking him. 
 
 De Foe has stated that he lost 3500 by this confinement, and 
 had to give up his coach too, and dismiss his servants, and go into 
 a smaller house. I am sure Tilbury Fort clay would not stand the 
 fire equal to the pantiles which the Dutch could import for the 
 London market. The speculation was an absurd one, and it failed, 
 as all De Foe's projects failed, through his own imprudence, extra- 
 vagance, and folly. I believe him to have been a thoughtless, vain 
 man, who did not confine his wants to his circumstances but 
 started in life, as thousands do, according to his ideas of respect- 
 ability ; and not according to the amount of his income. 
 
 About the time of De Foe's imprisonment (July 11, 1703), a 
 curious incident occurred in connection with William Colepeper, 
 Esq., a Kentish gentleman, well known as one of the five renowned 
 Kentish petitioners of the last reign, and legal adviser of Daniel 
 De Foe, when tried for writing his celebrated tract, the Shortest 
 Way with the Dissenters. It was on this man's advice that De Foe 
 pleaded guilty to the indictment, under a promise of pardon from 
 the Earl of Nottingham, the secretary of state ; which promise was 
 broken by the said earl ; and De Foe was condemned, in fact, to be 
 confined in prison during the Queen's pleasure ; which might have 
 been for life, had the Finch family been at the head of state affairs, 
 and longer lived than their prisoner. 
 
 Her Majesty being at Windsor at this time, Mr. Colepeper repaired 
 thither to present his petition to the Privy Council, then assembled, 
 on account of that extraordinary genius, beyond which " the world 
 has not in any age produced a man beyond Mr. De Foe, for his 
 miraculous fancy and lively invention in all his writings, both in 
 
LIFE OF T)E FOE. 187 
 
 verse and prose ;" and it was added by Mr. Colepeper as a reason or 
 justification for his interest taken in the liberation of the prisoner, 
 then confined in Newgate during the Queen's pleasure, "and to 
 justify his value for Mr. De Foe, that in an age when the heavenly 
 muses have become syrens, and turned low panders to the senses, 
 Mr. De Foe has given vice a stab, and writ up to the test of moral 
 virtue." 
 
 " For these reasons, William Colepeper freely engaged, on Mr. 
 De Foe's behalf, in an undertaking which, as the case stood, he 
 thought was equally just and charitable." 
 
 Be it understood, that this William Colepeper had stood a contest 
 for the county of Kent at the general election of 1702, and polled 
 upon that occasion thirty gentlemen out of thirty-five, in his own 
 division of the county ; and polled also 1625 freeholders, of whom 
 1200 were single votes, or what we now term " plumpers"; a number 
 never yet brought into the field, in that county, by one single gen- 
 tleman against two united ; and these supporters were, for the most 
 part, signers and abettors of the celebrated Kentish Petition of a 
 former period. Well, Mr. Colepeper lost his election, through the 
 canvassing against him of Sir George Rooke, Knight, lord high 
 admiral of England, and his dependants : a class of men convenient 
 for a coward military or naval to keep about him, by preferments 
 and promises, for the protection of the imbecile person of a British 
 sailor; who is too impotent or debased to protect himself; and also 
 by the " unfair usages put upon him by the sheriff of the county, 
 with relation to a hasty closing of the book, when all the candidates 
 agreed only to adjourn to the next day, William Colepeper having 
 then several hundreds of freeholders to come in." 
 
 While Mr. Colepeper was waiting in the ante-room of the council- 
 chamber, an express arrived from the navy, which caused some 
 attention to the subject among the waiters there ; when Mr. Cole- 
 peper asked Colonel Seymour, standing or sitting near to him, 
 whether the admiral was with the fleet (England being then at war 
 with France and Spain) , or at Bath ? and Colonel Seymour replied, 
 " He is at Bath, and has been there some time." " Is he not well?" 
 
188 LIFE OP DE FOE. 
 
 inquired William Colepeper." No/' replied the colonel; "if he 
 were, he would not be there ; he would be at the fleet." " How do 
 the waters agree with him ?" inquired William Colepeper. 
 
 This conversation was repeated to the admiral and his dependants, 
 waiters on Providence, skilled fencers ; captains and colonels about 
 town, better known somewhere perhaps the hazard- table than 
 on the battle-field, or by the number of the regiment; for they 
 were, one and all, the paid, promoted, cherished, hired bullies, or 
 street assassins, to the number of twenty-two ; emphatically (so far 
 as her Majesty's service went) unattached; but kept in the pay of 
 Admiral Sir George Rooke, to fight his battles, and protect his re- 
 putation by murder and assassination, as occasion might call forth, 
 either in the streets of London by night or by day ; or in the county 
 of Kent ; to which Sir George Rooke and these hired assassins, for 
 the most part, belonged. This conversation on Bath waters was 
 repeated to the disadvantage of William Colepeper, as though he had 
 laid particular emphasis on Bath waters ; perhaps with some mental 
 comparison with the waters of the Bay of Biscay, or Cadiz ; or as 
 we might in our day, 1858, understand by Baltic waters or Black- 
 Sea waters. Yes ! the lord high admiral of England taking the 
 waters of Bath, while his fleet were taking the waters of the Bay of 
 Balaclava or Cronstadt ! 
 
 Things took such a turn, that William Colepeper, to save his life 
 from assassination by the paid bullies of the lord high admiral of 
 England, was compelled to bring to trial, before Lord Chief Justice 
 Holt, for conspiracy, Mr. Nathaniel Denew, Mr. Robert Britton, 
 and Mr. John Merriam, all men from Kent ; and men skilled in 
 fencing and fighting other people's battles with the sword, either in 
 town or country, at a moment's notice. 
 
 The following is the record read at the trial : 
 
 " Mid.'ss. The jurors for our Sovereign Lady the Queen present, 
 that Nathaniel Denew, late of the parish of St. Clement's Dane, in 
 the county aforesaid, gent. ; John Merriam, late of that parish, m 
 the said county, gent. ; and Richard Britton, late of the same 
 parish, in the same county, gent., being fighters, swordsmen, and 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 189 
 
 disturbers of the peace, and skilled and verst in fighting duels ; on 
 the 2 1st day of August, in the second year of the reign of our 
 Sovereign Lady Anne, by the grace of God, of England, Scotland, 
 France, and Ireland, Queen, Defender of the Faith, &c., did in the 
 parish of Clement's Dane, in the said county of Middlesex, unlaw- 
 fully, clandestinely, devilishly, wickedly, and maliciously, under 
 pretence of discord, strife, and contention, between Sir George 
 Rooke, Knt., one of her Majesty's honourable Privy Council, and 
 William Colepeper, Esq., then and before mov'd, had, and being, 
 consult, machinate, propose, and intend, and did among themselves, 
 and others to the jurors unknown, confederate and conspire, and 
 each of them did machinate, propose, and intend to beat, wound, and 
 evilly treat the said William Colepeper ; and him, the said William 
 Colepeper, either by duel or assassination, feloniously and mali- 
 ciously to kill and murder ; and that afterwards, that is to say, on 
 the 21st of August, in the year aforesaid, about the hour of ten in 
 the afternoon of the same day, in the parish and county aforesaid ; 
 the said William Colepeper being in the peace of God and the 
 Queen ; came the said Nathaniel Denew with force and arms, and 
 lying in wait of his malice forethought and assault premeditated, 
 then and there offered himself to fight a mortal duel, in behalf (as he 
 said) of the said Sir George Eooke against the said William Cole- 
 peper ; and with threatening, spightful, and opprobrious words, then 
 and there daringly, wickedly, maliciously, and vehemently urged, 
 provoked, and stirred up the said William Colepeper to fight with 
 him the said mortal duel ; and that afterwards, that is to say, on the 
 22nd day of the said month of August, in the time aforesaid, about 
 nine o'clock in the morning, in the parish aforesaid, the said William 
 Colepeper being in the peace of God and the Queen, then came the 
 said Richard Britton with force of arms, malice forethought, and 
 assault premeditated, and then and there offered himself to fight a 
 mortal duel (as he said) on behalf of the said Sir George Rooke ; and 
 with threatening words, daringly, wickedly, maliciously, and vehe- 
 mently urged, provoked, and stirred up the said William Colepeper 
 to fight with him the said mortal duel ; and that the said Nathaniel 
 Denew and John Merriam, on the same 22nd of August, in the year 
 
190 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 
 and in the parish aforesaid, with force and arras, with malice fore- 
 thought, by lying in wait, and premeditated murder, assaulted him, 
 the said William Colepeper; and with drawn swords, sharply, cruelly, 
 and with all their strength, tried, and long contended, to wound, kill, 
 and murder him ; and unless the said William had strenuously and 
 with courage defended himself, and had been seasonably rescued by 
 several of her Majesty's subjects, at that time interposing between 
 them, they, the said Nathaniel Denew and John Merriam, had then 
 and there feloniously, voluntarily, and maliciously killed and mur- 
 dered him ; and that the said Nathaniel Denew, John Merriam, and 
 Robert Britton, committed other enormities to the said William 
 Colepeper, to the grievous damage of the said William Colepeper, 
 the danger of bloodshed and murder, to the great scandal and in- 
 famy of the said Sir George Rooke, being one of her Majesty's most 
 honourable Privy Council aforesaid ; in contempt of the Queen and 
 her laws, to the evil example of all others in the like case offending, 
 and against the peace of the said Queen, her crown, and dignity." 
 
 I am sorry I cannot give the whole trial, showing Sir George 
 Rooke, lord high admiral of the British fleet, to have been a coward, 
 and the hirer of assassins, even to the number of twenty, to fight his 
 battles and support his Bath-water-drinking reputation. 
 
 I will give an extract or two, as showing the pleasures of an acci- 
 dental stroll in London streets in 1 703 : 
 
 " Mr. Colepeper examined. The same Sunday morning, about 
 two or three hours after I had been with Sir George Rooke : I had 
 my eyes about me, as I thought it concerned me to have, and I often 
 turned about to see who was coming ; I saw Mr. Denew running 
 after me; seeing him run, I thought it not worthy of a man to 
 run from him. I stood; he comes up to me : says he, ' Well over- 
 taken;' said I to him again, 'Your business, sir?' Says he, 'I 
 come to demand satisfaction of you;' said I, ' I have been with Sir 
 George Rooke, and I have satisfied him.' ' Well, but' says he, ' you 
 have not satisfied me ; and you are a scoundrel and a rascal ; and, if 
 you will not draw, I '11 cane you.' I thought not fit to return his ill 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 191 
 
 language again ; and in the next place, I would give no colour to the 
 quarrel, being upon their own accounts. Said I, ' I see you are two 
 to one/ because Mr. Merriam was there. 'No/ said Mr. Denew, 
 ' you are three to two/ for I had this Mr. Cumin and Mr. Bentley, 
 my friends, with me. ' No/ said I, ' I will engage no man in my 
 quarrel, but I will go with you myself;' so I went with him, and 
 as we were going, said I, ' Mr. Denew, what quarrel have you with 
 me?' Says he, ' You spread out your hands thus, and raised your 
 voice/ Said I, f Mr. Britton hath been with me, and told me thy 
 own consultation ; but Sir George Rooke will not thank you for this, 
 for I have been with him/ Says he, ' I know Sir George Rooke' s 
 mind/ Said I, ' I have been with him this morning have you seen 
 him since V ' I know his mind better than you/ said he, ' and you 
 must fight with me/ So I went along with him. When I came to 
 the corner of Little Drury Lane, I observed him to have a very great 
 cane in his hand ; said I, 'You have a great cane, which is an advan- 
 tage, if you have skill to use it; you must lay down your cane/ 
 Instead of laying it down, he up with it as fast as he could to strike 
 me ; with that, I stepped back, and drew my sword, and he did the 
 same; but he fumbled, having his cane in his hand, so that I believe 
 my sword was out rather sooner than his. I walked back about 
 the length of this court, and there I stood ; Mr. Denew came to 
 me : though I know something of fencing, I had heard so much of 
 Mr. Denew's skill, that I was not willing to venture my skill against 
 his ; I held my sword close to my body, with the point up, and 
 thrust without parrying, and drew it back again to myself. This 
 was the way of my defence; and we had, in this manner, about 
 seven or eight passes at each other ; at last, seeing the advantage 
 he had of me with his cane, I threw first my hat at him, which 
 missed him; afterwards I threw my peruke, which hit upon his 
 shoulder ; I took that opportunity, and made a home pass at him. 
 Says Mr. Denew, ' That is not fair/ and dropt his sword ; ' that is 
 not fair/ said he. ' Fair/ said I, ' anything to an assassin : you are 
 a villain, hired by Sir George Rooke to assassinate me/ This, my 
 lord, was what I said." 
 
 Again. " Counsel for the Queen. What is this Denew ? 
 
192 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 " Mr. Colepeper. I don't know that he is a gentleman ; I believe 
 he is not. He has, by report, no very good fortune, and is said to 
 have fought in other people's quarrels pretty frequently. 
 
 "Counsel for the Queen. Is he a soldier, or a fencing-master, or 
 a gentleman ? What is he ? 
 
 " Mr. Colepeper. He is one that hath great skill in fencing, and 
 I thought him called out for that reason." 
 
 Again. " Counsel for the Defendants. I think you say you had 
 a challenge from Sir George Rooke ; was it in writing, or by word of 
 mouth ? 
 
 " Mr. Colepeper. By word of mouth ; by Mr. Denew. 
 
 " Counsel for the Defendants. You say Mr. Denew overtook you 
 by St. Clement's ; do you apprehend that they came thither to meet 
 with you? 
 
 " Mr. Colepeper. I apprehended it wherever I went. I looked 
 to be attacked in the street ; and so I told Mr. Bentley, and desired 
 him to be with me, and take notice I was upon the defensive, for 
 there will be swords drawn. 
 
 "Counsel for the Defendants. You say you lodged inCecill Street; 
 how could you think to meet them there ? Did you think they would 
 lye in wait? 
 
 "Mr. Colepeper. Yes ; and that they were waiting for me every- 
 where : when I arose in the morning, and looked from my lodgings, 
 I saw some persons stand at the end of Cecill Street, and bobb and 
 run ; these I apprehended were setters." 
 
 The Earl of Winchilsea, lord lieutenant of the county of Kent, 
 came forward to speak for the prisoners, and seemed to fall in with 
 old acquaintances; he considered Mr. Britton to be esteemed a 
 gentleman of such esteem and worth in town and country, that he 
 need say few words upon him. He was an old intimate acquaint- 
 ance ; and Mr. Denew, too, was no fencing-master, no dueller, and 
 no master of fence ; he was well known to him ; he held commis- 
 sions both from Prince George of Denmark and also from the 
 Queen; for he had two under the Prince. He was quite an 
 honourable man ; and of course well known in high quarters. 
 
 The Earl of Winchilsea is quite at home with all these men : 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 193 
 
 he iiot only knows them, but esteems them, as fellow-placeholders 
 under Queen Anne's government ; for one of these street bullies 
 one of these assassins held two places under Prince George of Den- 
 mark, and one under the Queen ! ! These men were government 
 officials at the command of the Privy Council at this hour for the 
 secretary of state ; and at that, for the lord high admiral. At the 
 command, I say, of the government, on that shortest possible notice 
 required for calling a hackney-coach, by day or by night, in town 
 or in country, and squeezing into that coach three, two, or four 
 armed men, to murder, fight, lie, quirk, or assassinate all opponents, 
 as orders from high quarters might require. 
 
 " The Earl of Thanet sworn, He had known Mr. Britton for 
 the last twenty years, and his business-like habits recommended 
 him to the station he now is in, to serve the Queen ; he has been 
 employed, or had a place, at Dover for twenty or thirty years ; and 
 this before he was made one of the commissioners of the custom- 
 house. 
 
 " Lord Winchilsea. As for Mr. Merriam, hearing his name, I 
 should have said something of him. He is now actually employed 
 under Prince George of Denmark, the Prince Consort, and me." 
 Me ! Deputy warden of the cinque ports. 
 
 These very men these hired street bullies or assassins though 
 convicted, and others indicted, in the county of Kent, for being 
 engaged in the villanous machinations and attempts upon the life of 
 William Colepeper, were at once, and immediately after the trial, 
 advanced to places of honour and profit, by the administration of 
 the Earl of Nottingham. 
 
 The above was stated on an appeal to all the judges, by William 
 Colepeper, at the bar, defending his own case, dressed in wig and 
 gown, as an English barrister, when the Lord Chief Justice inter- 
 rupted him, supposing him to reflect upon the government. 
 
 " William Colepeper hoped their lordships and the rest of the 
 Queen's judges would inform her Majesty of her admiral, and that 
 he would be made a severe example of her justice ; and added, ' My 
 lord, I desire your lordship and all the court to take notice of what 
 I now say : Sir George Rooke is the first admiral of England that 
 
 13 
 
194 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 ever sent a gentleman a challenge, and after it was accepted, em- 
 ployed others to fight for him.' " 
 
 Here my Lord Chief Justice and the other judges interrupted 
 Mr. Colepeper, on the same grounds as before. 
 
 " My lord," said William Colepeper, going on, " I am the most 
 injured gentleman of my country ; the matter of my discourse is 
 true ; perhaps the manner may be more excusable than justifiable. 
 Mr. Denew, from a captain, is made a lieutenant-colonel ; and Mr. 
 Knatchbull (one of the indicted of Kent) has a place of 800 per 
 annum : both since their crimes/' 
 
 "Nathaniel Denew fined 200 marks; Richard Britton 100." 
 
 Soon after this occurrence, the Earl of Nottingham was removed 
 from the ministry ; but yet certain officers of the navy were known 
 to be hovering about William Colepeper, to shed his blood, if 
 possible, in some accidental quarrel, in order to obtain a ship, as 
 the reward of the murder, from Sir George Rooke, the lord high 
 admiral of the British fleet a coward himself, and the patron and 
 promoter of common street bullies, assassins, and murderers. 
 
 These men, Denew, Britton, Merriam, and Knatchbull, and others, 
 to the number of twenty or more, could be easily traced to their 
 connection with the Earl of Nottingham, the secretary of state of 
 Queen Anne ; to show how things were managed by ministers of 
 state in the last reign of the illustrious family of the house of 
 Stuart. 
 
 Now, poor De Foe, when he was out of Newgate, was always 
 threatened with personal violence by letter, and even by being way- 
 laid in the streets by hired bullies or assassins. Could we suppose 
 these especial messengers of the Privy Council to be employed in 
 his case, or would he be handed over, with a list of others, to some 
 rougher class of hired runners of the Home Office ? 
 
 This is fresh ground, and worth ploughing up ; and would afford, 
 no doubt, a good return on the labour bestowed. 
 
 Now, suppose we had a Lord Nottinghan now in office, what 
 could he do to support Rath-water -drinking admirals, if we had any; 
 since fencing at the bottom of Drury Lane, or near St. Clement's 
 Church, on a Sunday morning, is out of fashion, and the coach-load 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 195 
 
 of hired villains, cut-throats, fencers, or assassins, sent, with the 
 fashion of street- fighting for hire, to Spain or Italy? What is a 
 minister to do ? can he hire a buffoon to laugh down the man that 
 civilization, in its fashions, forbids to strike down? Is there not 
 the assassin of the pen ? Cannot an obnoxious prater be written 
 down ? Is there no writing for hire ? Cannot the seat of corrup- 
 tion and of fraud in legislation be protected in its injustice by 
 the coach-load of hired villains and assassins of cheap reading and 
 buffoonery ? And cannot the battle-field of Little Drury Lane be 
 transferred to the self-complacent readings or actings of verbose 
 emptiness and foppery of the Lyceum and the Mechanics' Insti- 
 tute ? Light reading and light actings and light buffooners, fudges, 
 and emptinesses, are the rapiers of our modern street bullies, our 
 assassins of state, paid for throwing dust into the eyes of a people 
 who seem to be born in the sunshine of fun and frolic, for the 
 purpose of disguising the pressure of the yoke which oppresses the 
 national body. In this nineteenth century of ours, we have had 
 our Nottinghams, ah ! and the Little Drury Lane rapier encounters 
 too ! We have the rapier of the pen, cheap literature, and cheap 
 acting, to support legislative fraud ! That man that scoundrel, if 
 you like says that pluralities in the Church of England are a fraud 
 a passing-off of a bad shilling for a good one ; and he adds, too, 
 that the minister of state who has dared to do it, is a dishonest, 
 a fraudulent man ; and he for one, let consequences be what they 
 may, will cry, Stop thief ! What says Nottingham to this? Does 
 he invite Mr. Merry man to go and dine with him, to concoct a 
 theatrical tour of Punch-and- Judy exhibition through the provinces 
 a mountebank display of slack- wire tumbling, conjuring, and 
 antics, on the same plea of folly, fraud, and cunning, as James's 
 Book of Sunday Sports, really to keep people from thinking, but 
 under the pretence of encouraging matrimony ? Could a minister of 
 state in the nineteenth century procure a buffoon to write and act 
 a book, to hide his own dishonesty ? 
 
 This is a plain question ; but if it can be answered in the affirma- 
 tive, the days of Admiral Rooke protected by the assassins of 
 Nottingham, Queen Anne's secretary of state, in shedding the blood 
 
 13* 
 
196 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 of William Colepeper, for presenting a petition to the House oi 
 Commons, in the reign of William III., on the state of the coast oi 
 Kent ; it being left, purposely left, by a French-bought House oi 
 Commons, in a totally unprotected state ; for the encouragement 
 of a French invasion under Louis XIV., on behalf of the exiled 
 monarch, James II., a Roman Catholic, degraded tool, and paupei 
 or pensioner of the court of France have not passed away. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 IT may be restated here, that there are seven years of De Foe's life 
 unaccounted for : from the time when he left Mr. Morton's academy, 
 to his appearing as a hosier in Cornhill ; and during those years he 
 must have been employed somewhere, probably as an apprentice to 
 the hosiery business ; for no man could take up the trade of hosier 
 without learning it. De Foe was a writer and wit, but not a man 
 of fixed counting-house book-keeping habits ; and this he acknow- 
 ledges to have been his case ; for, when speaking of his failure in 
 the hosiery business, he says : 
 
 " Wit, like mercury and quicksilver, is of use to make silver run, 
 and separate the sterling from the dross ; but bring it to the crucible 
 by itself, and it flies up in the air like a true spirit, and is lost at 
 once. A wit turned tradesman, no apron-strings will hold him ; 
 'tis in vain to lock him in behind the counter ; he 's gone in a mo- 
 ment. Instead of journal and ledger, he runs away to Virgil and 
 Horace ; his journal entries are all Pindaricks, and his ledger is all 
 heroicks. He is truly dramatic from one end to the other, through 
 the whole scene of his trade ; and as the first part is all comedy, so 
 the two last acts are always made up with tragedy : a statute of 
 bankruptcy is his exeunt omnes ; and he generally speaks the epi- 
 logue in the Fleet or the Mint." 
 
 We have seen before, at the chapel prayer, that he was in trouble 
 in 1689 ; and in 1692, he had to run away from his creditors when 
 his hosiery trade gave way; and now, in 1703, Lord Nottingham's 
 prosecution closed the tileyard, caused his coach to be laid down, 
 and made him change his residence, and go into a small house. 
 There is no doubt but his whole life was a scene of dash and diffi- 
 culty, bankruptcy and improvidence ; he had great wit, and industry 
 in cultivating that wit ; but he was wanting in common prudence 
 
198 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 and stability. Of these latter qualities, indeed, it is to feared lie 
 had none. Now, this want of stability would drag him down to 
 dependency ; and the dependency would cause him to sell his talent 
 for a morsel of bread or a mess of pottage, and stamp him, in the 
 estimation of a hard-hearted world, as a scoundrel a man destitute 
 of all worth or principle a mere hack scribe, who would write or 
 do anything for anybody for a shilling. 
 
 Such comes of worshipping Britain's god Respectability. Re- 
 spectable ! what does it not represent, and what does it not ac- 
 complish? How many thousands and millions has not this deity 
 hurled to destruction ? Has it not produced more devastation than 
 either war, famine, or pestilence ? 1 believe it has. This false-god 
 worship ruined De Foe, as it has ruined tens of thousands besides. 
 Respectability what is it ? Pride. This was De Foe's ruin ; but, 
 poor fellow ! with all his innate follies, his improvidences, he was a 
 great man and a good man ; and he did more by his pen for the 
 benefit of mankind than almost any English author that ever lived; 
 for his Complete Tradesman alone is, perhaps, one of the best books 
 ever printed : a work which did much to form the character of the 
 great American, Benjamin Franklin ; and was the very work which 
 Franklin might have been supposed to have written for it is cha- 
 racteristic of Franklin throughout it is Franklin all over. This 
 work alone ought to have handed down the name of Daniel De Foe 
 with reverence, to the latest posterity of all true Englishmen. De 
 Foe was a benefactor of mankind ; yet Pope, in his Dunciad } could 
 speak of him as 
 
 Earless on high stood unabashed De Foe, 
 And Tutchin, flagrant from the scourge, below : 
 
 alluding to poor Tutchin being flogged down Dorchester streets for 
 his participation in the Monmouth invasion. Swift, also, classes 
 De Foe and Tutchin together, and speaks of the former as the fellow 
 whose name he had forgotten, but he who had had his ears cut 
 off, and had stood in the pillory an audacious fellow ! Swift and 
 Pope ! If nothing but what came through such hands could reach 
 posterity, what would history be ? Swift and Pope, the traducers 
 of Daniel De Foe, is the real record of history. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 199 
 
 Poor De Foe ! he might be improvident, and he certainly was 
 unfortunate ; yes ! he might die in his country's debt 5000 or 
 7000 ; but yet his one work of Robinson Crusoe alone might per- 
 haps go far to cancel this deficiency. If all the votes could be taken 
 from his time to ours, a period of one hundred and forty years, 
 how many a tiny hand would offer from its hoarded halfpence the 
 willing offering from a full, a grateful heart, to relieve the author 
 of Robinson Crusoe from the imputation of his dying a debtor to 
 his country ! When De Foe was in Newgate, and his wife and 
 children destitute, he yet could offer sympathy to the poor wrecked, 
 plundered mariner on the Goodwin Sands, and denounce the ven- 
 geance of Heaven on the town of Deal ; the great harbour of plun- 
 derers on the southern coast. 
 
 Those sons of plunder are below my pen, 
 
 Because they are below the names of men ; 
 
 Who from the shores presenting to their eyes 
 
 The fatal Goodwin, where the wreck of navies lies ; 
 
 A thousand dying sailors talking to the skies. 
 
 From the sad shores they saw the wretches walk, 
 
 By signals of distress they talk ; 
 
 There with one tide of life they 're vext, 
 
 For all were sure to die the next. 
 
 The barbarous shores with men and boats abound, 
 
 The men more barbarous than the shores are found ; 
 
 Off to the shattered ships they go, 
 
 And for the floating purchase row. 
 
 They spare no hazard nor no pain ; 
 
 But 'tis to save the goods and not the men. 
 
 Within the sinking suppliants' reach appear, 
 
 As if they 'd mock their dying fear. 
 
 Then for some trifle all their hopes supplant ; 
 
 Which cruelty would make a Turk relent. 
 
 If I had any satire left to write, 
 
 Could I with suited spleen indite, 
 
 My verse should blast that fatal town ; 
 
 No footsteps of it should appear ; 
 
 And ships no more cast anchor there. 
 
200 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 The barbarous, hated name of Deal should die ; 
 Or be a term of infamy ; 
 And 'till that 's done, the town will stand, 
 A just reproach to all the land. 
 
 In 1704, the bigoted High-Church Tories, Lord Nottingham, 
 the Queen's secretary of state, with his party in power, carried 
 affairs to so dangerous a pass with their persecution-of-the-dissenters 
 spirit, that the Earl of Nottingham and his friends in the minis- 
 try were obliged to resign, to free the throne from the threatening 
 storm produced by the preaching of Sacheverell and others of the fire- 
 and-faggot class ; and by such writers as Leslie, Dunton, Oldmixon, 
 Davenant, Ned Ward, Tom Browne, Burnet, Tutchin, De Foe, and 
 others. The pretence of the Earl of Nottingham's resignation was 
 the royal preference shown to the Whigs ; but the real cause was 
 the impression made on her Majesty's mind by the Whigs, that 
 her throne was in danger from such advisers as the Earl of Not- 
 tingham ; and this impression was given to the royal mind by Sarah 
 Duchess of Maryborough, the Queen's groom of the stole and mis- 
 tress of the robes, who was not yet displaced by Mrs. Masham, 
 Harley's relation. The Earl of Godolphin and the Duke of Marl- 
 borough, two men of stable views and common sense, with others, 
 not in place but near the throne, were the real guides or leaders, 
 regulators or drivers, of the royal mind ; which was, as I have said 
 before, a very weak one ; and these two men, with their supporters, 
 saved this tottering reign, again and again, from anarchy and con- 
 fusion ; for if these men, and such as these, had been removed from 
 the royal counsels, and all left to the Earl of Nottingham, Jack 
 Howe and others in the Commons, with Sacheverell for Archbishop 
 of Canterbury, the poor Queen would have wanted a kingdom in 
 less than a month. Everything must be done to conciliate the dis- 
 senters, whom Sacheverell from the pulpit, and De Foe from the 
 press, were at once giving up in a body to hanging and transporta- 
 tion : De Foe very properly arguing, that if Mr. Howe's church 
 members would so far play at bo-peep with God Almighty, as to go 
 to the steeple-house to receive the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 201 
 
 in order to be sheriffs or lord mayors, these members would receive 
 forty sacraments under the same circumstances, to save themselves 
 from being hanged. The Duchess of Marlborough in her Vindica- 
 tion, in alluding to the present time and circumstances, writes, " As 
 the trade and money of the nation were chiefly in the hands of those 
 who espoused the cause in which the ministry (the Whig part of 
 it) were then engaged, it is no wonder that my Lord Godolphin 
 began to pay them as much regard as the times and the Queen's 
 prejudices would permit him to do." All was in danger now, from 
 the throne downwards ; and something must be done to conciliate 
 the dissenters, the real supporters, as paymasters, of the war then 
 carrying on in Europe ; and the first step towards this calming of 
 the elements of discord, was the removal of the Earl of Nottingham 
 from the ministry, and the placing Harley in his place ; and as De 
 Foe, the real uncompromising, though disowned, champion of the 
 true dissenting principle, was then a prisoner in Newgate, for writing 
 what Sacheverell preached ; and writing, too, with equal force and, 
 if you like, coarseness, with the preacher ; something must be done 
 to conciliate the man whom neither pillory nor felon's cell in New- 
 gate could tame ; for Newgate confinement to him was but a her- 
 mitage a quiet retreat for him to write in ; and the diet, too, would 
 keep his head cool and clear, and tend more to sharpen the wit than 
 mortify the person. The pen of De Foe never was so fertile as at 
 this time ; for he wrote more church- defiance sedition during his 
 year of confinement in Newgate, than in any other twelve months 
 of his chequered life. 
 
 Amongst other things he wrote the Shortest Way to Peace and 
 Union. He also collected his works into one volume ; and this he 
 did in self-defence against the low printers of the day, who were 
 constantly printing his books in his name, in all forms of paper and 
 binding, and with mistakes of all kinds, to his great annoyance. He 
 at this time also wrote another satire, entitled King William's 
 Affection to the Church of England Examined; and besides this, 
 another pamphlet, More Short Ways with the Dissenters, in answer 
 to a pamphlet by the Rev. Mr, Owen, entitled Moderation a Virtue, 
 &c., apologizing for occasional conformity. De Foe replied in another 
 
202 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 pamphlet, entitled the Sincerity of the Dissenters vindicated from 
 the Scandal of Occasional Conformity, &c. On this subject volumes 
 were written at this time, advocating and repudiating the practice ; 
 but De Foe stood alone on this principle, " that to receive the sacra- 
 ment of the Lord's Supper at the table of the Church of England 
 merely as a qualification for civic honours in the city of London, was 
 a scandalous practice, and a playing at bo-peep with God Almighty." 
 This was the ground De Foe stood upon for years, to the great annoy- 
 ance of the leading, ambitious, wealthy, time-serving Presbyterians 
 of his day. Through this long intricate labyrinth of attempting to 
 serve God and mammon by the leading Presbyterians, for civic 
 honours the playing at long-spoon and custard on Lord Mayor's 
 day De Foe appeared to be the only man to stand by a fixed im- 
 movable principle on the subject ; and this he did, although deserted 
 by the whole body of the time-serving gentility-hunting Presbyte- 
 rians of his day ; and he, too, lying in Newgate at the Queen's plea- 
 sure, through the bigoted prosecution of her minister, the narrow- 
 minded, church-ridden Earl of Nottingham. 
 
 It would be utterly impossible to do justice to half the pamphlets 
 published at this time on the subject of occasional conformity, by 
 friend or foe ; the notorious Sacheverell being the most violent and 
 unscrupulous, though anonymous, writer in favour of the church and 
 against the dissenters; and with him was the nonjuror, Charles 
 Leslie, the author of the Rehearsal. Against these, stood forward 
 several good-natured, conciliating dissenting ministers ; and De Foe 
 advocating the same side of the question as Sacheverell and Leslie, 
 but from a different motive. Sacheverell, a vain, foolish, empty- 
 headed firebrand, thought to crush the dissenters, and raise him- 
 self upon the ruins ; but De Foe, like Samson of old, grinding in 
 the prison-house of the Philistines, thought of rousing the dissenters 
 to a state of desperation, and so obtaining by that convulsive effort 
 their perfect liberty, though he should perish in the ruins, by bring- 
 ing the house about his own ears and those of the church party. 
 Sacheverell was a fool, De Foe was not ; yet they both advocated 
 the same principle from opposite motives Sacheverell to make the 
 church triumphant; andDeFoe to rouse the whole body of dissenters, 
 
LIFE OF JDE FOE. 203 
 
 and make the church of Sacheverell not the church triumphant, but 
 the church repentant. 
 
 At the same time, the Presbyterian minister, Owen, who professed 
 more of the milk of human kindness and gentlemanly bearing than 
 fixity of purpose in defending what was at that time a dangerous and 
 unfashionable principle, came to the support of the strongest side, in 
 Moderation a Virtue - } or the Occasional Conformist justified from the 
 the Imputation of Hypocrisy ; to whom three parties replied : De Foe, 
 in the Sincerity of the Dissenters vindicated from the Scandal of 
 Occasional Conformity ; with some Considerations on a late Book 
 entitled Moderation a Virtue; Samuel Grascome, a violent non- 
 juror writer of the Leslie class ; and a Mrs. Mary Astell, a disciple 
 of Dr. Davenant. 
 
 I have no desire to slip over this period of strife on church and 
 dissent; but space will not allow anything more than a passing com- 
 ment upon half the pamphlets written on this subject at this time. 
 Dean Swift, happening to be in London at this eventful period, has 
 left on record, that at that time the contention on occasional con- 
 formity was so universal, that the dogs in the street took it up, and 
 that the cats, Whig and Tory, were debating the question by night 
 upon the roof of the house ; and the ladies, too, were split asunder 
 into High Church and Low Church, and were so zealous in disputes 
 on religion as to have no time to say their prayers. 
 
 On the weeding out of the Earl of Nottingham and his party from 
 the ministry, and freeing the country from their dangerous counsels, 
 Harley was appointed secretary of state in his place. Harley had 
 been thrice successively elected Speaker in the House of Commons, 
 and was undoubtedly the most popular man in that heterogeneous 
 mass of political conglomeration. Harley being a cunning beater-up 
 of friends, he, by cultivating conviviality among all such as were 
 fond of good dinners, rendered himself full of parliamentary sup- 
 port. Harley was not truly a real hearty good fellow, fond of good 
 company and good fare for their own inherent qualities ; but he was 
 tricky, ambitious, and a good judge of the ordinary quality of man, 
 so as to be able to raise himself to power by pandering to the foibles, 
 tastes, and ambitions of others. He climbed into the Speaker's chair 
 
204 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 in three successive Parliaments, and into the ministry too, and into 
 the House of Lords as the Earl of Oxford, through the stomach (I 
 wish to use polite words) of the House of Commons. Soon after 
 De Foe's commitment to Newgate, the Earl of Nottingham, the 
 Queen's secretary of state, had offered him a free pardon at once, 
 on the condition that the name of the individual who had put him 
 up to writing the obnoxious pamphlet should be disclosed to the 
 government ; for it was considered that there was more in that pro- 
 duction than appeared upon the surface, and more of statecraft in 
 it than the government could suppose a mere hack political writer 
 could possess. The government would insist upon the fact, that 
 some one of great political sagacity was behind the scene prompting 
 De Foe in this work. Would De Foe reveal the name ? No. 
 
 On the tampering with him by the government for the divulging 
 the name of his coadjutor, he wrote the following lines in his 
 Review : 
 
 What are thy terrors, that, for fear of thee, 
 
 Mankind can dare to sink their honesty ? 
 
 He *s bold to impudence that dare turn knave, 
 
 The scandal of thy company to save ; 
 
 He that will crimes he never knew confess, 
 
 Does more than if he knew those crimes, transgress ; 
 
 And he that fears thee, more than to be base, 
 
 May want a heart, but does not want a face. 
 
 Sacheverell preached, and De Foe wrote, and both from one text : 
 yet the preacher was lauded to the skies as one inspired, to be classed 
 with prophets and apostles ; while the writer was cursed to the low- 
 est hell, ruined by a government prosecution, and a twelvemonth's 
 confinement in Newgate, or longer if the Queen should think fit ; 
 for his fine was such as he could never pay ; and, besides these, he 
 had been degraded by a three-days' exhibition in the pillory. De 
 Foe was not prosecuted for his book- writing, but for his connection 
 with some one dreaded by the Earl of Nottingham. De Foe wrote 
 his book to overturn the Earl of Nottingham ; the book did over- 
 turn the Earl of Nottingham, who was succeeded by Harley ; who, 
 on coming to place and power, paid De Foe's fine from the Queen's 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 205 
 
 privy purse, and set him at liberty in the beginning of August, 1704. 
 The Queen also sent money to De Foe's wife and children through 
 the Lord Treasurer Godolphin. De Foe, writing on this subject, 
 observes : "Being delivered from the distress I was in, her Majesty, 
 who was not satisfied to do me good by a single act of her bounty, 
 had the goodness to think of taking me into her service ; and I had 
 the honour to be employed in several honourable, though secret, 
 services, by the interposition of my first benefactor (Harley); who 
 then appeared as a member in the public administration. I had the 
 happiness to discharge myself in all those trusts, so much to the 
 satisfaction of those who employed me, though oftentimes with dif- 
 ficulty and danger, that my Lord Treasurer Godolphin, whose me- 
 mory I have always honoured, was pleased to continue his favour to 
 me, and to do me all good offices with her Majesty, even after an 
 unhappy breach had separated him from my first benefactor." 
 
 We will now look back a little into the last twelve months, 
 during De Foe's confinement, and survey the political contentions 
 of that stirring period an age in its outpourings from a prolific 
 press, from the prose of Leslie to the poetry of Ned Ward. The 
 first production, A Hymn to Tyburn, was written as a satire on 
 De Foe's Hymn to the Pillory. Then succeeded the True-born 
 Hugonot, or Daniel De Foe; a satire, 1703. Then, An Equivalent 
 for Daniel De Foe. Then, A Pleasant Dialogue between the Pillory 
 and Daniel De Foe, by Thomas Browne. Then, Ned Ward enters 
 the lists against the chained lion, of which the Dissenting Hypo- 
 crite was the title ; and of which the following characteristic lines 
 will afford a fair specimen of the poet : 
 
 The pillory was but a hook 
 
 To make him write another book ; 
 
 This lofty hymn to th* wooden ruff, 
 
 Was to the law a counter-cuff ; 
 
 And truly, without Whiggish flattery, 
 
 A plain assault and downright battery. 
 
 Leslie, in his Rehearsal, charges De Foe with offering to make 
 any submission to be excused the pillory exhibition ; which imputa- 
 tion De Foe as flatly denies, as a scandalous slander, in one of his 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 Rfriftr-9 1 . Another pamphlet on another, was thrown upon the 
 public by friend and foe. One writes the Shorted Jfty triM /rAorw 
 taut Ropttrs; or, a AVi* Project for Reformation; dedicated 
 Mr, Daniel De Foe, author of the Starlet! Wmy wiM *fe Dute* 
 Another writes the Jbr wttA Ait Firebrand VnketwelM and 
 atom?; or, a SHtorf Answer lo Afr.DaJwV/ Foe't Shorted Way tri/A 
 the Dissenters. This author very sagdy remarks, that ff these crimes 
 had cost us too dear in England ; and we don't desire such dialogues, 
 or playing the fool betwixt jest and earnest, to bring us back a^aiu 
 into the same circumstances. 1 ' This writer might have been the 
 Earl of Nottingham himself, for he clearly perceives the power of 
 such a book to produce a revolution in this country. The wr 
 was right: it had a tendency to produce a revolution; and, if the 
 Earl of Nottingham had not retired from place, it would have pro- 
 duced a revolution ; but if it had, who was to blame ? Did De 
 set Sacheverell on preaching ? No. Sacheverell preached ser n 
 while De Foe wrote them; and the text was, "Down with the 
 bigoted secretary of state, the Earl of Nottingham." It is utterly 
 impossible to follow Leslie, Tom Browne, Ned Ward, Tutehin, 
 De Foe, Sacheverell, Burnet, Davenant, and others too mime 
 to mention. The press poured out its volumes of contention in all 
 forms of pamphlet and broad-sheet; and De Foe added to the amount 
 by bringing out thirty pages of satire and six of preface, under the 
 title of Afore Reformation, a satire upon HIMSELF. 
 
 In this preface De Foe states, that in future he should write 
 nothing without a long preface; as people cannot understand ;r 
 thing without a lengthened explanation, so as to comprehend v 
 is meant by the writer, and what is not meant. All this refer- 
 the dissenters, who had misunderstood his book of the Shortest IVay 
 with them ; for if he had wished to hang, banish, or destroy the 
 whole body, and that the gallows and the galleys should be the 
 penalty of going to the conventicle, he must have forgotten that his 
 father, wife, and six children, with himself, must be placed in the 
 
 1 A newspaper commenced on Saturday, Feb. 19, 1704, and continued weekly for 
 eight numbers ; and then twice a week on Tuesdays and Saturdays for several years, 
 all circumstances and without intermission, up to nine rolumes. 
 
Lin; 01 DI-; FOE. 207 
 
 same condition, and subjected to the same penalties. He regrets 
 that he had not followed the example of the Dutch artist, who, when 
 he had drawn a man and a bear, wrote in large letters under the 
 man, " THIS is A MAN" ; and under the bear, "Tnis is A BEAR." 
 He did this in order to prevent mistakes on the part of the public 
 as to the meaning of the drawing. De Foe had not done this; 
 and in the neglect, he felt that he had paid a compliment to the 
 judgment of his readers at the expense of his own ; he had given 
 them credit for possessing a quality which they did not possess. He 
 complains of his usage from the world, in being charged with all 
 sorts of crimes and faults, even to ten thousand more than he ever 
 had committed ; and all this was done to him when <50 was offered 
 by government for his apprehension, when he had run away, on the 
 first discovery of his being the writer of the Shortest Way with the 
 Dissenters. 
 
 Now, all this apology on the part of De Foe I consider to be 
 quite uncalled for. De Foe pushed Lord Nottingham's own cherished 
 principles to their full extent ; till his lordship had to retire from 
 the administration, and make way for another. His lordship felt 
 just indignation at being displaced from the ministry by his own 
 principles being used against him to their utmost and absurd limits ; 
 and, in his anger against the man who had injured him, he inflicted 
 all the injury in his power. Harley succeeded Lord Nottingham as 
 secretary of state ; and, as De Foe had acted with him and for him 
 in this business, Harley very justly showed his gratitude by releasing 
 De Foe from gaol, paying his fine, supporting his wife and children 
 in their destitution by the royal bounty, and taking De Foe into 
 the public service, where he, no doubt, performed many confidential 
 and important services for his country; as when in Edinburgh, 
 advocating the union of the two kingdoms, he had to sit in his bed- 
 room, when all his sitting-room windows had been broken by an 
 enraged Scotch-interested street mob, some years, though, after the 
 period we are now engaged upon. All writers, I think, without 
 exception, have looked upon De Foe's Shortest Way with the Dis- 
 senters as one of the most witty productions that ever emanated 
 from the head of man ; but I must confess, I never could see any 
 
208 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 wit in it. Lord Nottingham appeared anxious to hang himself; 
 and De Foe was determined he should have plenty of string ; which 
 Lord Nottingham perceiving, he considered that such hearty good- 
 will and willing service foreboded danger and treachery ; and in his 
 terror he punished De Foe as severely as he possibly could. He 
 punished De Foe ; but yet, all too late ! Lord Nottingham did 
 hang himself with his own rope ; and Daniel De Foe furnished the 
 hand to supply that rope faster than was required. Lord Notting- 
 ham was forced from power by De Foe, and De Foe was punished 
 severely for the offence ; this is the fact, and all apology is worse 
 than useless. 
 
 Having touched upon the Preface of More Reformation, and dis- 
 posed of De Foe's apology for his Shortest Way with the Dissenters, 
 I will now turn to this work, and give a short quotation as a speci- 
 men of the whole ; for nothing more can be done with a volume of 
 thirty pages : 
 
 He that in satire dips his angry pen, 
 
 To lash the manners and the crimes of men, 
 
 Pretends to bring their vices on the stage, 
 
 And draw the proper picture of the age : 
 
 If he be mortal, if he be a man, 
 
 They '11 make a devil of him if they can. 
 
 The meanest slip shall in a glass be shown, 
 
 That by his faults they may excuse their own : 
 
 So guided by their passions, pride, or fate, 
 
 That they who should reform, recriminate ; 
 
 And he that first reforms a vicious town, 
 
 Prevents their ruin, but completes his own ; 
 
 For, if he were an angel from on high, 
 
 He cannot 'scape the general infamy. 
 Again : 
 
 For Pride's the native regent of the mind, 
 
 And where it rules it ruins all mankind ; 
 
 He that pretends to storm it, may as well 
 
 Assault the very counterscarp of hell : 
 
 Ten thousand lesser devils stand within, 
 
 To garrison their frontier town of sin : 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 209 
 
 Again : 
 
 Whom e'er this swelling vapour does possess, 
 It never fails their reason to suppress ; 
 To struggle with it is a vain pretence, 
 It masters all the manners and the sense. 
 Shame, Pride's young sister, and herself a vice, 
 Prompts Nature next, repentance to despise ; 
 She talks of honour, scandal of the times, 
 Blushes at reformation, not at crimes. 
 Men must be vicious when they have begun ; 
 The scandal of acknowledgment to shun, 
 They must go on in vice, because they 're in, 
 Asham'd t' repent, but not asham'd to sin. 
 These arguments the latent cause contain, 
 Why mankind are so oft reprov'd in vain. 
 Their modesty 's the now uncommon evil ; 
 'Tis bad to sin, but to repent 's the devil. 
 He that offends may ha' been vice's tool, 
 But to acknowledge makes a man a fool ; 
 Puts him quite out of fashion in the town ; 
 And he that once reforms is twice undone, 
 Satire, while men upon such maxims move, 
 Expect no quarter, if thou wilt reprove ; 
 If e'er, unhappily, thou step'st awry, 
 Thy general virtue 's all condemn'd to die ; 
 With a full cry they '11 join to hunt thee down 
 By th' universal clamour of the town. 
 
 And wouldst thou now describe a modern tool, 
 To wit, to parties, and himself a fool ; 
 Embroil'd with state to do his friends no good, 
 And by his friends themselves misunderstood ; 
 Misconstru'd first in every word he said, 
 By those impitied, and by these unpaid ; 
 All men would say the picture was thy own, 
 No gazette mark were half so quickly known. 
 Thou that for party interest didst indite, 
 And thought'st to be excused for meaning right, 
 
 14 
 
210 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 This comfort will thy want of wit afford, 
 
 That now thou 'rt left a coxcomb on record. 
 
 England had always this one happiness, 
 
 Never to look at service, but success ; 
 
 And he 's a fool that differing judgment makes, 
 
 And thinks to be rewarded for mistakes. 
 
 Kneel, then, upon the penitential stool, 
 
 And freely tell the world that thou 'rt a fool ; 
 
 Which, from thy mouth if they will not believe, 
 
 Thy verse shall lasting testimonies give ; 
 
 A fool, indeed, to advocate for such 
 
 As load thee daily with unjust reproach ; 
 
 A fool, as by the consequence appears, 
 
 To put thy own eyes out to open theirs ; 
 
 A fool, to tell the nation of their crimes, 
 
 And knock thy brains out, to instruct the times. 
 
 Before thee stands the power of punishment, 
 
 In an exasperated government ; 
 
 Behind, the vacant carpet fairly spread, 
 
 From whence thy too-well- serv'd allies are fled. 
 
 At a remoter distance there they stand, 
 
 And mark thy folly, but ihy fault commend; 
 
 Freely thy former services disown, 
 
 And slyly laugh to see thee first undone. 
 
 Of thy plain action would invert the sense, 
 
 And rail, and counterfeit an ignorance ; 
 
 As if 'twas possible thou should'st intend, 
 
 In one point-blank two opposites offend ; 
 
 These seem'd provok'd, because they will not know 
 
 Thy easy sense ; and those because they do. 
 
 Satire, 'twould certainly appear a crime, 
 
 Not to applaud their policy in rhyme ; 
 
 Who, when poor authors in their quarrel write, 
 
 Can to their safety sacrifice their wit ; 
 
 Wait for the safe event, and wisely try, 
 
 Whether with truth or int'rest to comply. 
 
 As prospects govern, and success directs, 
 
 Their cunning this approves, or that rejects. 
 
LIFE OP DE FOE. 211 
 
 Blush for them, Satire, who thy name abuse, 
 
 And by reproach would gratitude excuse; 
 
 And tell them, as thou may'st be understood, 
 
 Their temper 's wicked, though their cause is good ; 
 
 Yet never thy just principles forsake, 
 
 For that would be to sin because thy friends mistake. 
 
 But bid 'em tell thee, if they can tell how, 
 
 What are the crimes for which they treat thee so ; 
 
 What horrid fact, what capital offence, 
 
 Could bar thee from the priests' benevolence, 
 
 That they their benediction should deny, 
 
 And let thee live unblessed unpray'd for die. 
 
 Thieves, highwaymen, and murderers are sent 
 
 To Newgate for their future punishment ; 
 
 But all men pity them when they repent : 
 
 Religious charity extorts a prayer, 
 
 And Howe shall freely visit Whitney there. 
 
 Yet three petitioned priests have said thee nay, 
 
 And vilely scorn' d so much as but to pray ; 
 
 Refus'd the weighty talent of the tribe, 
 
 And let their heat their piety prescribe ; 
 
 Strange power of fear upon the minds of men, 
 
 Which neither sense nor honour can restrain. 
 
 Ask them why they 're exasperated so, 
 To baulk the cheapest gift they can bestow. 
 Satire, it must ha' been some mortal sin, 
 Some strange apostacy of thy unhappy pen, 
 That has the reverend fathers so perplex'd ; 
 And disoblig'd the masters of the text. 
 
 W 7 hat, though the scurvy humours of thy head, 
 
 In house of tribulation made thy bed, 
 
 And Fate, which long thine enemy was known, 
 
 Had cloth' d thy tenement in walls of stone ! 
 
 I know the learned orthodoxly say, 
 
 That after death there is no room to pray; 
 
 But yet no article I ever read 
 
 Has counted men in Newgate with the dead. 
 
 14* 
 
212 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 Satire, look back, and former days review ; 
 
 How stood it once betwixt the tribe and you ? 
 
 In prosperous days, their conscious pride must know, 
 
 You fed those priests that scorn to own you now ; 
 
 With constant charity reliev'd their poor ; 
 
 For which they '11 stone thee, now 'tis in their power. 
 
 With just contempt look back upon their pride, 
 
 And now despise the gift which they deny'd ; 
 
 But let thy charity their crime outlive, 
 
 And, what they seldom practise, now forgive ; 
 
 For Heaven, without their help, upholds thee here : 
 
 He only claims thy thanks who hears thy prayer. 
 
 He can the royal clemency incline ; 
 
 For human grace is centred in divine. 
 
 I have given a much longer quotation from the above poem than 
 I had intended, because, as it was written when De Foe was in con- 
 finement in Newgate, before his trial and conviction, and when his 
 wife and family were in straits and difficulties ; I think it throws 
 an interesting light upon De Foe's mind, when a prisoner in New- 
 gate under such circumstances. 
 
 It would appear, on a careful perusal of this poem, that an infer- 
 ence may be drawn favourable to Lord Nottingham's judgment, in 
 the supposition of some party as well as De Foe being concerned in 
 the plot ; for the lines, 
 
 " And wouldst thou now describe a modern tool, 
 To wit, to parties, and himself, a fool," &c. &c., 
 
 would indicate a connection with one party who did not pity him, 
 and another party who did not pay him. Who could these parties 
 be ? The Whigs ? No, certainly ; though their true policy would lie 
 in this direction, I feel sure it would not be the Whigs who would 
 do this. The dissenters would not do it ; for they were all right, as 
 they could dissent to the end of the chapter, and conform too, when 
 civic honours presented prizes sufficiently valuable for them to con- 
 form for ; and besides, De Foe and they had quarrelled long ago : 
 and three ministers actually refused to pray, either with him or foi 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 213 
 
 him, when he lay in Newgate, though one of them came to pray with 
 Whitney the horse-stealer. The dissenters had not used De Foe as a 
 tool in this business, though some one had. I could fancy the Rev. 
 Mr. Howe's correct, well-fed, well-brushed, and weli-importanced 
 deacon, bustling forward among the first on 'Change, but utterly 
 confounded at being mixed up in any conspiracy with Foe the writer 
 how shocked he would be ! yes he would not stop at a point 
 or two with God Almighty, to play at long-spoon and custard, as my 
 lord mayor but to be mixed up with Foe ! 
 
 Mr. Howe's congregation were too correct to be mixed up with 
 De Foe in his Shortest Way with the Dissenters. Again 
 
 Before thee stands the power of punishment, 
 In an exasperated government ; 
 Behind, the vacant carpet fairly spread, 
 From whence thy too-well-serv'd allies are fled. 
 
 Here again we have allusions to allies and desertion ; and indeed 
 the whole poem would convey the idea of a man entrapped by the 
 designing, who dare not assist him in his difficulty. Now, if Harley 
 were De Foe's ally, he, as Speaker of the House of Commons, could 
 not atford to fly in the face of government, so far as to make common 
 cause with a seditious writer confined in Newgate, for writing a 
 pamphlet capable of disturbing the peace of the nation, and over- 
 turning the ministry; one of whom was now commencing a prose- 
 cution against the delinquent, then in confinement. Harley could 
 not do this ; he could not move, till the Earl of Nottingham was, 
 twelve months afterwards, removed from power ; when Harley, suc- 
 ceeding as secretary of state, made what reparation he could to De 
 Foe, by releasing him from prison, and employing him under the 
 government. 
 
 I believe Harley to have been the man to encourage De Foe to 
 write the Shortest Way with the Dissenters, in order to root out the 
 bigoted, High -Church, narrow-minded Tory from the ministry; 
 though, at the time the encouragement was given, it never was 
 supposed that De Foe was likely to get into Newgate through a 
 government prosecution. 
 
214 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 At this time of Tory supremacy, when De Foe was in gaol, and 
 Whigs and dissenters were a byword or term of reproach for the 
 high-priests and rabble ; when every clerical adventurer thought of 
 making his fortune by pandering to the taste of the Queen and the 
 High- Church party, the especially appointed supporters or, rather, 
 protectors of the church militant, in this realm of Great Britain ; 
 the Rev. Samuel Wesley, rector of Epworth, must try his chance 
 at fortune-making, by traducing the dissenters and their academies. 
 
 This Wesley was related to Dr. Annesley, and to some of the leading 
 dissenters of the day ; and by them he had been reared, clothed, 
 and educated, as an object of charity ; for his father having died 
 when Samuel was young, and having died poor too, young Wesley 
 was thrown a legacy upon his mother's relations for food and edu- 
 cation. He was at Mr. Morton's academy about the same time 
 with De Foe ; but on leaving that he went to Oxford, and made 
 his way by nattering royalty ; he could write either prose or poetry, 
 and dedicate his work to the Queen for the time being, and then 
 ask for a living as the reward of his services ; the rectory of Ep- 
 worth was one produce of his pen, Queen Mary being the patron ; 
 the neighbouring living of Wroot he obtained for bedaubing with 
 poetic flattery the Duke of Marlborough, after his victory of Blen- 
 heim ; and this traducing of the dissenters in the eventful year of 
 1703 was intended, through the royal patronage, to send this time- 
 serving flatterer into the archbishopric of Canterbury, upon the 
 back of that unprincipled miscreant Dr. Sacheverell. This Wesley 
 would have worked his way up by his pen, had it not happened that 
 there was a power about the throne superior to the throne itself, and 
 all the Tory courtiers assembled by the prospect of the dividing of 
 the loaves and fishes of royalty : and that power was the legacy of 
 the Whigs, left by King William III. to his prejudiced sister ; for 
 Queen Anne was emphatically the prejudiced daughter of James II. 
 These Whigs, at the head of whom stood Lord Godolphin, overruled 
 both the pretensions of Wesley and Sacheverell, at this time, and 
 saved the throne. These men did this again and again, with the 
 assistance of the bishops sitting in the House of Lords, during the 
 reign of Queen Anne. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 215 
 
 To render the dissenters as obnoxious as possible in the sight of 
 all parties possessing the least particle of humanity or honesty of 
 feeling, Ned Ward, who kept a public-house, and wrote coarse 
 poetry in the Hudibrastic style for his customers, together with 
 writers and wits equally coarse and unprincipled with himself, raised 
 the slander of the Calves' Head Club : a club said to be formed for 
 the purpose of commemorating the beheading of the unfortunate 
 monarch Charles I. ; and the annual dinner came off on the 30th 
 day of January in each year ; when the members (dissenters) ate 
 calves' heads and sung anthems; which anthems Ned Ward, and 
 other low wits of the time, professed to be so thoroughly acquainted 
 with, as to publish them along with their traducing poetic slanders. 
 These latter were the men who, at their midnight revelries, drank 
 to the mole and the horse " the two animals." Poor William III. 
 met his death by his horse stumbling at a molehill ; and this cir- 
 cumstance afforded mirth to the High-Church wits of Queen Anne's 
 reign ; and these wits invented the malignant slander of the Calves' 
 Head Club. 
 
 At this eventful period another attempt was made to introduce a 
 bill against Occasional Conformity ; which bill was carried through 
 the Commons, but thrown out in the Lords by the Lord Treasurer 
 Godolphin, his Whig supporters, and the bench of bishops. Poor 
 Dr. Burnet, one of them, and the most active of the bench, had to 
 support, through the whole reign, the whole weight of the national 
 High-Church slander and malignity : Charles Leslie, the nonjuror 
 clergyman, taking the lead as a church-and-state champion, and his 
 coadjutors, Tom Browne and Ned Ward, bringing up the rear-guard 
 and camp-followers such an assemblage of unscrupulous writers 
 as England never saw, before or since. 
 
 At this time of approaching anarchy, the whole weight of the 
 national virtue, responsibility, and safety, rested upon the integrity 
 of the House of Lords ; for the Commons were utterly abandoned to 
 party strife and Tory subserviency, the effect of the preaching in 
 the national church pulpits ; for the church had been falling ever 
 since the day that the Queen came to the throne, and Tory prospects 
 brightened for restoring the Pretender and destroying the dissenters. 
 
216 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 What could the people, the masses of England, care for the Pre- 
 tender? what was the house of Stuart to them? what had the 
 Stuart family done for the nation, but involve it in difficulty and 
 ruin? what? These are the questions which may be asked, but to 
 which no satisfactory answer can be given. The truth is, that the 
 people, the masses, the crowd, the mob, are led by impulse, and in- 
 fluenced by the gilded glitter and jingling music of wealthy power. 
 Church and King ! What glory does it not convey to a hero in his 
 cups ambition drunk ! Ten thousand parishes in England, with 
 the ten thousand influences always at work upon the national 
 mind, in sickness and in health, in life and in death. The drum- 
 ecclesiastic beaten every seventh day by ten thousand hands, what 
 noise should there not be raised what not accomplished by sound 
 in running down dissent ; or propping up the vested interest of an 
 endowed priesthood ! 
 
 The church threatened by designing infidel men ! What means it? 
 Priestcraft and statecraft shaking hands across the hiccoughing, 
 prostrated bodies of besotted ignorance ; for the church is in danger. 
 Well ; without going into the growth of national enlightenment, or 
 national darkness, we may state that, in 1704, the national position 
 was become truly serious, from the excitement produced by the 
 national -church preaching; and a full stop had to be made in the 
 onward movement of Toryism, for the salvation of the throne and 
 church too. For the dissenters held the money of the nation, and 
 the excitement then raging seriously threatened the supplies re- 
 quired for carrying on the war against France ; and as Oldmixon 
 (an authority I always like to quote), the historian of the time, and 
 spiteful traducer of De Foe, observes, in his History of England 
 (vol.iii- p. 330), "These great ministers (Marlborough and Godol- 
 phin), supported by the encouragement of Prince George of Den- 
 mark, and the continual insinuations of a lady, then nearest the 
 Queen's person and heart (Sarah Duchess of Marlborough), over- 
 came her Majesty's strong inclination to the cause for which she 
 had so often heard it said in the pulpit, her royal grandfather was a 
 martyr ; and prevailed with her to put her affairs into such hands 
 as her allies and her best subjects could confide in." This is what 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 217 
 
 I have said before, again and again; and only repeat it here to bring 
 in Oldmixon, the living British historian of the time, the bitter 
 antagonist of De Foe, and slanderer of the dissenters on all 
 occasions. 
 
 It may be observed here, that Sarah Duchess of Marlborough 
 was the instrument for good in the hands of Lord Cowper, Lord 
 Godolpldn, Lords Somers, Newcastle, Devonshire, Marlborough, 
 Halifax, &c., and was one of the greatest women that England ever 
 knew ; and that to her a debt of gratitude is due from this nation, 
 for the exercise of her influence over Queen Anne, who was a very 
 narrow-minded, weak woman, the daughter of a narrow-minded, 
 bigoted father. For twenty -seven years, Sarah Duchess of Marl- 
 borough exercised a controlling influence over the mind of her weak 
 mistress ; which influence held in the narrow religious influences of 
 her sovereign so far, as to cause her to pass through her reign of 
 twelve years without a revolution and an ignominious flight to Saint 
 Ger mains; where she might have ended her life an outcast from her 
 dominions, and a pensioner on the bounty of the court of France, 
 as her fathers had been. 
 
 At this time some one wrote a pamphlet under the title of Legion's 
 Humble Address to the Lords, and urged the necessity of dissolving 
 or abolishing the Commons for the term used does not appear very 
 definite so that they be got rid of, as betrayers of the people. He 
 complains also of Maidstone being disfranchised illegally; and of 
 the partial proceedings on the Aylesbury election; and of the great 
 partiality shown by the Commons in prosecuting public defaulters, 
 and in reassuming the grants made by the late King William, 
 while all other royal grants were allowed to pass undisputed ; and 
 also of their complimenting the Queen on her hereditary right, at 
 the expense, or to the disadvantage, of her parliamentary title ; and 
 of their addressing her to extend her royal prerogative, in order to 
 embroil her with the House of Lords. On the other hand, the 
 Lords are applauded for their patriotism in standing by the rights 
 of the people; and an intimation is given to their Lordships that the 
 freeholders of England would defend their Lordships in all their 
 privileges ; and this they would do with their properties and lives. 
 
218 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 This address was subscribed " Our name is Million, and we are 
 more." 
 
 Of course, this ungentlemanly production caused great annoyance 
 to the Tories ; and the wide circulation, too, of so obnoxious and 
 unconstitutional a document, by thousands of copies, throiigh the 
 country, caused great alarm to these Tories, who represented their 
 fears and the danger to the country to be such as to demand the 
 immediate attention of the secretary of state, and a government 
 prosecution ; when the government, to soothe and conciliate these 
 poor frightened tools of the French interest, issued a royal pro- 
 clamation, offering a reward of 100 for the apprehension of the 
 author, and 50 for the apprehension of the printer; but this 
 movement 011 the part of government availed nothing, for neither 
 author nor printer was arrested. Probably the twelve months' 
 confinement in Newgate had sharpened the wit as well as the pen 
 of De Foe ; but, be that as it may, no information was given to the 
 government as to either the one or the other author or printer. 
 
 A Tory writer answered this Legion Memorial ; and he pointed to 
 a little lord } and a Whiggish crew he entertained as his associates, as 
 the authors of the Legion Memorial. This was evidently an allusion 
 to the Lord Treasurer Godolphin, the head of the ministry; who was 
 a very little man, and leader of the Whigs. Although this writer 
 might wish to annoy the head of the government by his insinuations 
 that the high-minded Lord Godolphin was connected with placard 
 or pamphlet writing, this could only be done as a malignant insult 
 on the government, and an insult offered by but one writer only 
 a Tory. 
 
 As for the generality of writers, lampooners, or political specu- 
 lators the quidnuncs of the day they had but one opinion as to 
 the writer, and he was universlly named by them as De Foe ; for it 
 was well known that he had written the Memorial to the Commons, 
 and this Memorial to the Lords corresponded with his princi- 
 ples, and the style also betrayed the writer ; for De Foe's vigorous 
 epithets, and resolute use of vigorous healthy language, to represent 
 firm, vigorous, and healthy ideas, could not be mistaken by the 
 constant readers of the Revieiu, De Foe's newspaper, which was 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 219 
 
 published twice in each week, and was made instrumental to adver- 
 tise De Foe's pamphlets ; and also to elucidate the doctrines enun- 
 ciated in those pamphlets. Whenever De Foe wrote an important 
 pamphlet,, his Review was never to seek to back the principle, but 
 was always, I believe, involved as a partisan, in support of the doc- 
 trine advanced in the pamphlet. 
 
 The Tories could not rest satisfied with the mere spreading the 
 report of his being the author of the Memorial to the Lords ; but 
 they must give out, too, that he had run away immediately upon 
 the <100 reward appearing in the London Gazette for the appre- 
 hension of somebody for the secretary of state. Poor De Foe was 
 living quietly, writing his books, at Bury St. Edmund's, in Suffolk ; 
 and, of course, he would be very much annoyed to find his name in 
 every Tory trashy paper of the day, as a runaway author writer 
 pamphleteer. 
 
 Poor fellow ! his credit was so involved in these reports that he 
 had to declare the place of his abode, where he was willing to show 
 himself to all comers at the price usually paid for seeing a monkey; 
 namely, twopence a head ; or, if that was too much, he might be 
 seen like a quack-doctor, for nothing, at his own house, from eight 
 to twelve, and from two till nine. 
 
 Whether De Foe wrote this second Memorial has never been 
 proved ; but if he did, certainly the prime minister, Godolphin, could 
 have had no concern in the matter, for he was no placard or pamphlet 
 writer ; but if a hint had been hazarded that one of the secretaries 
 of state, Harley, had had a hand in such a production, from some 
 state reason or other, known to no mortal but himself, some cre- 
 dence might have been afforded to such a report, for Harley was 
 very tricky, intriguing, and, to mortal eyes, very erratic, in his course 
 as a politician. The whole course of this man's career was a sinister, 
 intriguing, suspicious one ; giving good dinners to fools, and using 
 them, when filled with gratitude, for the serving his private inte- 
 rests and views, was the very lifeblood of Harley's existence ; for he 
 was, emphatically, a tricky, quirking man. 
 
 De Foe was of opinion that his Shortest Way with the Dissenters 
 was the cause of the break-up of the administration consequent upon 
 
220 
 
 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 the national religious excitement of the time ; this, De Foe writes 
 many times in his several works, particularly in his Review ; and 
 there is no doubt but De Foe's prosecution, and confinement 
 in Newgate for twelve months, did break up the Nottingham- 
 Buckingham-Seymour part of the administration, for the clearing 
 the way for the more liberal men, and, consequently, more liberal 
 measures. 
 
 This tight-laced High-Church party retired from the ministry to 
 give place to better men in April 1704, while De Foe was a prisoner 
 in Newgate for writing that pamphlet which caused the excitement 
 that broke up this ministry. By Lord Nottingham was De Foe 
 prosecuted, and condemned to confinement in Newgate during the 
 Queen's pleasure (for such really was the sentence) ; and De Foe's 
 confinement was the cause of the Earl of Nottingham's removal from 
 the ministry ; this De Foe affirms, and he was right in his affirma- 
 tion. The Earl of Nottingham was a cipher in the course of the 
 national career ; and had he not been known as the prosecutor of 
 Daniel De Foe, no one would have heard of such an insignificant 
 being ; but, insignificant as he was, he was a narrow-minded, bigoted 
 secretary of state, who involved himself in a foolish government pro- 
 secution of Daniel De Foe, which caused his removal from office to 
 make way for a more liberal minister, and more liberal measures for 
 the Protestant dissenters of Great Britain. This is what De Foe's 
 Shortest Way with the Dissenters did for the dissenters ; though the 
 publication of that book ruined De Foe's family, and sent him to a 
 pillory and a gaol. 
 
 In April 1704, De Foe published his pamphlet entitled More 
 Short Ways with the Dissenters, in answer to the malignities of 
 the rector of Epworth, Samuel Wesley, and Dr. Sacheverell : two 
 pamphleteers who expected to steer their course to the archbishopric 
 of Canterbury, through the dishonest malignities of pamphleteer- 
 ing ; and they, when seated in the House of Lords, would not have 
 been the only clergymen, before that time or since, elevated to the 
 peerage by writing the political slang of party pamphlets. But, 
 fortunately for this country, the Lord Treasurer was too honest a 
 man, and too great a statesman, to make up a bench of bishops 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 221 
 
 by party slang writers, or unprincipled religious persecutors; so 
 both these writers found themselves neglected by the minister. 
 
 In 1704, also, De Foe published the Dissenters Misrepresented 
 and Represented; in which he says that the church party are so hot 
 and bitter, that they cannot hold their persecuting spirit in check 
 till the Occasional Bill is passed, but they want to deprive dissent- 
 ers from voting for parliament-men as freeholders ; and he even 
 recommends the taking the freeholds themselves away, as being 
 equally just with taking away the rights and privileges which the 
 freeholds give; and that another late author had found out the 
 way to crush the dissenters, by having all their children educated in 
 the principles of the Church of England a policy copied from the 
 court of Louis XIV. of France, who tried every method to extirpate 
 dissenters in France, and this method the last, when all other plans 
 appeared to fail. I wish we could say that this policy of Louis XIV. 
 had never been imported into this country since that period ; but, 
 alas ! the Privy-Council system of education is only a revival of the 
 same principle, for the attaining the same end, the crushing the dis- 
 senters ; and this, too, one hundred and thirty years after the death 
 of Daniel De Foe. Dissenters there were, and dissenters there are, 
 and will be, so long as there remain injustice in religious matters ; 
 dishonest legislation on church matters ; pluralities legalized by my 
 Lord John Russell, on the principle that a man, an Englishman, 
 may be robbed, provided you can prove by legal evidence that he 
 is only a poor man. Dissenter-extirpating plots have been common. 
 It is not for me to go into all these several schemes for deluding 
 and debasing the people, or conspiracies, if you will pardon the term, 
 under the pretence of guiding or educating the people; for such they 
 are ; but merely to make a remark or two on them in passing, when 
 reviewing the chequered life of Daniel De Foe, and occasionally 
 comparing his times with our own. 
 
 In July of this year, 1704, De Foe published A New Test of the 
 Church of England's Honesty. In this pamphlet he regrets that he 
 did not on his trial take a decisive stand, and, by way of defence, 
 show to the jury that the shortest way with the dissenters was the 
 sedition preached constantly from the pulpits of the Church of 
 
222 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 England, printed, too, in a Church-of-England University; and 
 officially licensed and owned by the Church-of-England authority. 
 He only printed what Sacheverell preached and wrote in his Political 
 Union, licensed by the vice-chancellor of Oxford. De Foe affirms 
 that whatever others might do, he was sure no English jury would 
 have brought him in guilty ; he felt sure of an acquittal if he had 
 appealed to a British jury. If he had so appealed, he might have 
 been acquitted; but the times were so corrupt, and the tide of popular 
 opinion running so quickly and counter to common sense, justice, 
 or honesty, that the result of an appeal to a jury could not have 
 been predicted with any certainty. 
 
 People at this time (1704) were mad for the Church of England, 
 Toryism, and Stuart or Pretender ascendency; with as deadly a 
 hatred of all Presbyterians, Whigs, or Dutchmen. Such is the 
 power of preaching, church-endowed preaching, backed by a know- 
 ledge that the sovereign at the time filling the throne has views on 
 all matters descanted on, in hearty union with the text. " Great 
 is Diana of the Ephesians " was a hearty, a loyal shout, backed as 
 it was by the high-priests and master shrine-makers, the whole 
 wealth and respectability of Ephesus, lay and clerical ; while Paul, 
 a stranger, a poor low fellow, who had not five shillings in his pocket, 
 aid knew nobody who was he ? 
 
 Leslie, the High-Church champion, complains of De Foe's two 
 pamphlets, the New Test of the Church of England's Loyalty, and 
 the New Test of the Church of England's Honesty, " as full of scur- 
 rility, and calculated for mob understandings ; and that for peace' 
 sake no answer has hitherto been given by any of the church to 
 either of these invidious pamphlets, though they have been trum- 
 peted up and down both town and country more than any other 
 since the Revolution, and are boasted of as unanswerable by all the 
 dissenters, who triumph in them." Leslie blustered and complained, 
 and threatened to answer ; since every Whig, Dissenter, or Low- 
 Churchman was asking the question, why the Highflyers did not 
 answer De Foe? 
 
 Leslie complained and threatened, but answered nothing by 
 pamphlet ; but in his paper, started at this time, and named the 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 223 
 
 Rehearsal, published in opposition to De Foe's Review, and Tutchin's 
 Observator, made, from time to time, occasional reflections on De 
 Foe, and these his " pernicious " writings. 
 
 De Foe's writings had such an extensive sale, that all sorts of 
 mean devices were resorted to, to cheat the author. Mean, low 
 printers, who wanted bread, hawked in the streets any trash of com- 
 position, in prose and verse ; and in order to excite attention, and 
 force a sale for such trash, they attached the signature of " Daniel 
 De Foe, author of the True-Born Englishman" This dishonour- 
 able and injurious practice was carried to so great an extent, that he 
 had to apply to the magistrate occasionally for protection. His own 
 " Scandal Club/' forming one division of his Review , was employed 
 as an advertisement of such abuse, as follows : 
 
 "July 25. The author of the True-Born Englishman was sum- 
 moned before the club, upon the complaint of a poor hawker, who 
 was sent to Bridewell lately. The poor woman had cried abundance 
 of scoundrel papers Trip to the Devil's Summer-house ; High Flyer; 
 Low Flyer, and the like ; all as written by the author of the True- 
 Born Englishman; for which he made complaint to the magistrate, 
 and had laid hold of this one by way of example. The woman 
 insisted that he was the author of it, and summoned in a crowd of 
 printers to justify it, they having ordered her to cry it so, and told 
 her it was true ; but when the poor woman wanted her vouchers, 
 none of them would appear. The author, to prove the negative in, 
 the particular paper which the woman was taken with, viz., the 
 Picture of a High Flyer, produced the very paper, varied only in a 
 few proper names, printed above twenty years ago ; being written 
 by Henry Care, and called the Character of a Tory. The society 
 pitied the poor woman, and let her go ; but resolved that the printers 
 should stand convicted of petty forgery, and be bound once a week 
 to repeat the following lines a la penitent, as a further satisfaction 
 to the author : 
 
 " The mob of wretched writers stand, 
 With storms of wit in every hand ; 
 They bait my mem'ry in the street, 
 And charge me with the credit of their wit. 
 
224 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 I bear the scandal of their crimes ; 
 
 My name 's the hackney title of the times. 
 
 Hymn, song, lampoon, ballad, and pasquinade, 
 
 My recent memory invade : 
 
 My muse must be the whore of poetry, 
 
 And all Apollo's bastards laid to me." 
 
 Besides the common street hawkers of penny trash using his 
 name to sell their worthless broad-sheets and penny ballads, authors 
 of more apparent respectability either stole his name to set off their 
 trash, or attacked him by name, in what were termed the Hudi- 
 brastic verse. This poetry was written by Ned Ward, the great ale- 
 house poet and wit of the time, who worked in the ranks of the 
 strongest side, as all such characters always do ; and at this time 
 Church and King would be the grand sheet-anchor of this fellow's 
 existence ; for his slanderous attacks were generally levelled at De 
 Foe and Tutchin, the representatives of the dissenting or liberal 
 party; poor De Foe having stood three times in the pillory; and 
 Tutchin having been flogged once at least, tied to a cart- tail, down 
 Dorchester streets. 
 
 The Comical History of the Life and Death of Mumper, General- 
 issimo of King Charles IL's Dogs, by Heliostropohs, secretary to the 
 Emperor of the Moon, was written by De Foe about this time ; and 
 also a Dictionary of Religions, Ancient and Modern, whether Jewish, 
 Pagan, Christian, or Mahometan. This was the first general Dic- 
 tionary of Religions published in the English language. 
 
 On Aug. 29, 1704, De Foe published his Hymn to Victory, in 
 compliment to the Duke of Marlborough, with five pages of poetic 
 preface to the Queen, and thirty pages of poetic congratulation to 
 the Duke ; the preface commencing thus : 
 
 Madam, the glories of your happy reign 
 
 Are sealed from heaven, and hell resists in vain ; 
 
 You're doubly blest with strange exalted joy : 
 
 At home with peace abroad with victory. 
 
 If this is but the earnest of your fame, 
 
 To what strange height will Heaven exalt your name ; 
 
 And what seraphick thoughts must fill your mind, 
 
 When you reflect on glories still behind. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 AFTER his release from Newgate, De Foe took up his residence at 
 Bury St. Edmund's, in Suffolk, as we have seen, where he resided 
 in quietness, writing his books ; but remained so long, that the Tory 
 scamps of the day (for such were the paid scribes of that party for 
 the most part) had to invent the slander, that he had run away from 
 justice; in short, that he had not been seen since the 100 reward 
 had been offered in the London Gazette for the apprehension of the 
 writer of the Memorial to the Lords ; and also that a government 
 warrant was out against him as the author of this Memorial. This 
 slander having so constantly appeared in the Tory Rehearsals, 
 Observators, Craftsmen, True Britons, Examiners, Corn-cutters' 
 Journal, and other newspapers or pamphlets, from Leslie down to 
 Browne and Ward, that poor De Foe's credit was completely im- 
 paired ; at least he intimates as much in his Review at the time ; so 
 that he had to advertise himself in his own Review as living at large 
 at Bury St. Edmund's, where he could'be found at any time ; and, 
 as government had been mixed up with his retirement, and the 
 slander of his having absconded, he wrote to the secretary of state 
 to inform him that, if a government warrant was really out against 
 him, he might be found living at Bury St. Edmund's; to which 
 notification he received a friendly reply, that the government were 
 not in search of him. 
 
 On Nov. 4 he thus writes in his Review, page 291 : 
 
 " Whereas, in several written news-letters dispersed about the 
 country, and supposed to be written by one Dyer, a news-writer, and 
 by Mr. Fox, bookseller in Westminster Hall, it has falsely, and of 
 mere malice, been scandalously asserted that Daniel De Foe was 
 absconded and fled from justice; that he had been searched for by 
 
 15 
 
226 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 messengers, could not be found, and more the like scoundrel expres- 
 sions ; the said Daniel De Foe hereby desires all people who are 
 willing not to be imposed upon by the like villanous practices, to 
 take notice, that the whole story is a mere genuine forgery, indus- 
 triously and maliciously contrived, if possible, to bring him into 
 trouble ; that the said Daniel De Foe, being at St. Edmund's Bury, 
 in Suffolk, when the first of these papers appeared, immediately 
 wrote to both her Majesty's secretaries of state, to acquaint them 
 with his being in the country on his lawful occasions ; and to let 
 them know that, on the least intimation from them, he would come 
 up by post, and put himself into their hands, to answer any charge 
 that should be brought against him. That, as soon as his business 
 was over in the country, he made his humble complaint of this un- 
 precedented usage to the secretary of state ; and had the honour to 
 understand, that no officer, messenger, or other person had received 
 any order, warrant, or other direction to search for, apprehend, or 
 otherwise disturb the said Daniel De Foe, or that there was any com- 
 plaint or charges brought against him. And further, having been 
 informed that Mr. Robert Stephens, the messenger, had reported 
 that he had an order or power from the secretaries of state to stop 
 and detain the said Daniel De Foe, and that he made several inquiries 
 after him to that purpose; the said Daniel De Foe hereby gives 
 notice, that as soon as he came to town, and before his application 
 to the secretary of state, he went, and in the presence of sufficient 
 witnesses, spoke with the said Robert Stephens, the messenger, as 
 he calls himself, of the press ; and, offering himself into his custody, 
 demanded of him if he had received any order to detain him ; and 
 he denied that he had any such order, notwithstanding he had most 
 openly, and in villanous terms, repeated before that he would detain 
 him if he could find him, and had, in a scandalous manner, made 
 inquiries after him. The said Daniel De Foe, having no other 
 remedy against such barbarous treatment but by setting the matter 
 in a true light, thinks he could do no less, in justice to the govern- 
 ment and himself, than make this publication; and further, he 
 hereby offers the reward of 20 to any person that shall discover to 
 him, so as to prove it, the author and publisher of any of those news- 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE, 227 
 
 letters in which those reports were published ; which shall be paid 
 
 immediately, upon such proof made, at the publishers of this paper. 
 
 " Witness my hand, " DANIEL DE FOE." 
 
 At this time (1704), De Foe wrote his celebrated pamphlet, 
 Giving Alms no Charity. It was intended as an answer to Sir Hum- 
 phrey Mackworth's bill, then introduced into the Commons, for 
 employing the poor, by establishing houses of industry or, properly, 
 workhouses, in the original meaning of the term houses for em- 
 ploying the parish poor in working. This publication appeared as 
 an Address to the House of Commons from an English Freeholder ; 
 for as such he claimed a right to be concerned in the good of that 
 community of which he was an unworthy member ; and that this 
 honourable House is the representative of all the freeholders of 
 England; for he says, "You are assembled for their good; you 
 study their interest; you possess their hearts, and you hold the 
 strings of the general purse." In this address he attributes to Queen 
 Elizabeth the importation of Dutch and Flemish manufactures, for 
 
 " The Queen [Elizabeth] who knew the wealth and vast numbers 
 of people which the said manufactures had brought to the neigh- 
 bouring countries, then under the King of Spain, the Dutch being not 
 yet revolted, never left off endeavouring, what she happily brought 
 to pass, viz., the transplanting into England those springs of riches 
 and people. She saw the fountain of all this wealth and workman- 
 ship I mean the wool was in her own hands; and Flanders became 
 the seat of all these manufactures, not because it was naturally richer 
 and more populous than other countries, but because it lay near 
 England ; and the staple of English wool, which was the foundation 
 of all the wealth, was at Antwerp, in the heart of that country. 
 
 " From hence it may be said of Flanders : It was not the riches 
 and the number of people brought the manufactures into the Low 
 Countries, but it was the manufactures brought the people thither ; 
 and multitudes of people make trade ; trade makes wealth ; wealth 
 builds cities; cities enrich the land round them ; land enriched, rises 
 in value ; and the value of lands enriches the government. 
 
 " Many projects were set on foot in England to erect the woollen 
 
 15* 
 
228 
 
 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 manufacture here ; and in some places it had found encouragement, 
 before the days of this Queen, especially as to making of cloth ; but 
 stuffs, bays, says, serges, and such-like wares, were yet wholly the 
 work of the Flemings. 
 
 " At last an opportunity offered, perfectly unlocked for, viz., the 
 persecution of the Protestants, and introducing the Spanish Inqui- 
 sition into Flanders, with the tyranny of the Duke d'Alva. 
 
 " It cannot be an ungrateful observation here to take notice how 
 tyranny and persecution the one an oppression of property, the 
 other of conscience always ruin trade, impoverish nations, depopu- 
 late countries, dethrone princes, and destroy peace. 
 
 " When an Englishman reflects on it, he cannot without infinite 
 satisfaction look up to Heaven, and to this honourable House, that 
 as the spring, this as the stream, from and by which the felicity of 
 this nation has obtained a pitch of glory superior to all the people 
 in the world. 
 
 " Your councils especially, when blest from Heaven, as now we 
 trust they are, with the principles of unanimity and concord, can 
 never fail to make trade flourish, war successful, peace certain, wealth 
 flowing, blessings probable, the Queen glorious, and the people happy, 
 Our unhappy neighbours of the Low Countries were the very reverse 
 of what we bless ourselves for in you. Their kings were tyrants, 
 their governments persecutors, their armies thieves and blood- 
 hounds; their people divided, their councils confused, and their 
 miseries innumerable. 
 
 " D'Alva, the Spanish governor, besieged their cities, decimated 
 the inhabitants, murdered the nobility, proscribed their princes, and 
 executed 18,000 men by the hand of the hangman. Conscience was 
 trampled under foot, religion and reformation hunted like a hare 
 upon the mountains ; the Inquisition threatened, and foreign armies 
 introduced. 
 
 " Property fell a sacrifice to absolute power ; the country was 
 ravaged, the towns plundered, the rich confiscated, the poor starved, 
 trade interrupted, and the tenth penny demanded. 
 
 " The consequence of this was, as in all tyrannies and persecutions 
 it is, the people fled and scattered themselves in their neighbours' 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 229 
 
 countries, trade languished, manufactures went abroad and never 
 returned, confusion reigned, and poverty succeeded. The multitude 
 that remained, pushed to all extremities, were forced to obey the 
 voice of Nature, and in their own just defence to take arms against 
 their governors. 
 
 " Destruction itself has its uses in the world : the ashes of one 
 city rebuild another ; and God Almighty, who never acts in vain, 
 brought the wealth of England and the power of Holland into the 
 world from the ruin of the Flemish liberty. 
 
 " The Dutch in defence of their liberty revolted, renounced their 
 tyrant prince, and, prospered by Heaven and the assistance of Eng- 
 land, erected the greatest commonwealth in the world. 
 
 " As D'Alva worried the poor Flemings, the Queen of England 
 entertained them, cherished them, invited them, encouraged them. 
 
 " Thousands of innocent people fled from all parts, from the fury 
 of this merciless man ; and as England, to her honour, has always 
 been the sanctuary of her distressed neighbours, so now she was so, 
 to her special and particular profit. 
 
 " The Queen [Elizabeth] who saw the opportunity put into her 
 hands which she had so long wished for, not only received kindly the 
 exiled Flemings, but invited over all that would come, promising 
 them all possible encouragement, privileges, and freedom of her 
 ports and the like. This brought over a vast multitude of Flemings, 
 Walloons, and Dutch, who, with their whole families, settled at 
 Norwich, at Ipswich, Colchester, Canterbury, Exeter, and the like. 
 From these came the Walloon Church at Canterbury, and the Dutch 
 Churches in Norwich, Colchester, and Yarmouth ; from hence came 
 the true-born English families in those places with foriegn names ; 
 as the De Vinks at Norwich, the Rebows at Colchester, the Papilons 
 &c. at Canterbury : families to whom this nation are much in debt, 
 for the first planting those manufactures from which we have since 
 raised the greatest trades in the world. 
 
 " This wise Queen [Elizabeth] knew that numbers of inhabitants 
 are the wealth and strength of a nation ; she was far from that 
 opinion, we have of late shown too much of, in complaining that 
 foreigners came to take the bread out of our mouths, and ill treating 
 
230 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 on that account the French Protestants who fled hither for refuge 
 in the late persecutions. 
 
 " Some have said that above 50,000 of them settled here, and 
 would have made it a grievance, though, without doubt, His easy to 
 make it appear that 500,000 more would be both useful and profit- 
 able to this nation. 
 
 " Upon the settling of these foreigners, the scale of trade visibly 
 turned both here and in Flanders. The Flemings taught our women 
 and children to spin, the youth to weave ; the men entered the loom 
 to labour, instead of going abroad to seek their fortunes by the war ; 
 the several trades of bayes at Colchester, sayes and perpets at Sud- 
 bury, Ipswich, &c., stuffs at Norwich, serges at Exeter, silks at 
 Canterbury, and the like, began to flourish. All the countries round 
 felt the profit ; the poor were set to work, the traders gained wealth, 
 and multitudes of people flocked to the several parts where these 
 manufactures were erected, for employment and the growth of Eng- 
 land, both in trade, wealth, and people, since that time, as is well 
 known to this honourable House ; so the causes of it appear to be 
 plainly the introducing of these manufactures, and nothing else." 
 
 The above is the substance of the introduction to this valuable 
 essay on employing the poor, without inflicting a sensible injury on 
 the community by the employment. De Foe, in 1704, was tho- 
 roughly master of this branch of political economy, and was far in 
 advance of the age in which he lived ; for he states that every session 
 of every Parliament since the Restoration, had had its act for em- 
 ploying the poor in workhouses, at the expense of the rest of the 
 community, of tax-payers, and sellers of labour for what we term 
 wages. In De Foe's time and in ours, there has always been a full 
 supply of weak-minded philanthropists who would rob the commu- 
 nity to have the credit of making a rogue-and-vagabond into an 
 honest man. De Foe knew this fully, and has written well upon 
 the subject; and a clear principle of political economy in 1704 is 
 rather a curiosity. I will go into the subject more fully, to show 
 my hero in this character. 
 
 "1. There is in England more labour than hands to perform it; 
 and, consequently, a want of people, not of employment. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 231 
 
 " 2. No man in England, of sound limbs and senses, can be poor 
 merely for want of work. 
 
 "3. All our workhouses, corporations, and charities, for employ- 
 ing the poor, and setting them to work, as now they are employed, 
 or any acts of Parliament to empower overseers of parishes, or 
 parishes themselves, to employ the poor, except as shall be hereafter 
 excepted, are and will be public nuisances ; mischiefs to the nation, 
 which serve to the ruin of families and the increase of the poor. 
 
 " That 'tis a regulation of the poor that is wanted in England, 
 not a setting them to work. 
 
 " If after these things are made out, I am inquired of what this 
 regulation should be, I am no more at a loss to lay it down, than I 
 am to affirm what is above ; and shall always be ready, when called 
 to it, to make such a proposal to this honourable House, as with 
 their concurrence shall for ever put a stop to poverty and beggary, 
 parish charges, assessments, and the like, in this nation. 
 
 " If such offers as these shall be slighted and rejected, I have the 
 satisfaction of having discharged my duty; and the consequence must 
 be, that complaining will be continued in our streets. 
 
 " 'Tis my misfortune, that, while I study to make every head so 
 concise, as becomes me in things to be brought before so honourable 
 and august an assembly, I am obliged to be short upon heads that 
 in their own nature would very well admit' of particular volumes to 
 explain them. 
 
 " First, I affirm that in England there is more labour than hands 
 to perform it. This I prove : 
 
 " 1 . From the dearness of wages, which in England outgoes all 
 nations in the world ; and I know no greater demonstration in trade. 
 Wages, like exchanges, rise and fall as the remitters and drawers, 
 the employers and the workmen, balance one another. 
 
 " The employers are the remitters, the workmen are the drawers. 
 If there are more employers than workmen, the price of wages must 
 rise, because the employer wants that work to be done more than 
 the poor man wants to do it ; if there are more workmen than 
 employers, the price of labour falls, because the poor man wants his 
 wages more than the employer wants to have his business done. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 " Trade, like all nature, most obsequiously obeys the great law of 
 cause and consequence ; and this is the occasion why even all the 
 greatest articles of trade follow, and as it were pay homage to, this 
 seemingly minute and inconsiderable thing the poor man's labour. 
 
 " I omit, with some pain, the many very useful thoughts that 
 occur on this head, to preserve the brevity I owe to the dignity of 
 that assembly I am writing to. But I cannot but note how from 
 hence it appears, that the glory, the strength, the riches, the trade, 
 and all that 's valuable in a nation, as to its figure in the world, 
 depend upon the number of its people, be they never so mean or 
 poor ; the consumption of manufactures increases the manufactures; 
 the number of manufacturers increases the consumption; provi- 
 sions are consumed to feed them; land improved, and more hands 
 employed, to furnish provisions. All the wealth of the nation, and all 
 the trade, is produced by numbers of people ; but of this by the way. 
 
 " The price of wages not only determines the difference between 
 the employer and the workman, but it rules the rates of every 
 market. If wages grow high, provisions rise in proportion ; and I 
 humbly conceive it to be a mistake in those people, who say labour 
 in such parts of England is cheap because provisions are cheap; 
 but 'tis plain, provisions are cheap there, because labour is cheap, 
 and labour is cheaper in those parts than in others ; because, being 
 remoter from London, there is not that extraordinary disproportion 
 between the work and the number of hands ; there are more hands, 
 and, consequently, labour is cheaper. 
 
 ' ' Tis plain to any observing eye, that there is an equal plenty of 
 provisions in several of our south and western counties, as in York- 
 shire, and rather a greater ; and I believe I could make it out, that 
 a poor labouring man may live as cheap in Kent or Sussex as in 
 the bishopric of Durham ; and yet, in Kent, a poor man shall earn 
 7s., 105., 9s., a week, and in the North, 4s., or perhaps less. The 
 difference is plain in this, that in Kent there is a greater want of 
 people, in proportion to the work there, than in the North. And 
 this, on the other hand, makes the people of our northern counties 
 spread themselves so much to the south, where trade, war, and the 
 sea, carrying off so many, there is a greater want of hands. And 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 233 
 
 yet 'tis plain there is labour for the hands which remain in the 
 North, or else the country would be depopulated, and the people 
 corne all away to the South to seek work ; and even in Yorkshire, 1 
 where labour is cheapest, the people can gain more by their labour 
 than in any of the manufacturing countries of Germany, Italy, or 
 France, and live much better. If there was one poor man in Eng- 
 land more than there was work to employ, either some body else 
 must stand still for him, or he must be starved; if another man 
 stands still for him, he wants a day's work, and goes to seek it, and 
 by consequence supplants another, and this a third ; and this con- 
 tention brings it to this : ( No/ says a poor man, that is like to be 
 put out of his work, ' rather than that man shall come in, I '11 do it 
 cheaper.' ' Nay/ says the other, 'but I '11 do it cheaper than you.' 
 And thus one poor man wanting but a day's work would bring 
 down the price of labour in a whole nation ; for the man cannot 
 starve, and will work for anything rather than want it. 
 
 "It may be objected here : this is contradicted by our number of 
 beggars. 
 
 " I am sorry to say I am obliged here to call begging an employ- 
 ment, since 'tis plain, if there is more work than hands to perform 
 it, no man that has his limbs and his senses need to beg, and those 
 that have not, ought to be put into a condition not to want it. So 
 that begging is a mere scandal in the general ; in the able 'tis a 
 scandal upon their industry; and in the impotent, 'tis a scandal 
 upon the country. Nay, the begging, as now practised, is a scandal 
 upon our charity, and perhaps the foundation of all our present 
 grievances. How can it be possible that any man or woman, who, 
 being sound in body and mind, may, as 'tis apparent they may, have 
 wages for their work, should be so base, so meanly spirited, as to 
 
 1 Probably, by Yorkshire is meant the extreme north of England Durham, Cum- 
 berland, and Westmoreland. At this time (1704), it is highly probable, that De Foe 
 had never been in Yorkshire, and knew nothing about it, but from books, written at 
 all periods before his time j his wages estimates, too, belong, probably, to an age or 
 period antecedent by a century to the date given. This certainly is the case in his 
 tour through England, written twenty years after this period ; many events in which 
 are taken, without acknowledgment, from Thoresby's History of Leeds, and there 
 recorded only as a state of things which had existed in history, but not as the visible 
 object for the eye of a passing tourist. 
 
234 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 beg an alms for God's sake ! Truly, the scandal lies on our charity; 
 and people have such a notion in England of being pitiful and 
 charitable, that they encourage vagrants, and, by mistaken zeal, do 
 more harm than good. 
 
 " This is a large scene, and much might be said upon it ; I shall 
 abridge it as much as possible. 
 
 " The poverty of England does not lie among the craving beggars, 
 but among poor families, where the children are numerous, and 
 where death or sickness has deprived them of the labour of the 
 father. These are the houses that the sons and daughters of charity, 
 if they would order it well, should seek out and relieve. An alms 
 ill directed, may be charity to the particular person, but becomes 
 an injury to the publick, and no charity to the nation. As for the 
 craving poor, I am persuaded I do them no wrong when I say, that 
 if they were incorporated, they would be the richest society in the 
 nation ; and the reason why so many pretend to want work is, that 
 they can live so well with the pretence of wanting work, they would 
 be mad to leave it and work in earnest; and I affirm of my own 
 knowledge, when I have wanted a man for labouring work, and 
 offered 9s. a week to strolling fellows at my door, they have fre- 
 quently told me to my face, they could get more a-begging ; and I 
 once set a lusty fellow in the stocks for making the experiment." 
 
 The paper extends to some further pages, on relieving tramps or 
 sturdy beggars, and the injustice done to honest poverty, and the 
 nation at large, by the pernicious practice ; for the begging trade 
 affords a less return upon the capital invested than any other, the 
 operative consuming the whole product of his labour, and nothing 
 left for the return on the capital advanced. 
 
 De Foe remarks on parish or county or national workshops for 
 the employment of beggars or felons at the public expense, as most 
 injurious to the community, and only tending to disarrange the 
 labour market, by taxing the public for the disarrangement. He 
 says, that " every session since the restoration of Charles II., has 
 produced a bill for supplying the poor with work in workhouses, and 
 tampering with the natural supply of labour in the market." This 
 was written in 1704; and since that time, up to 1858, how many 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 235 
 
 of these injurious schemes have been inflicted upon the working 
 classes; for all the injury falls unmitigated upon them, while the 
 credit of the mischief is given to some half-dozen enthusiasts, who 
 wish to set the world all right by a little prating in Parliament, a 
 little newspaper bribing, and a little pamphleteering : a process cheap 
 in the gross for obtaining the credit of their being the most feeling 
 men in the community, for the dear starving poor. 
 
 In order to illustrate this tampering with labour, and this tam- 
 pering with philanthropy, suppose, in a small confined community, 
 a few philanthropists set up for regulating the evils of their neigh- 
 bours, and extirpating poverty. This little club of benevolents de- 
 termine to make every tramp, beggar, or thief, into a shoemaker, 
 what would the result be in the shoe trade ; how would wages run 
 after such a supply of labour? Well, after a while, poor shoemakers 
 would be starving; so an act of Parliament must be obtained to re- 
 lieve the oppressed shoemakers ; and how their little village Exeter 
 Hall would ring with depreciated remuneration for the poor shoe- 
 makers ; and their hard taskmasters, the master shoemakers ! l Go- 
 vernment tampering with trades or education is always injurious to 
 the community ; for the attempt to get rid of crime, idleness, and 
 poverty, by public taxation, is absurd ; and inj urious to the honest, 
 industrious, and rich. A drunken man has six ragged children ; is 
 the industrious, sober, thrifty man, with six children, to be fined for 
 the support of the drunken family ? and are twelve children to be 
 educated, the sober man being taxed for the support of the whole ? 
 This question of workhouses was well understood by De Foe ; and, 
 as it is a most important one, I have quoted freely from him ; for 
 Daniel De Foe, as a political economist, is a new character in which 
 to study our hero ; and, of course, justice must be done to him in 
 it : my only regret being, that I could not follow him through his 
 valuable remarks on government employing labour out of the taxes. 
 
 1 What outcries have we not had about the remuneration paid in London to shirt- 
 makers ! How comes this ? I know not. Is there some disease in the natural supply 
 or demand in the market of labour here ? Who are the shirtmakers of London ; how 
 are they produced ; how comes supply so far to exceed demand ? Is it plain sewing 
 in charity schools which is employed to the bringing down the wages of all poor 
 women employed in sewing in London ? If so, what do charity schools effect here ? 
 
236 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 In the early part of 1705, De Foe again returns to the attack 
 upon Sir Humphrey Mackworth's bill for philanthropizing the poor 
 by deceiving and robbing the rich a bill which passed through the 
 Commons with great applause; but was rejected at once by the 
 House of Lords. Here, again, the Lords save their country once 
 more from the ignorant tampering of the most corrupt, worthless 
 Parliament that ever was returned by English freeholders ; and the 
 bench of bishops too were the main instruments of this salvation of 
 their country bishops appointed by William III. 
 
 De Foe manfully defends his course of action in his Review, 
 lamenting that he " must be forced to erect his own opinion, and 
 advance his private judgment, against the capitals of the nation; 
 and must stand the test of public censure for his arrogance, only 
 from the magnitude of his opposers, not at all from their reasons 
 or the force of their judgments. Be it so. Truth and demonstra- 
 tion are the weapons ; and I am only to be answered by the irre- 
 fragable arguments of reason. 
 
 " When these are against me, I submit and pay homage to truth 
 in the mouth of the meanest ; but with these, I am a match for the 
 greatest, and boldly take upon me to say, that bill is an undigested 
 chaos, a mass of inconsistency, big with monsters of amphibious 
 generation, brooding needless and fatal errors, and numberless irre- 
 parable mischiefs, absolutely destructive of trade, ruinous to the 
 poor, tending to the confusion of our home trade, stopping the cir- 
 culation of our manufactures, and increasing both the number and 
 misery of the poor." Review, vol. ii. pp. 37, 38. Bravo ! Daniel 
 De Foe ; political economist on workhouses for the poor ! 
 
 Having given long and dry, and perhaps uninteresting quotations 
 on political economy on a very important subject, one which, even 
 down to our day, has not had due consideration afforded to it; namely, 
 the whining, canting, tampering with labour and capital, in order 
 to gain a character for a benevolence which is hypocritical and dis- 
 honest dishonest to the poor themselves, who are to be whined or 
 canted into a Muggletonian character of recipients of charity ; in- 
 stead of being an independent, free, sturdy descendant race of a 
 free, erect, Saxon ancestry. I do not want to natter the poor ; all 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 237 
 
 I say is, 18s. a week, and no favour ; neither do I wish to say one 
 word on poverty, remembering that " Dust thou art, and unto dust 
 shalt thou return." But I do not want to see a people legislated 
 into poverty ; and then see poverty smothered down into broken- 
 souled dependency by the soothing balm of Gilead red herrings 
 and soup-tickets ; legislated starvation healed by a plaster of phi- 
 lanthropy and cant. I maintain that one half of the philanthropy 
 of the present day is a fabric of cant, built upon a concrete ground- 
 work of dishonesty proceeding in a great measure from placemen 
 and pensioners sitting as legislators in the Houses of Parliament. 
 
 There is not a street fight can be kicked up in the habitable globe, 
 but the poor inhabitant of Great Britain has to find the stakes from 
 his breadloaf. This is true, and will remain true, till placemen and 
 pensioners are removed from the House of Commons. Only look 
 at the Government Privy Council system of education, which is a 
 trap; a conspiracy extracted from the pressure of exorbitant taxation. 
 Church and dissent are two parties in the state, upon which exor- 
 bitant taxation presses with unequal violence ; the church party, 
 from social habits, feelings, or principles, feeling the greater amount 
 of the pressure ; therefore a counteracting influence a borrowing 
 power from the national exchequer, for the benefit of the church 
 side of the contest, to make the combatants equal. This scheme is 
 a conspiracy to ruin Protestant dissenters with their own money ; 
 it is only the old game of Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin and the 
 Protestants of France, played over again ; it is a conspiracy, and no 
 canting meetings at Exeter Hall can blot out the word : conspiracy 
 by a profession of philanthropy. 
 
 But, to return to De Foe and his tract on finding work out of 
 the public funds, national or parochial, for thieves, tramps, scoun- 
 drels, and sturdy beggars : I say again, rejoicingly, Bravo ! Daniel 
 De Foe, the political economist, and precursor of Franklin, Adam 
 Smith, Hume, Ricardo, Colonel Thompson ; and poor Elliott, who 
 never felt so happy in his work of feeding the poor with their own 
 bread, as when the scamps and street lads were shouting after him 
 as a fool broken loose. Poor Elliott ! who always worked on Dean 
 Swift's principle, of judging of the quality of a philosopher or a 
 
238 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 statesman by the number of boobies, fools, or scoundrels, following 
 in his rear. De Foe ! political economist ! But mind, when I 
 write the term political economist, I do not mean that De Foe, who 
 lived sixty years before the author of the Wealth of Nations, was 
 thoroughly master of the science of political economy. No ! neither 
 was Adam Smith, the honoured father of the science, embodied as 
 a science, distinct and separate from all other sciences the science 
 of political economy ; although he lived sixty years after De Foe, the 
 latter being born A.D. 1662. 
 
 As for this very treatise which I admire so much, as being so 
 far in advance of the year 1704, in which it was written this 
 Giving Alms no Charity one half of it, the latter half, which I 
 have studiously kept back on account of the errors in it, in my 
 quotation, is incorrect ; for it is all based upon the false principle 
 of giving employment to the poor as the first moving acting influ- 
 ence or power for attaining national prosperity ; whereas the first 
 power is high return of profit on capital ; for the surplus above the 
 cost of production ; the surplus of profit being the future bread of 
 the operative his future store of wage-fund. Be prepared with 
 your wage-fund before you start your operative at his work ; have 
 a heavy supply of that fund, and the workman will be prosperous, 
 as dividing a larger share ; but diminish that store, and the share 
 of each operative will be less. 
 
 Towards the close of 1 704 the Duke of Marlborough returned to 
 England a victorious general, when all national parties vied with 
 each other in showering blessings and honours upon the distinguished 
 hero, and amongst the crowd Daniel De Foe contributed his mite 
 of well-earned praise, in a congratulatory poem entitled the Double 
 Welcome to the Duke of Marlborough. 
 
 The muse that by your victory 's inspired, 
 First sung those conquests all the world admir'd, 
 Now sings the triumphs of your native land, 
 When you our hearts as well as troops command ; 
 Adapted thus to sacred truth and fame, 
 She never sung but they were both her theme. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 239 
 
 Stranger to penegyrick and to praise, 
 
 It must be some sublime, must her just fancy raise. 
 
 To truth and merit she was always true, 
 
 And never praised but William, sir, and you. 
 
 Bravo, Daniel ! you never praised in verse but two men in your 
 life : William III. of glorious memory, the best of kings and truest 
 of patriots ; and the victorious Duke of Marlborough. 
 
 The Duke of Marlborough was one great prop to the throne ; for 
 he was a great man as a man, independent of his generalship ; and 
 I feel glad at De Foe's selecting him, and him only, from the great 
 mob standing around. 
 
 You 're welcome, sir, to this unthankful shore, 
 Where men of worth were never owned before. 
 A steady glory ever has entailed 
 The grin of envy ; envy never failed 
 To act the high refined extreme of hell ; 
 How William found it, blush, my muse, to tell. 
 Shall any foreign bard desire to know 
 Why Britain can so few like William show ? 
 Say, angry poet, tell 'em 'tis because 
 Ungrateful devils grudge their due applause. 
 
 Although the British nation greatly rejoiced at the victories of 
 the Duke of Marlborough, yet the Tory High-Church party were 
 more afflicted with disappointment than with any other feeling, on 
 account of the influence afforded by the Duke to Lord Godolphin 
 and others about the court, for the removal of the Earl of Notting- 
 ham and his High-Church coadjutors from the ministry; for after 
 this, removal the greatest hatred was manifested towards the Duke of 
 Marlborough, his victories, and all belonging to him ; his very vic- 
 tories over the French at Blenheim were, indeed, represented to be 
 endangering the Church of England ; for the French party was the 
 Church-of-England party ; and the Duke of Marlborough conquer- 
 ing the French, was conquering Toryism, Churchism, and Pretend- 
 erism, at home ; since these were really one in spirit during the 
 whole twelve years of the reign of Queen Anne. To such a pitch 
 
240 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 was church-in- danger carried during the whole reign of this weak- 
 minded woman ; for De Foe in his Review, vol. ii. page 233, says 
 
 " I have been told of a certain worthy tacker, who, being a can- 
 didate for Parliament, caused a flag to be carried before him, with 
 this device a church leaning, and ready to fall ; and himself under 
 it, holding it up. When he had been at the place, and was chosen 
 again, he comes back with another flag which he had reserved in 
 petto ; and then the church was represented standing upright, and 
 his worship walking before it. This was a wrong device ; for, were 
 the church really falling, I must needs say, few of these gentlemen 
 would stand under to hold her up, for fear they should be crushed 
 in the fall. But these are all said to be defenders of the churfch : 
 I must confess I think not. Woe be to the church if Jacobites, 
 nonjurors, and tackers must hold her up ! 
 
 " We have seen these hot men out [of Parliament] a great while, 
 some of them a year, some two ; and pray, gentlemen, tell us, what 
 has the church lost by their being turned out ? 
 
 " Among the many enemies of the church, whose being put into 
 other people's stead, in the royal favour, gives a sad prospect to 
 the church, and who have been suggested to bring the Church of 
 England into danger, one of the principal is, his Grace the Duke of 
 Marlborough. 
 
 " Why, really, gentlemen, these are some of the remarkable in- 
 stances in which Nature gallops faster than the understanding can 
 follow. As these people are angry at being thought fools, they 
 ought not to expect that the people of England will be pleased to 
 be called fools, and made fools too at the same time. 
 
 te I hear people say that the Duke of Marlborough is pulling down 
 the Church of England ; why, our common people would be ready 
 to laugh at these gentlemen. How ! Beat the French to ruin the 
 church f How can this be? What ! are the French the supporters 
 of the church ? Is the Duke of Bavaria a friend to the church ? 
 Really, gentlemen, you must have most scoundrel thoughts of the 
 people's senses that read your papers, to think of prevailing upon 
 them to believe this stuff. 
 
 " I confess there are some incoherences in the matter suitable in 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 241 
 
 their kind to this ; and, upon examination, would appear so absurd 
 as this ; such as charging the Bishops, the Queen, the Lords, and 
 the like, with pulling down the church ; but nothing could be so 
 strangely adapted to the genius of common banter, to the capacity 
 of every mean understanding. 
 
 " That the Duke of Marlborough should attack the French lines ; 
 should push their armies to all extremities; baulk their councils, 
 take their generals ; pursue them over rivers, towns, fortifications, 
 and all the precautions of the highest art of war, and all this to 
 pull down the church ! 
 
 " Well, gentlemen, if this be to put the church in danger, here 's 
 strange doings in the world ; for here the church keeps holyday ; 
 the Queen makes processions to St. Paul's ; the clergy sing anthems ; 
 and all the people give thanks on these occasions ; and blessed, 
 congratulated, rewarded, even by the House of Commons. What, 
 gentlemen ! all this for joining in confederacy with a gang of cour- 
 tiers to pull down the church ? 
 
 " Pray, gentlemen, go back again ; let the Duke of Marlborough 
 be called home, and a churchman be put in his room, that may let 
 the French beat him for propagation of the faith ; and run away for 
 the safety of the church. 
 
 " These are the inconsistencies of the party, this is their memorial 
 argument, their High-Church consequences. I cannot but think it 
 a duty of every Englishman, as much as in him lies, to inform the 
 people, who are thus imposed upon, and to let them see a little, the 
 way our church is to be secured by those people, that cry out so 
 much of her present distress. 
 
 "Next to my Lord Treasurer [Godolphin], no man is worse in 
 their esteem, or has more of their ill language, than the Duke of 
 Marlborough, that is fighting for the safety of England, against 
 Popery, tyranny, universal monarchy, and all the complication of 
 devils that has pushed so far at the destruction of Europe's liberty ; 
 and has drove all the Protestant powers of Christendom to an abso- 
 lute necessity of leaguing together for their common security. This 
 is the same cause for which the late glorious King William so often 
 fought, so long struggled, and so bravely hazarded his life ; and now 
 
 16 
 
242 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 an English duke, fired with the same zeal, and filled with the same 
 desire of the general prosperity, pushes at our safety and establish- 
 ment, runs down all before him. This is the man that is branded 
 by this unhappy party with the scandal of ruining and destroying 
 the Church of England. 
 
 " And this nation, among all the blessings attending the glorious 
 victory obtained by the Duke of Marlborough, has this, as none of 
 the least that the vile notion raised by a yet more vile party, that 
 this hero, or this ministry, with whom he acts in concert, are not, 
 nor can be, instrumental to injure the church ; all their fighting, 
 conquering, and struggling, both abroad and at home, being a plain 
 and just indication of their true zeal for the Church of England, and 
 the prosperity of the Protestant religion in general. 
 
 " May the church never want such guardians ; and let the 
 mal-contented party bring out their seditious memorials every 
 day, till they expose themselves more and more, become justly 
 odious to all the world, and particularly contemptible to all good 
 men." 
 
 After the removal of the Earl of Nottingham, Sir E. Seymour, l 
 and others from the ministry in 1704, nothing could be done in 
 this kingdom, but the High-Church party industriously gave out, 
 that it was done for the destruction of the Church of England ; and 
 even the victory of Blenheim, obtained August 2, 1704, scarcely 
 received the usual compliment of the thanks of the House of Com- 
 mons ; because the general, the Duke of Marlborough, would not 
 sacrifice every principle and every feeling to the grand ruling passion 
 of poor Queen Anne : the fostering of the vested rights and exclu- 
 sive privileges of an endowed priesthood, the fraternity of the Church 
 
 1 Who was Speaker in the House of Commons in the reign of Charles II. ; he was 
 always suspected of being in the French interest ; and was impeached by the Commons 
 in consequence. He opposed King William at the Eevolutiori ; but that king en- 
 deavoured to bring him over by making him a privy councillor and lord of the 
 Treasury ; but all to no purpose : he had to be discarded, when he became the head of 
 the opposition in the Commons. On the death of William, this man was made comp- 
 troller of the household, and a privy councillor. This man, and such as he, would 
 have Sacheverelled this kingdom into open rebellion again and again, had it not been 
 for a power a national power superior in strength to the throne itself ; and that 
 power may be found enrolled in the Kit-cat Club. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 243 
 
 of England ; nourished by royal favour, for a purpose the succes- 
 sion of the Pretender to the throne of these realms ; to the exclusion 
 of the house of Hanover. 
 
 We will give another instance of the dishonesty of the Church- 
 and-Pretender spirit which occurred at this time, on the building 
 of the Hay market Theatre, which was opened May 3, 1705. This 
 undertaking came out under the patronage of the Kit-cat Club, an 
 association of noblemen, forty-eight in number, whose names are 
 worthy of being handed down to posterity ; not as a literary club, 
 that founded the Augustan age of English literature ; no, nor as the 
 builders of the Haymarket Theatre ; no but as that power which 
 William III. placed around the throne, and which in power was 
 superior to the throne ; for the throne never could shake off this 
 power during the Queen's reign ; a power of aristocracy which could 
 override the French or Pretender interest, then mad and rampant 
 in the House of Commons mad to that degree, that De Foe advo- 
 cated the abrogation of the Commons' House, root and branch, as a 
 nuisance planted on British soil, for the serving of French interests, 
 by the sacrifice of British interests. All this occurred in the unfor- 
 tunate reign of Anne, when British nobility was a pattern for the 
 world, and at a time when rottenness in the bone, with idiocy of 
 the mind, was the disease of the stockjobbing, priest-ridden, 
 Stuart -worshipping House of Commons the byword of civilized 
 Europe. 
 
 These high-minded noblemen, the Kit-cat Club, shall go through 
 the muster-call, to show what William III. left to Britain for the 
 protection of the throne, and the institutions of the country : 
 William Cavendish, first Duke of Devonshire; John Churchill, 
 Duke of Marlborough; Thomas Wharton, Marquis of Wharton; 
 Charles Howard, Earl of Carlisle ; Richard Boyle, Earl of Burling- 
 ton; Richard Lumley, Earl of Scarborough; Francis Godolphin, 
 Earl of Godolphin ; Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset ; Charles 
 Lenox, Duke of Richmond; John Montagu, Duke of Montagu; 
 John Sommers, Baron of Evesham ; Charles Cornwallis, Lord Corn- 
 wallis ; with others, patriots and wits. 
 
 These men built a theatre ; they founded the Augustan age of 
 
 16* 
 

 244 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 English literature ; they saved the crown through a very weak reign, 
 and kept poor Anne's church from falling on the gravestones in 
 the churchyard ; they kept the institutions of this nation together 
 for twelve years, and saved poor Anne from an ignominious flight 
 to the hospital of the exiled Stuarts at St. Germains. I have men- 
 tioned these gentlemen again and again, but never had the oppor- 
 tunity of bringing them together till now, when slandered as the 
 destroyers of the church, by building a theatre. Not that Leslie 
 cared anything about the church-destroying building. No; he 
 cared not if five hundred theatres had been built, provided Dan 
 Burgess's Mercers' Hall Chapel, in Cheapside, had been closed by 
 the building of them. It was not the theatre, but its being a Whig 
 theatre, that affected him ; and its being called the Queen's Theatre, 
 threw all the spires out of the perpendicular, and endangered the 
 gravestones. The Dan Burgess of Charles Leslie, the nonjuring 
 pamphleteer, was Dr. Burgess, the Presbyterian minister; the 
 most persecuted man in his day, not excepting Dr. Burnet, the 
 Bishop of Salisbury, or Daniel De Foe, our political economist. I 
 should have felt delighted if De Foe had been traduced, maligned, 
 and slandered in this forty-first number of the Rehearsal. I should 
 have liked De Foe to have been office-bearer for this one day, to 
 the illustrious, high-minded collection, the Kit-cat Club, along 
 with Dr. Daniel Burgess; for a better collection of patriots, pa- 
 trician or plebeian, could not have been made in this Isle of Great 
 Britain. 
 
 William III. was the real designer of the Augustan age of Britain, 
 although Queen Anne had always had the credit of it. William III. 
 created, or brought together and kept together, these accomplished 
 noblemen ; and they formed the Augustan age of English literature 
 by their taste, their writings, and their patronage. 
 
 Charles Leslie is much offended at this theatre being a Whig 
 theatre the production of " the Kit-cat Club, which is now grown 
 famous and notorious all over the kingdom ; and they have built a 
 temple for their Dagon, the new playhouse in the Hay Market. The 
 foundation was laid with great solemnity by a noble babe of grace. 
 And over or under the foundation-stone is a plate of silver, on which 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 245 
 
 is engraven Kit-cat on the one side, and little Whig on the other. 
 This is in futuram rei memoriam, that after- ages may know by 
 what worthy hands, and for what good ends, this stately fabrick was 
 erected. And there was such zeal shewn, and all purses open to 
 carry on this work, that it was almost as soon finished as begun, 
 while PauPs-work is become a proverb ; and the greatest part of our 
 communicants cannot come to our churches for want of room ; and 
 there is no zeal or money to be found to build others ; while Dan 
 Burgess and other dissenters can rear cathedrals with as much 
 expedition as that in the Hay Market." 
 
 I need not quote Leslie's Rehearsal for information further, for 
 one of De Foe's Reviews is full of it, vol. ii. page 101 : 
 
 " We have lately erected, at the cost and charges of several pious, 
 charitably disposed Christians, a noble and magnificent fabrick near 
 the Hay Market, in the liberties of Westminster. The name of the 
 thing (for by its outside it is not to be distinguished from a French 
 church or a hall, or a meeting-house, or any such usual public build- 
 ing) is a theatre, or, in English, a playhouse. The use and design 
 of this, is for the encouragement of wit, the entertainment of the 
 ladies, &c., for the representations, or misrepresentations, of vice; 
 for the encouragement of virtue ; and, in short, to contribute to the 
 exceeding reformation of our manners. 
 
 " The dimensions of this noble pile, its beauty, its stupendous 
 height, the ornament and magnificence of its building, are de- 
 monstrations of the great zeal of our nobility and gentry, to 
 the encouragement of learning, and the suppressing of vice and 
 immorality. 
 
 " What, though the founders of this structure may complain of 
 deficient funds for the completing the building, and that some gen- 
 tlemen's names stand to the roll whose money has not yet increased 
 the bank ; and that there may be some ground for the following 
 notes : 
 
 " The fabrick 's finished, and the builder's part 
 Has shewn the reformation of his art ; 
 Bless'd with success, thus have their first essays 
 Reform d their buildings, not reformed their plays. 
 
246 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 The donor's bounty may be well designed, 
 
 But who can guess the model of the mind ? 
 
 Never was charity so ill employed, 
 
 Vice so discouraged, virtue so destroyed ; 
 
 Never foundation so abruptly laid, 
 
 So much subscribed, and yet so little paid. 
 
 On public faith the fabrick they begin, 
 
 And vice itself is run in debt to sin. 
 
 " After all, the author has nothing to say to the crime of a play ; 
 nor am I so narrow in my opinion as to think it an unlawful action, 
 either in the player's acting or the person's seeing a play, if it could 
 be abstracted from all the unhappy circumstances that attend our 
 theatres. Nor am I so angry at the gentlemen concerned in our 
 theatres, either as poets or actors : I know 'tis the taste of the town 
 that will have everything mix'd with something vicious ; or will not 
 be pleased with it. ' D n a sober dog ; a serious play is like a 
 game at nothing/ and away they go ; so that, in short, to reform 
 the stage would be, not to build it up, but to pull it down ; and if 
 nothing but representations of virtue, and decrying vice, should be 
 the dull subject, the wit would be lost, and the labour too, and all 
 the players and poets would be starved. But, gentlemen and ladies, 
 if you would have a reformation in the playhouse, you must reform 
 your taste of wit : and let the poet see you can relish a play, though 
 there be neither bawdy nor blasphemy in it. 
 
 " In short, the errors of the stage lie all in the auditory ; the 
 actors and the poets are their humble servants, and, being good 
 judges of what will please, are forced to write and act with all the 
 aggravations and excesses possible, that they may not be undone 
 and ruined, lose both their reputation and their employments. 
 
 " So easy a thing would it be to reform the stage ; so soon 
 would a mode of virtue ruin all the manufacture of vice in the 
 nation." 
 
 A prologue was spoken on the occasion of the opening, written 
 by Dr. Garth, a man who was, according to the unscrupulous, 
 scurrilous Leslie, a professed atheist, and chaplain of the Kit-cat 
 
LIFE OP DE FOE. 
 
 Club. The following verses are selected as a fair specimen of the 
 whole : 
 
 More sure presages from these walls we find 
 
 By Beauty founded, and by Wit designed ; 
 
 In the good age of ghostly ignorance, 
 
 How did cathedrals rise, and zeal advance ! 
 
 The merry monks said orisons at ease, 
 
 Large were their meals, and light their penances ; 
 
 Pardon for sins was purchased with estates, 
 
 And none but rogues in rags died reprobates. 
 
 But now that pious pageantry 's no more, 
 
 And stages thrive, as churches did before, 
 
 Your own magnificence you here survey, 
 
 Majestic columns stand where dunghills lay, 
 
 And cars triumphant rise from carts of hay. 
 
 Swains here are taught to hope, and nymphs to fear ; 
 
 And big Almanza's fight, mock-Blenheim's here. 
 
 Descending goddesses adorn our scenes, 
 
 And quit their bright abodes for gilt machines. 
 
 We have gone fully into the church-is -falling spirit of the times, 
 to show the absurdity of the cry a cry raised by a bribed French 
 interest, in order to bring in the Pretender upon the shoulders of a 
 besotted populace, influenced by an interested priesthood ; who in- 
 tended to crush dissent, that they and vested interests in rates and 
 tithes might be hand-and-glove through all time ; whatever might 
 become of the trick through the boundless expanse of eternity. 
 
 Huzza, boys ! throw up your hats for religion and the Pretender, 
 and down with the Dutch Presbyterians, and psalm-anthem-singing 
 Hogan-mogans ! T That was the trick ; but but it could not be 
 played. No ; the talent was all on the other side, backed by the 
 new titles of the monastic estates ; enjoyed by parties who had 
 power, and who exercised it : it was too late ! The church might 
 fall upon the gravestones ; but NO PRETENDER no re-establishment 
 of the Roman Catholic religion within these realms. Some of these 
 great patriots may have descendants, who would not scruple to palm 
 a church lie for a church truth upon a confiding, credulous British 
 
 1 t . e. Hugger-muggers Dutchmen. 
 
248 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 public ; but who would tremble in their shoes at the very idea of 
 the re-establishment of Popery ; lest the cabbage-stalls of Covent 
 Garden Market might be made to give way to the rebuilding of 
 chapel, cells, dormitory, and cloisters, to some religious order of 
 nuns, or sisters of mercy ; under the important appellation of the 
 CONVENT. No ! legislative lying is not so dangerous as the re- 
 establishment of Popery for them. 
 
 But to our dissenting playhouse and Dan Burgess, the Presby- 
 terian minister, or his deacon, Daniel De Foe ; for De Foe wrote a 
 prologue as well as Dr. Garth, and here it is : 
 
 Here whores in hogsties vilely blended lay, 
 
 Just as in boxes at our lewder play j 
 
 The stables have been cleansed, the jakes made clear, 
 
 Herculean labours ne'er will purge us here. 
 
 Some call this metamorphosis a jest, 
 
 And say, " We 're but a dunghill still at best : 
 
 The nastiness of all your common shores, 
 
 Being far less nauseous than our beaux and whores." 
 
 Bless us ! (said I) what monstrous beast 's a man ! 
 
 Whom rules can never guide, nor art make clean ; 
 
 View but our stately pile, the columns stand 
 
 Like some great council-chamber of the land ; 
 
 When strangers view the beauty and the state, 
 
 As they pass by, they ask" What church is that ?" 
 
 Thinking a nation as devout as we, 
 
 Ne'er build such domes but to some deity. 
 
 But when the salt assembly once they view, 
 
 What gods they worship, how blaspheme the true ; 
 
 How Vice's champions, uncontrolled within, 
 
 Roll in the very excrements of sin ; 
 
 The horrid emblems so exact appear, 
 
 That hell 's an ass to what 's transacted here. 
 
 Having done with church in danger in the battle-field of Blen- 
 heim, and having viewed the tottering fabric in the Presbyterian 
 conventicle, the Haymarket Theatre ; we will turn to the colonies, 
 and see whether graves and gravestones lie unencumbered with 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 249 
 
 wreck of chancel, tower, or steeple ; for at home there never was a 
 church but the tower was on the leads of the chancel ; or the steeple 
 had fallen, and very nearly killed the parson in the rectory. 
 
 Charles II. had laid claim to the so-called deserted colony of 
 Carolina, and had granted a patent of occupation on March 24, 
 1663, to eight noblemen and gentlemen, " who, being excited with 
 a laudable and pious zeal for the propagation of the gospel" the 
 gospel ! ten per cent, dividend, and a bonus ! This is hanging 
 Indian Sepoys by thousands, thanking the Lord for throwing his 
 enlightening face on heathen lands, and doubling the subscription 
 to the Bible Society ! We may rob the Sepoys of their fatherland ; 
 hang them for resisting ; but, never let us insult Heaven by 
 charging the Lord of it with imbecility or folly ; for God is not a 
 fool, to be mocked by our cant ; for the hangman's rope and cheap 
 editions look very like insult and mockery. Well, this converting- 
 the-heathen scheme took with the government ; it, I suppose, being, 
 along with the grantees, " excited by a laudable and pious zeal for 
 the propagation of the gospel among a barbarous people, who had 
 no knowledge of God." 
 
 The religious persecution against the dissenters at home soon 
 stocked this new colony with these oppressed religionists, perse- 
 cuted from Britain by test acts, and constant threats of occasional- 
 conformity bills. In process of time, as the colony advanced in 
 numbers and prosperity, the Church of England laid claim to all the 
 honours and emoluments in the colony, through test acts, and other 
 legal instruments, made to keep all places of profit or honour in the 
 hands of the select few ; so that church and dissent, steeple-house 
 and conventicle, threatened its destruction in 1705 : the resident 
 proprietors being dissenters for the most part ; but the proprietors 
 in England being Church-of-England-men, backed by the poor, 
 narrow government of Queen Anne. 
 
 During this agitation, De Foe published a pamphlet on the sub- 
 ject, entitled Party Tyranny; or, an Occasional Bill in Miniature, 
 as now practised in Carolina ; humbly offered to the Consideration of 
 both Houses of Parliament, 1705. 
 
 The constitution of Carolina was drawn up by John Locke, and, 
 
250 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 as might have been expected, was worthy of its author ; but time, 
 prosperity, and innovation, had superseded the original spirit of the 
 constitution : Church and Queen being as much a party -triumphant 
 cry in connection with the colony, as in the mother country. 
 
 In 1705, De Foe also wrote or published Advice to all Parties: 
 a tract which had been written in 1703, and seized, with his other 
 papers, by the vigilant High-Church champion, the Earl of Not- 
 tingham, the Queen's secretary of state ; but returned with all his 
 other voluminous papers, perhaps in mistake. In this tract De Foe 
 writes 
 
 " Popery and slavery will never go down with this nation. Popery 
 is so formidable a thing, that the very name of it would set the 
 whole nation in an uproar. Those who do not understand it, hate 
 it by tradition ; and I believe there are a hundred thousand plain 
 country fellows in England, who would spend their blood against 
 Popery, that do not know whether it be a man or a horse." 
 
 In the early part of this year, De Foe collected his remaining 
 tracts into a second volume, the first volume being printed in 1703. 
 This will account for the title-pages of volumes one and two being 
 so dissimilar, as to make a buyer of the work believe that he had 
 purchased odd volumes. The same occurs, but with a more marked 
 difference, in the Complete Tradesman, and in other works of his, 
 from the same cause : the volumes being printed at separate times, 
 with long intervening periods of time. 
 
 The reason De Foe gives for collecting his tracts into one volume 
 is, " the scandalous liberty of the press, which no man more than 
 myself covets to see rectified, is such that all manner of property 
 seems prostrated to the avarice of some people ; and if it goes on, 
 even reading itself will in time grow intolerable. No author is now 
 capable of preserving the purity of his style no, nor the natural 
 product of his thought to posterity ; since, after the first edition of 
 his work has shown itself, and perhaps sinks into a few hands, 
 piratic printers or hackney abridgers fill the world : the first with 
 spurious and incorrect copies; and the latter with imperfect and 
 absurd representations, both in fact, style, and design. 'Tis in vain 
 to exclaim at the villany of these practices, while no law is left to 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 251 
 
 punish them. To let it go on thus, will in time discourage all 
 manner of learning." 
 
 On March 26th in this year, De Foe published the Consolidator ; 
 or, Memoirs of sundry Transactions from the World in the Moon. 
 
 This work of 360 pages would, in all probability, be written when 
 De Foe was a prisoner in Newgate during the Queen's pleasure ; for 
 such was the sentence passed upon him in 1703, for writing the 
 Shot-test Way with the Dissenters. This book is a valuable history 
 of the circumlocution principles of passive obedience and non- 
 resistance in theory, with active resistance in practice, by the clergy 
 of the Established Church of England during the reign of James II. 
 The book is valuable, but encumbered with the disguise of being 
 written in the moon, and in moon-like terms and language ; but, 
 although the moon is a long way off, yet with the assistance of De 
 Foe's moon-vocabulary we may stumble out the sense into pretty 
 intelligible English. Take the following as a sample of this lunar 
 book : 
 
 te These great masters of distinction (the clergy of the Church of 
 England) have learnt to distinguish between active swearing and 
 passive swearing ; between de-facto loyalty and de-jure loyalty ; and 
 by this decent acquirement they obtained the art of reconciling 
 swearing allegiance without loyalty, and loyalty without swearing ; 
 so that -native and original loyalty may be preserved pure and unin- 
 terrupted, in spite of all subsequent oaths to prevailing usurpations. 
 Many are the mysteries, and vast the advantages, of this new- 
 invented method; mental reservations, inuendoes, and double 
 meanings, are toys to this; for they may be provided for in the 
 little terms of an oath ; but no provision can be made against this ; 
 for these men, after they have taken the oath, make no scruple to 
 declare they only swear to be quiet, as long as they can make no 
 disturbance ; that they are left at liberty still to espouse the interest 
 and cause of their former prince, they nicely distinguish between 
 obedience and submission; and tell you a slave taken into captivity, 
 though he swears to live peaceably, does not thereby renounce his 
 allegiance to his natural prince, nor abridge himself of a right to 
 attempt his own liberty, if ever opportunity present. 
 
252 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 " And this method of circumstantiating matters of fact into truth 
 or falsehood, suited to the occasion, is found admirably useful to the 
 solving the most difficult phenomena of state ; for by this art the 
 Church of England made persecution be against their principles at 
 one time, and reducible to practice at another. They made taking 
 up arms, and calling in a foreign power to depose their prince, con- 
 sistent with non-resistance and passive obedience ; nay, they went 
 further, they distinguished between a dissenter's taking arms and a 
 Church-of-England man ; and fairly proved this to be rebellion, and 
 that to be non-resistance. 
 
 "Nay, and which exceeded all the power of human art in the 
 highest degree of attainment that ever it arrived to, on our side the 
 moon ; they turned the tables so dexterously as to argument, upon 
 one sort of dissenters called Presbyterians, that, though they 
 repented of the war they had raised in former times, and protested 
 against the violence offered their prince ; and, after another party 
 had, in spite of them, beheaded him, took arms against the other 
 party, and never left contriving their ruin, till they had brought in 
 his son, and set him upon the throne again." 
 
 " Thus the Presbyterians were called the murderers of the father, 
 though they restored the son; and all the testimonials of their 
 sufferings and protests signified nothing; for this method of dis- 
 tinguishing has that powerful charm in it, that all those trifles we 
 call proofs and demonstration were of no use in this case. Custom 
 brought the story up to a truth, and in an instant all the dissenters 
 were hooked in under the general name of Presbyterians; at the 
 same time to hook all parties in the crime. Now, as it happened, 
 at last these Church-of-England gentlemen found it necessary to do 
 the same thing themselves, viz., to lay aside their loyalty, depose, 
 fight against, shoot bullets at, and throw bombs at their King, till 
 they frightened him away, and sent him abroad to beg his bread. 
 The dissenters began to take heart, and tell them now they ought 
 to be friends with them, and tell them no more of rebellion and 
 disloyalty ; nay, they carried it so far as to challenge them to bring 
 their loyalty to the test, and compare Dissenting loyalty and Church- 
 of- England loyalty together, and see who had raised more wars, 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 253 
 
 taken up arms oftenest, or appeared in most rebellions against their 
 kings; nay, who had killed most kings, the Dissenters or the 
 Church -of-England men; for there having been then newly fought 
 a great battle (Boyne) between the Church- of-England men under 
 their new Prince, and the armies of foreign succours under their 
 old King, in which their old King was beaten, and forced to fly a 
 second time ; the Dissenters told them that every bullet they shot 
 at the battle (of the Boyne) was as much a murdering their King as 
 cutting off the head with a hatchet was a killing his father." 
 
 I might go on, page after page, to good purpose, on the parties, 
 principles, and deceptions of the reign of James II., but space will 
 not allow ; suffice to say, that the people, the masses, the gentry, 
 with the clergy, were in such a state of subserviency and general 
 want of self-relying principle, that James II. might have substituted 
 the Roman Catholic religion in England for the Protestant, if he 
 had only taken due caution. This was De Foe's fixed opinion ; he 
 lived at the time, and devoted his life to studies of this nature ; and 
 was fully competent to give an opinion of what was passing around 
 him, in the religious or political world. 
 
 Bishop Burnet fully bears out De Foe ( s view of the utter pros- 
 tration of all vitality of political independency in the first year of 
 James II. On the calling together his first Parliament, every art 
 was practised upon the independency of the elector in the borough 
 constituencies; and scores of boroughs were disfranchised by the 
 mere King's will or order, and the powers of voting restricted to the 
 self -elected corporations of those boroughs ; and these corporations, 
 too, weeded out as to objectionable or independent burgesses, and 
 the gentry of their neighbourhoods substituted for them ; so that 
 the King had a complete packed House of Commons, to his heart's 
 content; with the nice sprinkling of appearance of opposition or 
 independency of forty members. This House was more corrupt 
 than any previous House of Commons that ever existed ; for they 
 even voted more money than the King required. With such tools 
 a skilful workman could have accomplished any oppression, with 
 due prudence ; but James being forced forward by his Italian Queen 
 and her confessors, and by his priests, made an attack upon the en- 
 
254 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 dowments of the Church of England, when the drum-ecclesiastic 
 was struck, when the church was in danger ; and then away flew this 
 pretended or lick-the-dust-for-bread subserviency ; for this loyalty 
 was of this class. Yes; a lick-the-dust class for bread ! It flew as 
 soon as self-interest found itself in danger of being superseded by 
 a competing or adverse sect of religionists. Our endowments in 
 danger ! Governments have great powers for mischief, if they only 
 exercise them with due caution, select safe tools, and mind what 
 they are about ; but princes and rulers are so apt to make a short 
 cut at the desired object, that they excite alarm by their haste, and 
 rouse the principle of resistance, almost lulled to sleep by kind 
 nursing, flattery, and gentle usage. Education of the people was 
 James II.'s grand project; but he was only a poor schoolmaster; 
 he was too hasty and passionate ; for he went upon the butcher- 
 boy-and-shepherd-dog principle, which does not suit the English 
 national temper. I have heard of the little lad telling his master 
 that he could do anything but knuckle ; but knuckle he could not ; 
 and so it is with men in England anything but knuckle. Now, 
 James II. tried to make the people of England knuckle, and he 
 failed; for knuckle they couldn't. Coercion could not drive Pres- 
 byterians, Independents, or Hogari-mogans, into a Roman Catholic 
 chapel. No ; British blood would not knuckle / 
 
 Ignatius Loyola tried this game in Italy, but by educating the 
 children into state-priesthood principles; for he began with the 
 cradle. Louis XIV. tried this scheme with some success. And 
 Catherine de Medici carried this condition of education into 
 state-priesthood religion, from Florence to France, as her marriage 
 settlement. 
 
 Educating the children out of the religion of their fathers may 
 be done ; but it requires a very steady hand to play the game. The 
 game may be learnt ; but is it worth learning ? No ; never ! but to 
 make some tricky expert hand, knave or fool, Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, as the reward of his dexterity in throwing the balls. The 
 whole trick is a game; and the archbishopric of Canterbury, the 
 stakes to be played for. 
 
 James II. surrendered his judgment to the influence of priests, 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 255 
 
 and it was his ruin. As King of England, he could have no interest 
 in the matter. Suppose all his subjects had wished to have been 
 Primitive Methodists,, what could that have been to him, so long as 
 they were honest Methodists, and honest subjects? It is a mistake 
 to suppose that a sovereign can have the least interest in closing a 
 Methodist chapel. A priest may rave, stickle, lament, and bluster ; 
 yes, and be paid for raving, for stickling, for lamenting, and for 
 blustering. It is his speculation ; and, if he be rewarded by a rich 
 bishopric, it is a paying speculation. But, pay or not the Derby 
 stake, or a butcher's cart no matter an ambitious parson is not 
 a king ; and God's Almighty name be praised yes ! be praised for 
 civil liberty and free religion. Down with all tampering with the 
 education of the people; which is only a pretence for priestly tyranny. 
 Suppose a neglected, mortgaged, bankrupt village a village standing 
 as a byword in its neighbourhood for total neglect and depravity ; 
 suppose, I say, this neglected spot of earth could have a little unpre- 
 tending building erected on it, called by what name you like 
 Ranter, Christian, Culamite, or Muggletonian for the disciples 
 were first called Christians at Antioch yes ! ranters there ! Yes ! 
 they were the ranters there ; for there was neither dean nor chapter, 
 nor lord bishop, with all the circumstance of place, pride, and im- 
 portance; no pluralities under j8400 per annum each, then; no 
 shuffling honest parishioners out of their rights, to pamper a priest- 
 hood, then ; no shuffling the cards of law, in the Lords or in the 
 Commons ! No, all poverty and meanness ; and, consequently, none 
 of the quips or quirks of dishonest or one-sided legislation, then. 
 They were first called Christians at Antioch, in derision ; for they 
 had no endowments. 
 
 Well; but to return to our own little Anabaptist conventicle 
 erected upon the village-green, for the gathering together all the 
 outside Hogan-mogan-conventicle-mongers of the district. The 
 gospel is preached there, on the sabbath and on the week-day, to 
 the poacher, and idle man-of-all-work in the hours of darkness, the 
 pigeon-stealer, the midnight burglar, or highway-lounger of the 
 night : what is the consequence ? A reclaiming of the whole fra- 
 ternity ; and this, too, outside the churchyard consecrated croft. 
 
256 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 The whole party never enter a church, and never intend to enter 
 one ; the drunkard becomes a sober man, who spends his time in 
 the bosom of his family instead of the pheasant preserve, the ale- 
 house, the beer- shop, or the king's highway ; he becomes a reformed 
 character, a comfort instead of a nuisance and a curse to his neigh- 
 bourhood and his family ; he becomes a respectable honest member 
 of society ; but shut up his conventicle tell this man he shall no 
 longer be Hogan-mogan, but he shall be church, what will be the 
 result ? Ask the wife, the children, the neighbours. John shall be 
 church, for the parson says so ; but John won't be church, for he 
 says so. Is he church ? No ! John can't knuckle John won't be 
 done ; he '11 return to the alehouse first he never was done by a 
 church parson ; and he never will. He can't consait church ; he 
 never could and he won't go ! What is to be done ? In England 
 there are thousands of families which the Church of England never 
 did touch, and never will never ! The church has 6,000,000 per 
 annum for the religious instruction of the people ; and you may, by 
 bribing the members, as Harley did when in power, by warming 
 their insides with victuals; and flattering the vanity of their outsides, 
 through my Lord Chamberlain's Ticket Office, for the mother and 
 daughters, and that puppy -lad who wears hair on his upper lip, un- 
 attached ! to look either like fool or swindler. I say, by flattering 
 all these at royal drawing- rooms and royal concert-rooms,Parliament 
 might be induced to grant another 6,000,000 per annum for state 
 instruction ; but they never will shut up the conventicle. 
 
 Suppose every child in England was taught to read and write, 
 from the public taxes ; what would be the result upon the taxpayer, 
 but a diminution of the power of employing the body, by the amount 
 taken for cultivating the mind. There would be an increased pressure 
 upon the vitality of the nation, with a decreased power of living, and 
 an increased power of perception of the difficulty. Would this empty 
 the conventicle? Would it stop the mouth of the Muggletonian 
 preacher? Would the Dutch -Presbyterian shepherd drop his an- 
 them ? Stickling parson might reap his deanery or his bishopric- 
 school inspector might reap his rectory school monitor might be 
 elevated to the post of supervisor ; but injustice would remain : 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 257 
 
 injustice, millions would be paid to school masters for teaching; 
 good books might be suppressed ; and slang, under the patronage 
 of the Harley of the day, might be promulgated by all his 
 bribed talent. Some half-dozen writers and thinkers might be 
 ruined in their reputations, by all this bribed talent for ribaldry 
 and slang; but would the conventicle be laughed down by the 
 church ? No ! No ! The Anabaptist conventicled hut upon the 
 green cries " No !" and points at the two 400 per annum, as the 
 wages of the pluralist. Kings fancy that they can legislate a nation 
 into leading-strings, by bamboozling them. James I. tried it, and 
 organized dissent. His son Charles tried it, and that dissent, orga- 
 nized by his father, cut off his head. His sons, Charles and James, 
 worked in Spain as soldiers of fortune for years, under Turenne, for 
 bread, instead of being seated upon a throne ; and this said James, 
 afterwards trying the bamboozling scheme, failed and ran, to live a 
 pauper on the bounty of France. Queen Anne poor weak woman ! 
 tried the same, and would have had to run like her father, but 
 for William Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire, and others ; who had 
 been left as a legacy of trustees, by the good King William III. 
 of glorious memory, who prevented the flight. Poor George III. 
 tried this ; and, poor mumbling old man ! a pretty mess he made of 
 it ; as the loss of the United States of America, and the vast in- 
 crease of the national debt, fully testify. 
 
 Let princes beware how they tamper with the education of the 
 people, for the people of England will not knuckle. Let rulers take 
 off the tax on paper, and all taxes on knowledge ; and let them leave 
 the rest ; for the people of England have a consait, and a will of 
 their own ; and, what is more they never did, and they never will, 
 knuckle either to kings or parsons. 
 
 The Consolidator professes to be a machine something like a 
 modern railway locomotive engine filled with fire and steam, but 
 fitted with wings instead of wheels ; and the feathers of these wings 
 were made from the members of the House of Commons, some for 
 ornament, others for use; each member constituting one feather. 
 This Consolidator book records passing events in England ; but, for 
 the safety of the writer, England is called the Moon ; and in other 
 
 17 
 
258 LIFE OF I)E FOE. 
 
 respects the book carries such an amount of caution in it, as to show 
 that speaking or writing out fully on parliamentary parties, events, 
 or contests, was not safe for the writer at the time he wrote. This 
 great caution induces me to suppose that the work was written when 
 Daniel De Foe was a prisoner in Newgate, in 1704, and confined 
 there during the Queen ; s pleasure; for such was his punishment 
 for writing the Shortest Way with the Dissenters ; for the fine of 
 200 marks imposed upon a man who had nothing, was placing 
 him prisoner for life, if the Queen or her ministers had desired 
 it. This Consolidator book was printed in 1705; and as it con- 
 tains 360 pages, and much political information of those times, and 
 the times preceding by some years, as the Kentish petitioners' im- 
 prisonment, which occurred in the reign of William III. ; his own 
 incarceration in Newgate, for writing the Shortest Way with the 
 Dissenters, in the reign of Anne, in 1703 ; and, what I like to find, 
 this prosecution for writing, connected with the break-up of the 
 ministry of the Earl of Nottingham. I have brought these two 
 events together more than once, as two parts of one complete whole ; 
 and I am glad to find De Foe brings them also together here his 
 prosecution and confinement in Newgate, and the break-up of Lord 
 Nottingham's position as secretary of state All these considerations 
 taken together, induce me to believe that the work occupied con- 
 siderable time in getting up, and was, besides, the product of great 
 pains and industry; and it is, moreover, a work worthy the reputation 
 of Daniel De Foe as a writer. As a work of fiction it is curious, as 
 being the model upon which Swift moulded his Gulliver's Travels ; 
 and also, as showing very forcibly his own views on many subjects 
 and parties, by his contrasts and comparisons made between the 
 inhabitants of this Earth and those of the Moon; as in the case of 
 the dissenters, who are represented in the Moon as never thinking 
 without first using a thinking-machine, called there a cogitator ; 
 while the English dissenters never used such a machine in England ; 
 but, on the contrary, made great use of a machine called an elevator. 
 Here we have a glance at John Howe and his deacons playing at 
 long-spoon and custard on lord mayor's day, through a prostitution 
 of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, to foster pride. The dis- 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE, 259 
 
 senters in 1705 did not stand high in the opinion of Daniel De 
 Foe ; for they possessed at the time more of the principle of raising 
 themselves than searching after the truth. This applies emphati- 
 cally, if not altogether, to the Presbyterian dissenters of that day. 
 
 It would almost appear that a flight to the Moon was through 
 China ; for our voyager is landed in the grand library of the Chi- 
 nese empire, at Tonquin ; to which library the meanest Chinese had 
 admittance, to learn the laws of his country; for there were no fools 
 there : for the emperors always observe the laws by observing the 
 pacta conventa of the government ; which pacta conventa show 
 natural right to be superior to temporal power ; while we in Europe 
 prove from pacta conventa, that kings and emperors come down 
 from heaven with crowns on their heads ; and all their subjects are 
 born with saddles on their backs. 
 
 This book on the sovereignty of the people was thought safest on 
 the shelf of the royal library, unread, and, of course, unquoted ; lest 
 our tract-writers in England on passive obedience, divine right, &c. 
 as Lesley, Sacheverell, and others should be blasphemed by the 
 mob, and brought into contempt of the people; so far as to be 
 questioned for the blood of Algernon Sidney and Argyle. 
 
 De Foe considers the doctrine of passive obedience among states- 
 men to be like the Copernican system of the earth's motion among 
 philosophers ; which, though contrary to knowledge, and incapable 
 of demonstration, yet is adhered to in general, because by it they 
 can solve the dark phenomena in nature better than they could 
 without it ; the dark obscurity of the doctrine being useful in the 
 dark obscure of philosophy, for purposes of delusion. Modern 
 statesmen approve of passive obedience ; not that it admits either 
 a rational defence, or a demonstration ; but because by it they can 
 better explain, as well as defend, all coercion in cases of invasion of 
 natural rights than they could without it. 
 
 In this library our voyager found a tract on Wind, which out- 
 does even the sacred text, which makes us suppose it could not be 
 written for the Jews ; for this book tells whence it cometh and 
 whither it goeth. This book turns all our philosophers into fools ; 
 and their transactions a parcel of empty stuff, even down to the 
 
 17* 
 
260 
 
 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 experiments of the Royal Society of this country. In this book 
 you have the receipt for making glasses of hogs' eyes for seeing the 
 wind, its regular and irregular motions, compositions, and quan- 
 tities ; and by their algebra they can cast up its duration, violence, 
 and extent. These calculators can state the revolutions of storms, 
 and how many shall happen in any period of time, with as much 
 precision and truth as could be done by any philosopher in 
 England. 
 
 This wonderful book, although in the royal library at Tonquin, 
 was written not by a native of this world, but by an author born in 
 the Moon ; but brought to China by our voyager on one of his 
 return passages, and deposited there with other volumes : one, on 
 Tides, being written two thousand years before the deluge. 
 
 One work on the Brain shows how that organ is divided into two 
 large warehouses, of which Conscience has one, and the Devil the 
 other. The first is very seldom opened, but has a till in which all 
 the follies and crimes of life are dropped ; but the locks are very 
 rusty, for they are never or seldom opened, but on extraordinary 
 occasions, as sickness, afflictions, gaols, casualties, and deaths. But 
 as for the Devil's warehouse, he has always two constant warehouse- 
 keepers Pride and Conceit; and these are always at the door, 
 showing their wares, and exposing the pretended virtues and ac- 
 complishments of the man, by way of ostentation. In this former 
 work on the Brain we have a long essay on Memory ; and the most 
 wonderful part is, the power of wilful for get fulness. It is fully 
 proved that there is no such power in nature; and that all pre- 
 tenders to it are impostors, who put a banter upon the world ; for 
 it is impossible for a man to oblige himself to forget a thing ; since 
 he that can remember to forget, and at the same time forget to 
 remember, possesses an art more than the Devil. 
 
 The composition of a wit takes a trifling place in the pages of 
 this lunar essay, showing how effluxious, vapours, deliriums, giddi- 
 ness of the brain, and looseness of the tongue, form the principal 
 ingredients of the character. The humours of a wit expose him to 
 all kinds of disasters, as loss of property; for Waller, Denham, 
 Dryden, and others, were obliged to condemn their races to lunacy 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 261 
 
 and blockheadism, only to prevent the fatal destruction of their 
 families by entailing wit upon their posterity. 
 
 Wit contains beauism, dogmaticality , whimsisication, impudensity, 
 and other foppe?'osities, which, issuing from the brain, descend into 
 all the faculties, and branch themselves by infinite varieties into all 
 the actions of life. These beggar the head, the tail, the purse, and 
 the whole man, till he becomes as poor and despicable as negative 
 nature can leave him ; abandoned by sense, manners, modesty, and 
 what's worse money; having nothing left but poetry, dies in 
 a ditch, or a garret, a-la-mode de Tom Browne (Doctor Browne) , 
 uttering rhymes and nonsense to the last moment. 
 
 These poor creatures (wits) are not to be reproached, since Nature 
 has formed them to act coxcombs by organic agencies, and com- 
 pelled them, by the necessity of the laws of reproduction, to be what 
 they are wits. 
 
 The discovery is wonderful, and edifying, and such as our side of 
 the world could not produce; but Wit and Folly have been made 
 out by a lunar philosopher to be near akin. 
 
 It is here stated that Addison would not write the poem called 
 the Campaign, for the minister lord, without having j200 per 
 annum settled upon him ; " since His known they have but one 
 author in the nation who writes for them for nothing, and he is 
 labouring very hard to obtain the title of blockhead, and not be 
 paid for it." Who was this author for we have him repeatedly 
 alluded to, as working for nothing but ingratitude and abuse? 
 His name was Daniel De Foe. 
 
 " Denny had to write twenty-two plays to show he was a cox- 
 comb ; but the Chinese bookshelf would have given the information 
 without this book-writing ; and Dryden, too, might have told his 
 fate, having his genius slung upon a swivel, to turn round as fast as 
 the times; for he wrote elegies on Oliver Cromwell and Charles II., 
 with all the coherence imaginable ; he wrote Religio Laid, and the 
 Hind and Panther ; and yet remained the same man : to change 
 his religion, change his coat, change his master, but yet never 
 change his nature. 
 
 "How useful a thing it would be for most sorts of our people, 
 
262 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 especially statesmen, parliament-men, convocation-men, philoso- 
 phers, physicians, quacks, mountebanks, stockjobbers, and all the 
 mob of the nation's civil or ecclesiastical bone-setters together, with 
 some men of the law, some of the sword, and all of the pen : I say, 
 how useful and improving a thing it must be to them, to take a 
 journey up to the world in the Moon ; but, above all, how much 
 more beneficial it would be to them that stayed behind !" 
 
 De Foe expresses " great desire to go up to the world in the Moon, 
 having heard of such extraordinary knowledge to be obtained there ; 
 since, in the pursuit of knowledge, wiser men than he had taken as 
 unwarrantable nights, and gone a great deal higher than the Moonj 
 into the strange abyss of dark phenomena, which they neither could 
 make other people understand, or even understand themselves; 
 witness Malbranch, Locke, Hobbes, Boyle, Norris, Asgil, Coward; 
 and Dean Swift's Tale of a Tub." 
 
 This great lunar searcher into Nature has left wonderful disco- 
 veries behind him, in various engines and contrivances, to go from 
 China to the Moon. 
 
 " As for Bishop Wilkins's mechanical motions, or the artificial 
 wings of the learned Spaniard, they are fools to this gentleman, 
 As for his telescopes, too, they are of such power that both moon 
 and planets will afford the time of day to this earth by their dials, 
 just as plainly as, from London, a clock-face might be read at 
 Windsor Castle; and his speaking-trumpet, too, unfinished when 
 he died, would have done wonders in conveying earthly sounds to 
 the moon, and bringing their acquired knowledge, with their daily 
 improvements in science, back in return." 
 
 De Foe had the notion that a presentation of one of these tele- 
 scopes to the Royal Society, might have raised its reputation for 
 science to such a pitch, as to preserve the vitality of the reputation 
 of that learned body for at least forty years ; " and thus the repu- 
 tation of the So-So's might be recovered in England." 
 
 " In this philosopher's first voyage to the Moon, he found there, 
 men, women, beasts, birds, fishes, and insects, of the same species 
 as our own. The men no wiser, better, nor bigger than here; the 
 women no handsomer or honester than ours. There were knaves 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 263 
 
 and honest men, honest women, arid prostitutes, of all sorts, coun- 
 tries, nations, and kindred, as on this side the skies ; and they were 
 all flocking about him, to see the man who had come from their 
 moon ; and one of their savans cultivated Daniel's acquaintance so 
 far as to borrow his diary, journal, or note-book, from which to 
 publish a few extracts for the information of his people." Poor 
 fellow ! he was called before his betters for writing De-Foe pam- 
 phlets in the Moon, and he was told, by the Sir Simon Harcourt, 
 solicitor-general of the Moon, as poor Daniel had been told at the 
 Old Bailey, by the same earthly individual, that they could not bear 
 the reflections of "this damned satirical way of writing; and so 
 they put the poor scribe, astrologer, almanac-man, or what he might 
 be, into prison, ruined his family, and not only fined him ultra- 
 contenementum, but exposed him in the high places of their capital 
 city, for the mob to laugh at him for a fool. This erection was like 
 our pillory, and was appointed for mean criminals fellows who cheat 
 and cozen people, forge writings, forswear themselves, and the like. 
 But the people pitied the poor writer; and, instead of hooting at 
 the victim of tyranny, only showed their sympathy with him by loud 
 shouts of affection when he was taken down/' 
 
 Writing on lunar mechanics, De Foe says of the engine called a 
 cogitator, that " had our unhappy monarch James II. been screwed 
 up in a cogitator, he never would have trusted the English clergy 
 wlien they preached up that non-resistance, which he must needs 
 see they could never practise ; for he would have reflected that it 
 was against nature to expect they should stand still, and let him 
 tread upon them ; that they should, whatever they had preached or 
 pretended to, hold open their throats to have them be cut, and tie 
 their own hands from resisting the Lord's anointed." 
 
 " And the clergy, too had they been screwed in this cogitator, 
 they had never turned martyrs for their allegiance to the late King 
 James II., only for the sake of having Dr. Sancroft, Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, in their company." 
 
 Our lunar traveller found one nation very wealthy, populous, 
 potent, and terrible ; but generally at war with one of the greatest 
 monarchs of that world ; and with any other monarchs, great or 
 
264 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 little, with whom a quarrel could be picked ; and when not at war 
 abroad, always quarrelling with one another at home. They were 
 all very religious, but not two of them could agree to worship God 
 in the same manner : some being high-worship men, and some low ; 
 but most of them screwed as to their principles in the elevator ; 
 working, I suppose, on the principle of "Glory be to God but well 
 done I." 
 
 Our voyager could not understand how a kingdom divided against 
 itself could stand ; or how a kingdom fighting with all the world 
 could stand running into debt to find employment for certain 
 members of the community, who were brought up to the fighting 
 trade, and who must be maintained in their calling. "But," said I, 
 "if this people go on fighting and snarling at all the world, and one 
 among another, in this manner, they will certainly be ruined and 
 undone, either subdued by some more powerful neighbour, whilst 
 one party will stand still and see the other's throat cut, though 
 their own turn immediately follow; or else they will destroy one 
 another/' 
 
 The danger here from foreign foes is not so great as would at first 
 sight appear ; for no sooner does a foreign enemy appear, than they 
 all fall in together as loving as brothers, and all turn their utmost 
 energies to work to fight that common enemy ; no matter the cause 
 of dispute, whether just or unjust right or wrong fight, fight, 
 fight; and run into debt for materials with which to fight ; and not 
 one word heard about their religion, so long as the contest abroad 
 lasts; but, only proclaim peace abroad, and you proclaim discord 
 amongst brethren at home ; fighting done with, then keep up the 
 spirit of contention about religion. Yes; my religion is better than 
 yours mine is a pet religion, and enjoys the loaves and fishes ; we 
 have the endowments; we have pluralities; we have the riches, 
 and consequently the power ; while you are poor, poverty-stricken 
 Muggletonians ; you don't use the elevator, we do ; you are poor, 
 scabbed Lazarus, and we are Dives. We use the elevator, and you 
 make what use of the coaitator you like ; give me the loaves and 
 the fishes ! Bread 's the stuff ! 
 
 The real difference in religion is not so great, but all might kneel 
 side by side, and worship their common Creator according to the 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 265 
 
 light that was in them ; but this would not do for the ruling power ; 
 for if there were no religion to quarrel, spar, or fight about, there 
 might be other causes of quarrel arise, which might be more incon- 
 venient to the ruling powers. The court politicians of the Moon, 
 like certain court politicians nearer home, always liked plenty of 
 religious strife to work upon ; for it kept the people fully and harm- 
 lessly employed, and prevented " their more narrow inspection into 
 depredations and encroachments on their liberties, which was always 
 making on them by the court." 
 
 Whatever the court might do, there was naturally in the breed of 
 these people a contentious spirit, produced by the very nature of 
 their existence as a people; they were a breed sprung from the 
 gloomy, foreboding, suspicious malignants of all the nations of the 
 earth : a sort of what I might call blowers-through-the-nose breed 
 of men I 'm-as-good-as-you class of mortal beings ! 
 
 What a strange thing that people should be so blind to their own 
 interests as to allow the court to play at battledoor and shuttlecock 
 with them as churchmen and dissenters ! It is thoroughly de- 
 plorable ; but so it was in the Moon, where the court could jolt the 
 people's heads together over trifles ; and so rule and overreach them 
 when divided. All this proceeds from a constitutional pride, which 
 despises the cogitator, but worships the elevator. 
 
 "Pride cometh before destruction, and a haughty spirit before 
 a fall," has been a maxim both of earth and moon for a hundred 
 generations, and will continue, I fear, through all time, as the main 
 instrument of courtly oppressors, for the destruction of liberty. I 
 may be wrong, but I believe that no instrument is so powerful in 
 the hands of the rulers of a people, for the destruction of civil and 
 religious liberty, as pride. Oh ! shade of Andrew Marvell ! the 
 man who could live four days upon a shoulder of mutton, and fear- 
 lessly and publicly despise the offered patronage of Charles II. ! 
 
 This work was attacked by Dr. Browne, Tutchin, and others, in 
 sundry tracts, as the Moon-Calf; or, accurate Reflections on the 
 Consolidator; and A Journey to the World in the Moon ; and also in 
 A Second and more strange Journey to the World in the Moon : 
 " containing a comical Description of that remarkable Country, 
 with the Character and Humours of the Inhabitants;" with. the 
 
266 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 promise in an advertisement of " A Letter from the Man in the 
 Moon to the Author of the True-Born Englishman, containing a 
 variety of diverting news and comical intrigues relating to the pre- 
 sent posture of affairs in Europe." All the above were pamphlets 
 pirated from De Foe's Consolidator, wretchedly got up, curtailed, 
 mutilated, and sold in the streets as the last work of Daniel De Foe, 
 by the common street-hawkers, criers, or ballad-sellers. Such was 
 De Foe's reputation as a writer ; and such was the compliment a 
 rough one no doubt, but yet a compliment to the man, and his 
 talent for writing. 
 
 De Foe next wrote " The Experiment ; or, the Shorter Way with 
 the Dissenters exemplified : being the Case of Mr. Abraham Gill, a 
 Dissenting Minister in the Isle of Ely ; and a full Account of his 
 being sent for a Soldier by Mr. Fern (an Ecclesiastical Justice of 
 the Peace) and other Conspirators. To the Eternal Honour of the 
 Temper and Moderation of High-Church Principles. Humbly dedi- 
 cated to the Queen." 1705 : London. 
 
 The subject of this pamphlet, Abraham Gill, was born at Riving- 
 ton, in Lancashire, in 1665 ; and was partly educated by the dis- 
 senters, but afterwards went to Brazennose College, Oxford, where 
 he graduated B.A. ; from which place he went to Parham, the family 
 residence of Lord Willoughby, as a tutor, where he remained two 
 years ; and after that he took orders in the Church of England in 
 1692. He was ordained to the curacy of Maney, near Wisbeach, 
 where he remained two years, preaching twice each Sunday, contrary 
 to the practice of the neighbourhood. In 1695 he went to Wilney, in 
 the same county, a chapelry in the gift of the inhabitants, where he 
 remained seven years, to the satisfaction of his flock. He soon 
 became dissatisfied with the Liturgy, in certain of its parts, and 
 presently in the whole of them. On this the rector of Upwell, the 
 mother church, Dr. Gregg, remonstrated, and threatened to place 
 another curate at Wilney, to supersede Mr. Gill ; but, he showing 
 the rector that this chapel was extra-parochial, so far as discipline 
 went, the rector was satisfied, and, as a gentlemen, very properly 
 desisted from giving any further trouble on the occasion. 
 
 Some time after this, Dr. Gregg was succeeded in the rectory by 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 267 
 
 Mr. Hugh James, a man fond of making something important of 
 himself as an official in the parish ; and he attempted to remove 
 Mr. Gill from his chapelry. By a series of persecutions he suc- 
 ceeded, whereupon Mr. Gill retired into Lincolnshire, where perse- 
 cuting malice followed him, and brought charges fictitious ones 
 though which caused this poor man to be thrown into prison ; but 
 released on the failure of the appearance of the prosecutors at the 
 trial. This treatment excited such an interest among the people of 
 his former chapelry in Upwell parish, where we have shown he re- 
 sided seven years to the satisfaction of his flock, that many of them 
 invited him to settle there again, but as a dissenting minister. 
 With this request he complied, and a chapel was legally licensed. 
 Here his enemies closed upon him, and, by legal process of writs 
 and legal fictions, committed him by writ of habeas corpus to Nor- 
 wich gaol, on the serious charges of felony, trespass, contempt, and 
 other crimes, which not being proved on the trial, he was of course 
 discharged. 
 
 Mr. Gill, returning to his people in Upwell parish, was threatened 
 by James the rector, and his curate, Lateward, with a committal to 
 prison again, if he preached in their parish. He did preach, and was 
 arrested shortly afterwards for holding a conventicle, and was com- 
 mitted to Wisbeach gaol for the offence. 
 
 The quarter sessions passed over, and the assizes coming on, and 
 he still in prison and untried, these two clergymen conspired with 
 other justices to impress him as a soldier, before the assizes should 
 come on. This was done, notwithstanding GilPs standing on his 
 rights as a freeholder of Lancashire, and a freeman of Wigan. After 
 enlistment, Gill was marched forty miles to Cambridge ; where he 
 was arrested for debt and locked up in the gaol ; and, being locked 
 up, he could not attend the muster roll among the soldiers ; when 
 Fern the justice the clerical justice issued a warrant for his appre- 
 hension as a deserter. By these several persecutions he was driven 
 to seek the shelter of the law, when he moved for a writ of habeas 
 corpus to discharge him from the enlistment ; and, a rule of court 
 against the conspirators being granted, things were made up with 
 his creditors ; and after seven weeks' imprisonment, he returned to 
 
268 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 Wilney, where he found his poor wife and children in the greatest 
 distress from destitution. 
 
 Early in the summer of 1705, a pamphlet, entitled Advice to the 
 Ladies, by the author of the True-Born Englishman, was cried about 
 the streets by the news-hawkers, and, as usual, brought a ready 
 sale; for anythirig would sell if sold as the latest production of 
 Daniel De Foe, whose name was constantly stolen in this way, for 
 the sale of worthless, nameless trash, which never could have obtained 
 a sale but by this artificial forcing. De Foe had to advertise in his 
 Review, that all this hawked trash was stolen, even if the work cried 
 was his ; for he never employed street-hawkers to cry his own books; 
 and that in future he should publish no book without his name being 
 properly affixed to it. 
 
 The next production from the fertile pen of De Foe was the Diet 
 of Poland, 1705; in which William III. is named Sobieski; and 
 most of the political characters of his reign, and that of his suc- 
 cessor, are drawn to the life the Earl of Halifax, Russell, and 
 Somers, being especially and favourably portrayed ; and Notting- 
 ham, Rochester, Seymour, Rooke, and others, are drawn by way of 
 contrast, to show off his better portraits, his heroes of the national 
 legacy left by William the Patrotic of glorious memory, to this 
 country, to keep it from anarchy; and preserve his poor weak sister- 
 in-law in her inheritance, in spite of herself. 
 
 In this poem he reviews the opposition of the High-Church- 
 Pretender-serving clergy, to the Occasional Bill, and their general 
 bigotry and intolerance, where French interests could be served ; 
 for they were French and Pretender all over ; in short, they were 
 anything but Dutch-Presbyterian, or Dan -Burgess-psalm-singing 
 Muggletonian. 
 
 When once the pulpit plague infects the land, 
 And sermon-readers get the upper hand, 
 The nation 's ruined all the town 's undone, 
 And tongue-pad evils through the vitals run : 
 Reason submits its captivated head, 
 And raging nonsense governs in its stead. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 AT this time, De Foe was appointed by Harley, the secretary of 
 state, to some important and secret mission on the continent of 
 Europe ; but whether in France or Spain, is uncertain ; but cer- 
 tainly in one of these countries ; for the service was a dangerous 
 one, requiring some considerable Downing- Street modesty of face in 
 passport, and credential papers ; as bulwarks against prying country 
 justices, and jack-in-office officials of the landing-stage. On this 
 business there is a letter extant in Birch's Manuscripts (No. 4291) 
 in the British Museum ; and this letter is addressed by De Foe to 
 Harley, the minister ; though De Foe's name is not appended to it, 
 (F.) being the only signature. Harley, in this letter, is requested 
 to address his answer to Mr. Christopher Hurt. The papers enclosed 
 in the letter sent to Harley were expressly written for him, being 
 observations on public opinion, on the affair of the Fleet (1705), 
 an unhappy subject ; and the intelligence sent to the minister on 
 public opinion is much below the excitement on the subject. What 
 was it? He assures the minister that he has "no personal design" 
 as to Sir George Rooke, the admiral : " I neither know him, nor 
 am concerned with him, or with any that does know him, directly 
 or indirectly ; I have not the least disrespect for him, or any per- 
 sonal prejudice, on any account whatever. I hope you will please 
 to give full credit to me in this, otherwise it would be very rude and 
 presuming to offer you the paper." He is preparing with joy to 
 execute the minister's commands on Thursday next, and furnishing 
 " myself with horses, &c." Furnishing himself with horses, fyc. : 
 what does this mean? Scotland? A secret trip to Scotland, for 
 Harley the tricky minister, and friend of the Queen ? Horses would 
 not be required to ride to France. No ! nor yet to Spain. But 
 for Scotland, if De Foe had to visit the Scottish lairds or chieftains 
 
270 LIFE OF DE FOE, 
 
 in their strongholds or castles, he would require horses, et cetera; 
 and the Diet of Poland, the satire on the English nobility, he wants 
 returning, from Harley, to whom it had been lent, to carry into the 
 country with him ; " and, as I am sure of its being very useful, I 
 cannot but importune you to let me perfect it, and turn it abroad 
 into the world." 
 
 "The other papers which I purposed to furnish, I prefer, with your 
 (Harley's) license, to send you per post." Why this per post ? 
 Dare he not trust the bearer with the parcel ? No ; but per post, 
 and signed, of course, as agreed upon beforehand, Christopher Hurt. 
 Yes ! and, if you like, the parcel endorsed Notes on Scotch Intrigue. 
 Yes ! hand-and-glove : Harley and De Foe, Queen Anne, Doctor 
 Sacheverell, the parsons, and James VIII. of our court at St. 
 Germains. Is this possible? Harley was a back-stair adviser before 
 he was minister of state ; he was related to Mrs.Masham, the super- 
 seder of the Duchess of Marlborough in the Queen's confidence ; he 
 was tricky and unscrupulous, but the Queen's implicit confidential, 
 and she poor woman ! was all church, steeple, and Pretender, at 
 heart ; whatever she might appear to be under the shadow of the 
 birchen rod of William Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire, and his 
 coexecutors or guardians for Britain's commonwealth. Harley had 
 the entire support of the French interest of the most corrupt House 
 of Commons that England ever knew; and by these men was 
 Harley created Speaker in three successive Parliaments ; and this 
 command of the Commons, attained through the bowels of the House; 
 for Harley was a great feeder of the members ; placed him secretary 
 of state by Lord Godolphin and his Whig friends, in order to lead, 
 feed, or drive that House, which they had neither the power, nor 
 the inclination to purchase power (for it was a belly power), of lead- 
 ing, or driving, or feeding. 
 
 But, to return to De Foe's letter to the Queen's secretary of 
 state. " By post" he will send "some notes relating to the Parlia- 
 ment, and a scheme of an office for secret intelligence, at home and 
 abroad." Some detective-police business ; for secret intelligence 
 secret intelligence! what could it be in 1705, at home and abroad? 
 when De Foe is buying horses for a journey to Scotland, and he, 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 271 
 
 when there, requiring Downing- Street modesty for protection; and 
 he, too, to be addressed as " Mr. Christopher Hurt" per post ; for 
 the service was a dangerous one, requiring protection from the 
 meddling, prying gossip of Scotch whisky- drinking justices. In 
 this letter De Foe writes on going abroad ; but it must be con- 
 sidered that a journey from London to the Highlands of Scotland 
 in 1705, would be considered and termed going abroad; for the 
 trip from one central English county to another would cause a man 
 to make his will before he set out on his travels "to foreign 
 parts." 
 
 In reading De Foe's works, there is one circumstance which has 
 excited my attention, and that is, the proud, commanding, sacred 
 office of freeholder ; he was a freeholder in more than one county; 
 and he was a freeman of London ; and this feeling in De Foe is 
 really infectious, from the poetic association of ideas from other 
 quarters; particularly Paul objecting to be punished before trial, 
 on the ground of his being a freeman of Home : the centurion 
 stating, that with a great sum he had purchased the privilege or 
 honour ; but Paul could reply triumphantly, " but I was born free," 
 yes, the son of a freeman ! How he would stand erect on the 
 declaration, before the honour-buying Roman officer ! 
 
 I could almost wish that the old title of freeholder of England 
 could have been preserved in all its illusive importance of antiquity; 
 for the antiquity is illusory, as going no further back than the 
 eighth and tenth of Henry VI., A.D. 1429-31 ; when 2 per annum 
 was equal in value to 12 per annum in the reign of Queen Anne; 
 and equal to 20 per annum in the early part of the reign of 
 George III., when Sir William Blackstone, who wrote the Com- 
 mentaries, remarked upon the fact. The keeping up the illusion of 
 veneration for the forty-shilling freehold franchise is impossible, so 
 mixed up as it is in practice with freemen, potwallopers, and scot- 
 and-lot tax and rate payers, as borough voters ; and then the Duke 
 of Buckingham's 50 tenant- at- will qualification, and the ten-pound 
 per annum borough voter ; all these weaken or break up the charm 
 of antiquity, illusory as it was. The old qualifications must follow 
 
272 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 the course of time, and give way to modern innovations of terms 
 and usages. The antiquity of the English forty-shilling freeholder 
 is illusory altogether ; for before the breaking- up of the monastic 
 institutions by Henry VIII., the character of an ordinary English 
 freeholder did not exist as a working party in the state. The act 
 for creating a forty- shilling- freeholder qualification was not an ex- 
 pansive move, but a restrictive one ; for previous to this restriction 
 on the polling-day at elections, and scot-and-lot show of hands, the 
 true old Gothic mode of election of knights and burgesses to serve 
 in Parliaments, exercised no doubt for centuries through the whole 
 of Germany and along the shores of the Baltic: I say, on the 
 breaking-up of the old Gothic system of scot -and -lot poll- day muster, 
 when heads were counted, not acres heads, not rent-rolls, the baron 
 or barons, alone or in combination, who could carry most heads or 
 polls to the hustings, would stand the best chance of the sheriff's 
 verdict as to the show of hands, if each of those hands was well 
 furnished with a good workable hedging-bill, hayfork, halberd, or 
 even salmon-laister. Before the restrictive act of the forty-shilling 
 freeholder an act worthy of a Duke of Buckingham, the last of the 
 Plantagenets ! scot-and-lot show of hands was the turning-point 
 of elections ; and this, without the modern innovations of lawyers, 
 poll-clerks, bill-stickers, or vote-corruptors by drink, influence of 
 money, or intimidation by layman or parson. 
 
 De Foe was proud of the poetic feeling of respectability, of the 
 antiquity of the order his order of freeholders ; but if De Foe 
 had been an antiquary in these matters, he would have taken a 
 more poetic flight than that of freeholder ; he must have gone to 
 potwalloper or potboiler house or hearth holder, taking his share, 
 or scot and lot, in all incomings and outgoings, with the other inha- 
 bitants of the borough. De Foe would have found that freeholder 
 was a debasing, restricting device of interested rulers, for curtailing 
 the liberties of the people; and he would have found, on a thorough 
 investigation of the subject, that polling the people by a show of 
 hands, will carry the point of antiquity, against the limitation of a 
 land-tenure, by twenty centuries of Gothic usage. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 The people must the person first create, 
 
 And so the man became a magistrate. 
 
 If any right directed in this choice, 
 
 ' Twas property obtained the general voice; 
 
 He had the justest title to command, 
 
 Whose property prevail'd, and own'd the land; 
 
 And so elective power commenced its reign, 
 
 Where equal right of property began. 
 
 The land divided, right to rule divides, 
 
 And universal suffrage then provides ; 
 
 The government lay in the general voice, 
 
 They only had the power that had the choice. 
 
 The undisputed right is plainly trac'd, 
 
 Where Nature first had due possession plac'd ; 
 
 Thus the collective body of a land, 
 
 In right of property, had power contain'd, 
 
 And all original right with tJiem remain'd. 
 
 They had the right, because the land } s their own, 
 
 And property 's the basis of a throne : 
 
 He that had all the land, had all the power, 
 
 The property, the title must secure ; 
 
 If he eujoy'd in common with the rest, 
 
 While right remains in common, title must. 
 
 No man can claim a power of government, 
 
 Where they that own the land will not consent. 
 
 If any single man possess this land, 
 
 And had the right, he must have the command ; 
 
 If once he was but landlord of the isle, 
 
 He must be king, because he own'd the soil ; 
 
 No man his just succession could dispute ; 
 
 He must both make the laws, and execute ; 
 
 No laws could ever be on him impos'd, 
 
 His claim of right the people's claim foreclosed; 
 
 And he that would not to his rule submit, 
 
 Must quit the place, the place was all his right. 
 
 When any thus by force or fraud obtain 
 
 Power, not deputed right, that power 's in vain ; 
 
 The people only true, first power could show, 
 
 W 7 hat only they tmjoy'd, thev only could bestow ; 
 
 18 
 
274 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 Their Maker taught them tyrants to prevent, 
 
 And trusted them with their own government : 
 
 No rules of management were e'er set down ; 
 
 Nature was furnish *d to direct her own : 
 
 The high unerring light of Providence, 
 
 Left that to latent cause and consequence ; 
 
 Hardly suspecting men would be such fools, 
 
 To let their monarchs tread down Nature's rules ; 
 
 No nat'ral fence of power supreme prepar'd, 
 
 But left the crime to be its own reward; 
 
 Left men to be by their own follies curst, 
 
 And he or they that will be ruin'd, must. 
 
 He left them masters of themselves, and free, 
 
 And trusted them with their own liberty ; 
 
 For Providence, which never works by halves, 
 
 Would ne'er ha' made mankind to make 'em slaves 
 
 It quite destroys the meaning of the thing, 
 
 To make a nation only for a king ; 
 
 To make one life to forty thousand heads, 
 
 And give one wretch the knife to cut the threads. 
 
 Heaven gave them sense and reason to direct, 
 
 The liberty he gave them to protect ; 
 
 But as they have that liberty betray'd, 
 
 And so defac'd the glorious thing he made ; 
 
 They that are willing to be thus opprest, 
 
 He lets them live unpitied, die unblest. 
 
 Satire, give off the search of sovereign right ; 
 
 'Tis found; the ancient secret's come to light ; 
 
 Not in the flaming crimes of barbarous men, 
 
 Who conquer nations merely to obtain 
 
 The name of tyrant, and the power to reign : 
 
 But wheresoever the property appears, 
 
 The true regalia 's there the kingdom 's theirs : 
 
 Whether in all the people it remains, 
 
 'Tis PROPERTY the right of power contains. 
 
 From this just title men might fairly plead, 
 
 Divine succession has a sacred head ; 
 
 For right of property 's a sacred law ; 
 
 Nature consents, and reason 's kept in awe. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 275 
 
 All the just bonds of government in man, 
 
 In i\\\$ foundation principle began : 
 
 Here only right hereditary lies, 
 
 Succession 's born of this, and with it dies ; 
 
 This is divine, and from the first of time, 
 
 By this one title God himself lays claim. 
 
 He rules the world, because the world 's his own, 
 
 And by this claim first government begun ; 
 
 By this the power descends ; by this 'tis just ; 
 
 For were the lands our own, the kingdom must : 
 
 Wherever Providence transplants a nation, 
 
 The government goes always with possession. 
 
 If governments have since swell* d up too high, 
 
 Assum'd on life, and vanquished property; 
 
 The error in the governors appears ; 
 
 'T has gain'd on time, and swell'd its powers by years ; 
 
 But all 's encroachment still, and usurpation, 
 
 And time can never bless the alteration. 
 
 Here, again, we have De Foe's partiality for his freehold quali- 
 fication a freeman of Britain, and that freedom based upon a pro- 
 perty qualification, was almost a romantic passion with him, and 
 constituted him poet as well as patriot; and I must confess the 
 feeling becomes infectious; for I feel the romance of the feeling 
 myself. 
 
 We talk of reforming the House of Commons ; let us go back at 
 once to the real origin of the House the Gothic origin ; not the 
 Norman importation of Danish tyranny under Norman banners : 
 no ; but to the real usage of Gothic ancestry ; and we land at the 
 Poll-booth of Universal Suffrage ; for we can find no resting-place 
 short of that ; that is antiquity that is truth. Polling the people 
 on the day of election; the scot-and-lot pot-wallopers of this 
 nation ! 
 
 The forty-shilling restriction bill of Henry VI. of 1429, was a 
 plundering of the people of rights which they and their ancestors 
 had exercised for centuries, many centuries, in Britain and Germany; 
 and it was done on the principle that poor people had no right to 
 
 18* 
 
276 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 exercise the same electoral privileges as rich people. Poverty, or 
 humble circumstances of the people, was the plea or excuse for 
 plundering them of their rights: this was the plea in 1429; and 
 I regret to say it has been a plea for an act of injustice at a later 
 period in church matters. 
 
 Poverty in the people was the plea of Henry VI. for robbing them 
 of their privileges ; and let poverty of the people be the plea used 
 for a restitution of those privileges the electoral privileges of voting 
 for members to represent them in Parliament privileges of twenty 
 centuries of black-lettered respectability of antiquity. This must 
 be done by claiming a right for manhood suffrage, household suffrage, 
 or head-of- family suffrage, hearth- and-fire suffrage; or potwallop- 
 ing, or pot-on-the-fire-boiling suffrage. 1 This is what the people 
 must demand from Whigs and Tories ; and they must take no less. 
 But the danger what danger ? Widen the electoral districts, if 
 you fear danger; and shorten the duration of Parliaments, if you 
 fear danger. Increased numbers, wider districts, with shorter time 
 for M.P. to bargain away the rights of his constituents, for dinner 
 or concert or drawing room, or levee tickets tickets for Mr., Mrs., 
 and five daughters ! 
 
 But to return to De Foe, who was about to write a book on 
 Bribery and Corruption drunkenness, feastings, &c., at elections ; 
 but when he entered upon his task " he found such an ocean of 
 villany, such a depth of corruption, that it was endless to finish it, 
 having no leisure to write large volumes in folio, upon so unpleasant 
 a subject." Review, vol. ii. p. 125. 
 
 Coventry election was the main influence on him at this time for 
 undertaking his task ; for five hundred or one thousand on a side 
 might be seen fighting in the streets under the influence of the 
 greatest fury and animosity. The consequences were disastrous to 
 the fighters, and injurious to the freedom of election ; for many of 
 
 1 The election of members of Parliament by the potwalloping franchise is this : 
 That every inhabitant, whether housekeeper or lodger, who has a fire to dress his own 
 victuals, shall, some short time before the election, bring out their pots, and place them 
 upon fires made in the street, and there boil their victuals in the sight of their neigh- 
 bours, and so establish their votes by accustomed usage. This used to take place at 
 Taunton, in Somersetshire. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 277 
 
 the voters were prevented coming to the poll through terror and 
 club-law. From the account given, all appears to have been riot 
 and disorder : those voted who liked, for there were no poll-books^ 
 consequently no power of checking the votes. De Foe wrote so 
 freely on the bribery and treating practised by the interested, on 
 the freeholders, that Tutchin and others took him to task for his 
 free remarks ; and he was even threatened with parliamentary inter- 
 ference, for meddling with what they chose to term the " Freedom 
 of Election." 
 
 The powers in being, Whig or Tory, who had the ambition to 
 represent Coventry, and the spirit or ability to find the drink or 
 sinews of war for the street fights which were to carry the election, 
 might soon have been cured of their generosity by a three weeks' 
 confinement in the common town gaol, on common gaol diet, with 
 common gaol companions, and a few hours' exhibition onjthe 
 pillory platform, a heavy pecuniary mulct for the county fund, and 
 a brand of the letter B on the right cheek for bribery ; or a slitting 
 of one or both ears, by way of ear- mark, with a pair of common 
 shears or scissors. This is the protection for household suffrage. 
 Well, but the committee committee, what ? Paid for the drink ; 
 paid for the intimidation ; paid for the corruption ; the bribery 
 what committee ? All the better ! ten ! hundred ! or thousand ! 
 commit them all ! all, by the blessing or the curse of God ! 
 all ! to the common gaol, for gaol diet, and gaol company, for 
 three weeks ; and a three hours' each exhibition on the pillory plat- 
 form ; and if pillory could not hold corruptors, lawyers, committee, 
 or candidate, from the Reform, Crockfor.d's, or the Carlton, single 
 out the ringleaders in this bond of villany, strip him or them naked 
 to the waist; tie him or them, thus stripped, to the tail of a cart; 
 and by the assistance of that laced gentleman who walks at the 
 head of the Grenadier Guards with his gold-headed walking- staff, 
 let this culprit, this or these debasers of the people with drink, for 
 the betrayal of their country, be placed by the half-dozen together, if 
 you like, under the scourge of this gentleman, for a good exercising 
 round Trafalgar Square, down the Strand, or up Cheapside ; or, if 
 you like, down that open space in front of Buckingham Palace ; I 
 
278 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 care not where, so long as mid-day be the time ; for the protection 
 of the rights and privileges of the potwallopers of England. 
 
 How would a pillory stand in Palace Yard, or on the ground 
 where the equestrian statue of George always proclaims United 
 States of America, in Cockspur Street how would a pillory for 
 bribing candidates for parliamentary honours stand there ? Or near 
 the statue of Dr. Jenner in Trafalgar Square : Jenner looking after 
 the preservation of the body, and our obelisk doing a little towards 
 the mind ? Palace Yard, Westminster would that do ? Or has 
 Tyburn Gate more poetry about it, and more orthodox recollections 
 of City institutions ? What can be said against Marble Arch being 
 turned to the account of protecting the voters, by having a pillory 
 erected upon the top of it, for parliamentary candidates convicted 
 of treating, bribing, intimidating, or corrupting ? Would it not 
 make a good pillory ? Three hours on the top of it, and both ears 
 slit, or cheek branded, would soon stop the beer-tap at elections. A 
 good B, branded on the right cheek, would set off the black hair of 
 the upper lip of either Whig or Tory. What a change for royalty ! 
 What a deliverance to the captives of Buckingham Palace ! What 
 with Whig stools, gold stools, and silver stools, and sticks too, 
 and then the eternal nuisance to royalty of having to hold the 
 farthing-dip of party subserviency to half the snobs in Europe 
 the Clarkies and Jubbies, and the Tonisies (once Thompson), with 
 all their sons and all their daughters, because they claim some fifth 
 cousinship of some flippant cowardly speculator in mouth of a 
 privy councillor. 
 
 But to return from the capability of making a household suffrage, 
 a free, honest, safe, thoughtful, patriotic constituency; I will return 
 to the Coventry election, from which these homely and indignant 
 thoughts have been elicited ; for it is stated, you could not trust 
 the people with the franchise. Not trust the people ? Who says 
 this ? is it Whig or Tory ? Is it I, my brother, our two nephews, 
 and a cousin, who, like the Three Tailors in Tooley Street, are to 
 be what ? what, indeed ? but the People of England ! 
 
 Well, the fighting in the streets at Coventry election disgusted 
 De Foe greatly, at the powers of the town supporting, conniving at, 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 279 
 
 or abetting the disorders of a turbulent, drunken rabble. This to 
 him, making a tour of inspection, or persuasion to peace and mo- 
 deration, of 1100 miles, through the west of England, before the 
 elections came off, or at the time ; for he was at Coventry during 
 the election, and saw the disorders of the town supported by the 
 authorities. 
 
 " In vain/' says he, " we talk of peace ; if the mob must prevail 
 over the magistracy, and the club oppress the halbert ; no more let 
 us talk of the freedom of elections, if they must be carried by strength 
 of hands, and not by number of voices ; but, if nothing but troops 
 of horse will keep them quiet, they must thank themselves : the 
 peace must be maintained." Yes ! Daniel, the peace must be main- 
 tained, and household suffrage must be demanded, and maintained 
 too ; till every drummer in the Scotch Fusileer Guards can flog a 
 scoundrel down the Strand or Fleet Street, both to the tune of 
 drum and bagpipe. 
 
 On the subject of inculcating peace and union among the free- 
 holders, De Foe takes much credit to himself really, though not 
 in words; for his labours and troubles in this patriotic cause had 
 been great and dangerous, as will be seen when we come to the 
 treatment he received on this tour, not only from the magistrates, 
 but also from my lord judge, in his charge to the grand jury at 
 Exeter assizes ; of great danger to the peace of the realm, because 
 what? Daniel De Foe was in the county, endangering the peace 
 of the community ! when, poor fellow, he had travelled 1100 miles 
 on horseback, to inculcate peace and quietness among his dear, 
 enfranchised, privileged class a class romantically and poetically 
 and enthusiastically dear to him the English freeholders. 
 
 " I have not the vanity to say I have had a hand in opening 
 their eyes ; but I can tell you who has : even the tackers them- 
 selves. That one action (tacking) has given the greatest blow to 
 the party that ever was given ; but if a parliament of devils were to 
 meet, he resolved to hold his face to it, let the consequence be what 
 it might." 
 
 The reader must understand, that the most corrupt, dishonest 
 House of Commons had existed for some years previous to the 
 
280 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 summer of 1705, that England had ever known so thoroughly de- 
 moralized that De Foe, in his Review, advocated its entire abroga- 
 tion. This I have said before ; but, as De Foe advocated the abro- 
 gation of the Commons so fixedly, I may repeat the circumstance ; 
 for it was so 1 completely in the interest of James III., the exile of 
 St. Germains, the High Church wedded to the Stuart-family inte- 
 rest, in opposition to the house of Hanover; and this, too, when 
 Britain was blessed by the peerage legacy in the Lords, of William 
 the Third of blessed memory a legacy of patriotism, as I have said 
 a legacy of worth and truth, which kept the state together, for 
 the whole tumble-down-church-tower-tottering reign of that poor, 
 weak, though honest-minded woman, Queen Anne ; and kept her 
 from an ignominious flight, an outcast, and a pauper to a foreign 
 land. This I have said; and this I repeat the House of Lords 
 saved this kingdom from anarchy in the reign of Anne ; and 
 William III., the most patriotic of kings, made, adjusted, balanced, 
 regulated, educated, or created that House of Lords. 
 
 Well, to overcome the patriotism of the Lords, the rascaldom in 
 the Commons, which was the scoundreldom of the French- Stuart 
 interest, tried every means to overset the constitution of the state ; 
 and as no fair legislation no fair, honest bills passed legitimately 
 through the House by the majority of the votes of the Commons, 
 money bills were resorted to; and every kind of rascality was 
 attempted to be passed through the Lords by its being tacked to a 
 money bill, and by its being called a money bill ; whence the term 
 tacker. 
 
 I consider it a duty to De Foe, to quote at length from the Review, 
 vol. ii. pp. 213-215, to show what he went through in his election 
 tour : 
 
 " 'Twould even reflect upon the nation in general, if I should give 
 the particulars of about twenty or thirty letters, most of which 
 threaten my life ; and the world might think England coming into 
 the mode of Italy. Indeed, we have seen too much of this method 
 lately ; and justice seems to wait but a few weeks to take the sad 
 example from a set of assassinators ; the murderers of the Scotch- 
 man of Queenborough. To all the gentlemen who are so exceedingly 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 281 
 
 angry at me for inviting them to peace, as to threaten my throat 
 and the like, I make this serious request : Let them step to Maid- 
 stone gaol, and there discourse a little with their brother murderers ; 
 and, if their condition please them, let them follow their steps, if 
 they can. 
 
 " Indeed, gentlemen, the mean, despicable author of this paper is 
 not worth your attempting his correction at the price : gaols, fetters, 
 and gibbets, are odd melancholy things ; for a gentleman to dangle 
 out of the world in a string, has something so ugly, so awkward, 
 and so disagreeable in it, that you cannot think of it without some 
 regret ; and then the reflection will be very harsh, that this was for 
 killing a poor mortified author, one that the government had killed 
 before." 
 
 " I move about the world unguarded and unarmed ; a little 
 stick, not strong enough to correct a dog, supplies the place of 
 Mr. Observator's (Tutchin's) great oaken towel ; a sword sometimes, 
 perhaps, for decency ; but it is all harmless to a mere nothing ; can 
 do no hurt anywhere, but just at the tip of it, called the point. 
 And what 's that in the hand of a feeble author ? 
 
 "And yet this bullying method is not the only treatment the 
 author of this has to complain of. But, now he has had a storm of 
 a more scandalous assassination, studying to ruin and embroil him ; 
 crowds of sham actions, arrests ; sleeping debts in trade of seven- 
 teen years' standing revived ; debts put in suit after contracts and 
 agreements under hand and seal; and, which is worse, writs taken 
 out for debts without the knowledge of the creditor, and some after 
 the creditor has been paid; diligent solicitations of persons not 
 inclined to sue, pressing them to give him trouble ; others offering 
 to buy assignments of debts that they might be sued ; for others to 
 turn setters and informers, to betray him into the hands of trouble ; 
 collateral bonds sued where the securities have been resigned and 
 accepted. 
 
 " It would take up too much of the reader's time to trouble the 
 world with the barbarous treatment shown a man just stripped 
 naked by the government; 'tis like a man just ransomed from 
 Algiers ; and, could I descend to particulars, would be too moving 
 
282 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 to be read. That this is all for the party ; that this is a pique at 
 the subject as well as the author speak, conscience, and tell us 
 why were none of these things done before?" 
 
 At this time a report was industriously circulated that De Foe 
 had been committed to Newgate, and that some of his friends had 
 visited him there. 
 
 " III tongues may do much; but I cannot but tell a certain gentle- 
 man, who has offered 100 to have it so, that it will hardly be in 
 his power to effect it. Pardon me, gentlemen, to inquire into the 
 importance of this malice. A GAOL WOULD NOT CHECK THIS PAPER. 
 Perhaps, if you could bring it to pass, it might furnish me with 
 leisure to perform it better." Bravo, De Foe ! a gaol would give 
 you more time and retirement for writing ! Poor fellow ! he appeals 
 to his enemies for compassion "on a man whose house has been 
 burnt down or plundered. Will you have no compassion ? Neither 
 will all this restrain his pen from writing; the truth depending 
 upon it, that the author of that truth will, one time or other, own 
 at least the work, if not the unworthy author. Suits at law, gaol, 
 murther, assassinations, and all that malice can contrive, are, there- 
 fore, without influence on me : I avoid the first, and I contemn the 
 last ; the law, I trust, will protect me from the first, and I freely 
 run the venture of the last." 
 
 Review, vol. ii. p. 377 : 
 
 (( I have been a long journey into the country, chiefly, indeed, 
 to be out of the reach of implacable and unreasonable men; 
 which may serve for an answer to an impertinent vilifier, who, 
 in print, had the impudence to demand what business I had in 
 Devonshire? 
 
 " In all my perambulations, my constant endeavour, my whole 
 discourse has been, like my writing, nothing but peace ; entreating 
 and persuading all men, of what persuasion, and of what opinion 
 soever, to lay aside their party prejudices, to bury former animo- 
 sities, to remember they are all Protestants, all Englishmen, em- 
 barked in the same vessel, environed and attacked by the same 
 enemies ; that have no friends but one another to stand by them. 
 I frankly appeal for the truth of this, to all the several towns and 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 283 
 
 counties I have gone through, in near 1100 miles' riding. I have 
 made no private gain, I have been raising no contributions, as another 
 author has been busy about; I have dispersed no libels, as Mr. 
 
 Justice S d says his informer alleged ; I have poisoned nobody's 
 
 principles with anything but the infection of peace. I have, indeed, 
 carried the Memorial with me, and on all occasions have shown it 
 as a thing which carries its own evidence along with it ; and which, 
 as I have often said, I think wants nothing to move the people of 
 England to a suitable abhorrence of it, but to have it be seen. 
 
 " I can testify that the principles discovered in that book have, 
 in all places that I have shewn it in, opened the eyes of the people 
 to an equal detestation of it, with the grand jury at the Old Bailey ; 
 not a man but, without the help of spectacles, can see there, the 
 Church of England dressed up like a Merry Andrew, to be laughed 
 at, represented a la mode camisar, with the sword in her hand against 
 her sovereign; and, in short, personated to principles which her 
 soul abhors." He here goes on to say, "that his Memorial has 
 done more to rouse the nation, to treat them as they deserve, than 
 all the declarations the government could have put out, in vin- 
 dication of their proceedings." He congratulates his readers that 
 the eastern parts of the nation had that " blessed article of peace 
 and union much further advanced, and the people of all sorts, as 
 well church as dissenter, living in more neighbourhood and society ; 
 their clergy going on, hand-in-hand, in the heavenly work of doing 
 good to souls ; and more like Christians and men, conversing with 
 one another, than can be easily seen in these parts." 
 
 He observes, that "the circulating through the length and breadth 
 of the land pernicious pamphlets, wrangling papers, news-letters, 
 Rehearsals, Observators, and Journals, so far as these papers en- 
 courage discord and prevent peace, is most pernicious to the pro- 
 sperity of the nation ; and that all men of sense, men of manners, 
 men of piety, and men who have most to lose, are the men of peace ; 
 for these listen to the invitations of the Queen, and are moved at 
 the pressing persuasions of the royal eloquence; while the loose- 
 headed, the drunken, the lewd, the dissolute, the immoral, the raven- 
 ous, the haughty, the ignorant, the idle, the conceited, the dull, 
 
284 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 the dogmatick, and the bigot : these, added very unhappily to a too 
 strong party of the inferior clergy, and gentry led away by the said 
 clergy, are the maintainers of this unhappy temper ; these, and their 
 rabble, whom they possess with notions ridiculous as themselves, 
 are the firebrands of this nation, the enemies of its peace, and the 
 destroyers of the church." 
 
 " When this paper (the Review) comes among these, 'tis cursed 
 without belly book, and candle ; many times it is thrown into the 
 fire, instead of its author, who, in the mean time, has such a cha- 
 racter given him, and so suited to the temper of the givers, that 
 truly, when I shewed myself in some places, and the people knew 
 who it was, they began to look for the cloven-foot, the heads, and 
 the horns, and all the demonstrations of devilism, which our com- 
 mon people have learned from the painters, old women, and the 
 like ; and I have had the honour, with small difficulty, of convincing 
 some gentlemen, over a bottle of wine, that the author of the Review 
 was really no monster, but a conversable, sociable creature." 
 
 As peacemaking is such a dangerous thing, he advises his reader 
 to beware, 
 
 " 1st. How he come near the town of Weymouth, in Dorsetshire, 
 lest the worshipful Mr. Mayor cries out ' A Presbyterian plot '; and, 
 not daring to meddle with him personally, shall put all his hearsays, 
 supposes, and drunken evidences together, and carry all the honest 
 people he can find that converse with him to Dorchester, before a 
 judge ; where accusing this peacemaker of a phanatick plot, and a 
 bloody design, to persuade folks to a peaceable rebellion, he comes 
 home with a flea in his ear, much about as wise as he went. 
 
 " 2ndly. Let him have a special care how he comes to Exeter, 
 
 particularly in time of the assizes, lest Mr. Alderman B , Mr. 
 
 , and Mr. , should consult about sending an English free- 
 holder and liveryman of the city of London for a soldier, according 
 to the laudable example of Abraham Gill ; but, finding their power 
 weaker than their malice, should afterwards apply themselves to 
 somebody in scarlet, informing that there are a great party of two 
 men gone forth into the country, to raise rebellion against the High 
 Church, by earnestly pressing all the well-meaning people of Eng- 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 285 
 
 land to adhere to the Queen's sober and healing admonitions and 
 exhortations to peace and union. 
 
 " 4thly. But, above all, let him have a care of Justice S , near 
 
 Crediton ; for if ever he comes, with his peacemaking sedition, into 
 his parts, an information in nubibus, with an oath, or without an 
 oath, shall procure a warrant from his worship, to take him up, &c." 
 
 All this occurred to De Foe when he was in Devonshire, on his 
 errand of peace an endeavour to sow peace and union amongst the 
 freeholders at the time of the elections ; " for that the author [De 
 Foe], with but one friend and his friend's servant, being in the 
 western counties of England, on a journey about his lawful occa- 
 sions, met with several unmanlike and unreasonable insults upon 
 the road ; that at Wey mouth, his letters, being delivered to a wrong 
 person by mistake, were shown about the town. That a friend 
 having wrote in one of them, as a piece of news, and too true, that 
 a certain person had the impudence to say, in defence of the High- 
 Churchmen, that the ' Queen had broken her coronation oath/ and 
 the like ; the wise mayor of the town examines all the people he 
 found had conversed with him, and officiously carries them to Dor- 
 chester, before the judges, the assizes being then at the place ; where 
 the impertinence being discovered, the mayor was sent back, the 
 gentlemen dismissed, and a wise magistrate thought it his duty to 
 send up a letter to the court, to inform her Majesty's secretary of 
 state what an officious booby was trusted with the government of 
 that corporation." 
 
 At Exeter, this story being magnified, certain parties justices 
 no doubt procured the judge, in his charge to the grand jury, to 
 direct them to apprehend certain seditious persons (De Foe and his 
 friend), and to tell them, that a great many such were come into the 
 country, to stir up the people and disturb the peace. " That the 
 party would have the judge to mean this author (De Foe), reports 
 were immediately spread, and industriously carried all over the 
 county (Devonshire), that he had named the author of this in par- 
 ticular, and that he should be apprehended wherever he should be 
 found." 
 
 "That the author being then at Bideford, in Devonshire, and 
 
286 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 being told of what news was come into the town from the assizes, 
 applied himself to the mayor of the town : but, he being absent in 
 the country, he applied himself to the next principal magistrate, to 
 offer himself to justice, if any man had anything to inform of, and 
 to show him his face, if occasion required. 
 
 " That being dismissed, as reason good, he travelled on as his 
 business required, to Tiverton; and hearing that one Justice Stafford, 
 near Crediton, had granted a warrant for him to be apprehended 
 and brought before him, though without any information upon oath, 
 or mentioning to have him brought before any other justice of the 
 peace, he sent him a letter to acquaint him where he was, and which 
 way he was going ; and the names of the towns he would be at, if 
 his worship thought fit to send for him. 
 
 " He cannot but laugh at the wisdom and courage of a country 
 
 justice, the wise Esquire S , who, having carefully issued out his 
 
 warrant for the author, after he could not but know he was gone, 
 and searched every house but that where he lodged, showed his folly 
 and his temper both at a time. Had these wise gentlemen designed 
 really to have come to hand, as they call it, with the author of this, 
 nothing was more easy than to have done it ; and a small difficulty 
 would have made it out, that they knew which road he was gone, 
 and to what towns ; but, like the famed hero that always looked for 
 his enemy when he knew he could not be found, they sent their 
 warrants just the contrary way; having more desire to have it said, 
 they granted a warrant, than that they had executed it." 
 
 Now that the elections were over, De Foe turned his attention to 
 the duties of the elected M.P.'s, as to their attending or not attend- 
 ing the House of Commons at pleasure; and the serious conse- 
 quences that may attend an habitual inattention to this duty of 
 punctuality on this momentous question. He strenuously insists 
 upon an early and constant attendance of the members, and gives a 
 melancholy instance of the mischief that may be done by a neglect 
 of vigilance on the part of members, in the case of Lord Holland, 
 beheaded in the time of the Civil Wars, by the casting vote of the 
 Speaker, when one of his friends was absent on some trivial business, 
 which caused the loss of the life of this noble lord. The friend took 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 287 
 
 the circumstance so fully to heart, as to die shortly afterwards of 
 grief and mental upbraidings. De Foe makes use of this incident, 
 to show the necessity of constant vigilance and attendance, e^rly 
 and constantly. 
 
 On the change of the ministry, and the throwing out the more 
 prejudiced portion, the Duke of Buckingham, Earl of Nottingham, 
 Sir Edward Seymour, and their spies spies ? Yes, spies ! their 
 dependants of stools and sticks, set as a watch or restraining power 
 upon the action, mental and corporeal, of fettered royalty; I say, 
 when these men were removed in April, 1704, to make room for 
 more liberal and less dangerous men, Lord Haversham joined the 
 Tories, although brought up a dissenter, and raised to the peerage 
 by the late monarch, William III. 
 
 On Nov. 15, this Lord Haversham introduced a motion into the 
 House of Commons on the state of the nation ; and, like a disap- 
 pointed man, made all the noise he could against the peace- and - 
 union principles advocated by De Foe at this time. The speech of 
 this lord was printed, and De Foe replied to it, he charging his 
 lordship with ingratitude to his late benefactor; and his lordship 
 charging De Foe with being a mercenary writer, which imputation 
 De Foe as indignantly repels. This dispute between our hero of the 
 pen, and a disappointed place-hunting lord, made a great noise at 
 the time, so much so that I cannot well slip over this page of De 
 Foe's history without a passing notice ; as for Lord Haversham's 
 turning Tory, because his pretensions to power, place, profit, and 
 pension, were not appreciated in high diplomatic circles, I should 
 treat with a neglect due to a spoiled child, who cries because it 
 rains. On this lord, De Foe writes with manly self-reliance and 
 defiance, which I could quote at length; but the subject Lord 
 Haversham is too contemptible for me to waste space upon ; for 
 space in pages is now becoming a subject of anxiety with me; I 
 must clip all down, if possible, at any sacrifice of quotation, to one 
 readable volume. How often do we hear ' ' That is a heavy, scarcely 
 readable book ! " and " What a pity ! No one to revise and curtail. 
 Oh ! dear beyond expression three shillings for the volume ! Why, 
 there is not a tenpenny-worth of ideas in it so prosy, so long, so 
 
288 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 tiresome; and such a style ! read it ! why, I will defy any one to 
 read it, with profit ; they talk of light reading, of which we all com- 
 plain ; but this prosy stuff is reading with a vengeance; for there is 
 weight enough here." 
 
 What a recompense for a poor writer, who has spent weeks 
 yea ! months, in reading greasy old itchy pamphlets or broadsheets, 
 to bring before the reader some half-dozen ideas or secrets, which 
 have been laid upon the dusty shelves of some bankrupt hall, which 
 has been let furnished to some racing or fox-hunting squires for 
 the better part of a century ; in short, ever since the old boy who 
 embarrassed the estate by representing the neighbouring borough 
 on true Old English principles "for he was a jolly good fellow" 
 died yes ! died, and left things not all square at the hall. 
 
 About this time, a poor unfortunate author of the name of Dre- 
 lincourt was so rash as to publish a dull, heavy book, without con- 
 sulting his friends in the book trade, who knew well what would 
 take with the public as purchasers. Well, this Drelincourt pub- 
 lished his truly heavy book unadvised, and paid the penalty ; for 
 the public would neither read nor buy ; so the poor fellow had to 
 keep the whole impression, unsold, on his hands. In his difficulty 
 to him a great one he applied to De Foe for advice ; who told 
 him that a marvellous preface might sell the book; and that he 
 would write one for him, to be fixed to the whole impression, yet 
 unsold. This preface was written and prefixed, as agreed upon; 
 when, marvellous to relate, the impression was not only readily sold 
 off, but the work went through forty editions, and had such a sale 
 as no other book in England ever had, excepting Bunyan's great 
 work, the Pilgrim's Progress. 
 
 This preface recites that Mrs. Veal died at Dover on a Friday 
 afternoon, at ten minutes after three o'clock ; and that at twelve 
 o'clock at noon, next day, just as the church-clock chimes were 
 going at Canterbury, this said Mrs. Veal called upon her old friend, 
 Mrs. Bargrave, who lived near the Market Place, and sat with her 
 one hour and forty minutes, discoursing on a variety of subjects, 
 but particularly that most suited for advancing years the necessity 
 of providing for a future state by divine meditation, and secret and 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 289 
 
 constant prayer. These two conversed freely on this solemn sub- 
 ject, and compared notes on their various reading : Sherlock on 
 Death being pronounced good, but neither so forcible in argument, 
 nor comforting in spirit, as Drelincourt's delightful book, on the 
 Fear of Death. On Mrs. Veal's death being known, as to day, 
 hour, and minute, at Canterbury, Mrs. Bargrave declared that 
 Mrs. Veal had called upon her, and sat at her house, twenty hours 
 after she was reported to have died at Dover. Of course there was 
 a considerable sensation, both at Dover and Canterbury, as to time, 
 dress, conversation, &c. ; and her dwelling so emphatically, under 
 such circumstances, on the beauties of Drelincourt, soon made the 
 thinking portion of aged matrons take to reading ; and Drelincourt 
 on Death became the book in demand ; when the first edition was 
 sold in a week, to the great relief of the frightened author. 
 
 De Foe, Swift, Ebenezer Elliott, and others, always gauged their 
 usefulness in any political work by the density of the rage of the 
 party opposed to that work. These men always laid it down as an 
 axiom in political warfare, that when political opponents are indif- 
 ferent, lukewarm, or contemptuous smiling, only little progress was 
 being made in the onward rush of contention ; but when strife waxes, 
 warm, and malignant defiance takes the place of self-complacency, 
 then work is done. This I have found ; and I look upon a politician 
 who only excites a smile of contempt from self-complacency as a 
 very harmless sort of a creature, whether he be one or 6ther of the 
 great plundering sections of this deluded, confiding nation. Now, 
 De Foe says, it would be useless for him ' ' to repeat the threaten- 
 ing letters, and opprobrious terms, the bear-garden language, I have 
 daily thrown upon me for persuading men to peace. If I had been 
 assassinated as often as I have been threatened with pistols, daggers, 
 and swords, I had long ago paid dear for this undertaking" the 
 undertaking of the advocacy of peace in his Review. 
 
 I have been a writer on political questions for thirty years, and I 
 have seen the temper of parties excited in proportion to the magni- 
 tude of the evil to be defended on the one hand, and to be redressed 
 on the other. Corn-law repeal, to an insolvent landlord, was an 
 exciting topic ; and so was church reform to the pluralist-expectant- 
 
 19 
 
290 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 sun-worshipper for preferment, or clerical sycophant. But I never 
 met with so earnest a spirit of despair as on my affirming that the 
 Privy Council attempting the education of dissenters' children in 
 church principles with the public taxes, is the conspiracy of Cardi- 
 nals Richelieu or Mazarin, the ministers of Louis XIII. and XIV. 
 of France : that the principle was worked against the French Pro- 
 testants of France; and that it came to France from Italy with 
 Catherine de Medici, the diabolical mother of all intrigue and 
 iniquity at the court of France; that it is, in fact, a conspiracy 
 stinking in the nostrils as the pestiferous blast of brimstone Flo- 
 rence and the Inquisition. The Privy Council tampering with edu- 
 cation must be put down by dissent, or dissent will be put down by 
 the Privy Council. This contest will go on till universal suffrage 
 close the scene, and education will stand on its own legs, and right 
 and justice, energy and sincerity, will take the palm of victory; and 
 what? Corruptions in the church will go; royalty will be free from 
 spies ; free from dictation of party ; as being the sovereign, not of 
 half-a-dozen Lord John Eussells, but of the millions the people, 
 who wish to see royalty set free from party spies; royalty unfettered ; 
 royalty happy. With a reformed House of Commons, and a con- 
 tented people, Buckingham Palace would know a freedom which it 
 never knew before, when under the dictation of party ; and the spies 
 and cormorants of faction would give way to freedom, more honest 
 men, and more effective measures. 
 
 The above remarks have been elicited by the statement of De Foe 
 in his Review, that 'his inculcating peace and union had given the 
 greatest satisfaction to those upon whose judgment he most relied; 
 and he had undeniable testimony in the implacable rage and malice 
 of the high party, by which they acknowledge the injury he had 
 done to their cause, than which he desired no greater honour. 
 
 De Foe commenced the year 1706 by publishing a Hymn to 
 Peace, in Pindaric verse : 
 
 When to the world thou mak'st a short return, 
 
 Me only thou hast scorned to shun ; 
 
 Me thou revisitest not ; but storms of men, 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 291 
 
 Voracious and unsatisfied as death, 
 
 Spoil in their hands and poison in their breath, 
 
 With rage of devils hunt me down, 
 
 And to abate my peace, destroy their own. 
 
 Brought up in teaching sorrow's school, 
 
 In peace and patience I profess my soul ; 
 
 Am master of my mind, 
 
 And there the heaven of satisfaction find. 
 
 Let them ten thousand barbarous methods try, 
 
 When they '11 no longer let me live, I '11 die ; 
 
 Of all their fury I shall have 
 
 An uncontested conquest in the grave. 
 
 Poor De Foe ! he wrote for peace to the community ; but to 
 attain peace, he had to wade through such a lane of abuse from 
 parties who had a vested interest in wrong, that he, poor fellow, 
 the great pioneer of national regeneration and enlightenment, never 
 knew peace in his own person, and in his own spirit. No ! his life 
 was one continued scuffle and elbowing of contending principles 
 and interests ; for on Feb. 5, 1706, he has to complain again in his 
 Review, of his treatment by the printers selling trashy pamphlets in 
 the streets with his name affixed to them ; and this mortified him 
 greatly; for, although he had written scores of pamphlets on all 
 subjects, yet he had never come down to writing penny nauseous 
 ribaldry on halfpenny sheets and half-sheets, and cried, too, in the 
 streets as his ; the trashy villany carrying his name at the bottom 
 of the page as the writer. Poor fellow ! he writes emphatically in 
 this Review : " I never write penny papers, this excepted, nor ever 
 shall, unless my name is publicly set to them ; and I hope this will 
 clear me of the scandal, though it cannot fortify me against the 
 damage." His Review was a mortifying dose of political physic for 
 his opponents, published at a penny only, and circulated freely at 
 all inns and coffee-houses, to the great mortification of his adver- 
 saries, who could not stop the reading, nor the channel of intelli- 
 gence, by the clearest and most industrious, as well as courageous 
 political writer of that day. This Review was a bitter pill for his 
 political and social opponents, who took every means to depreciate 
 
 19* 
 
29.2 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 the writer by bringing his name into contempt, and by hiring 
 scoundrels to go to the coffee-houses for the purpose of stealing or 
 burning the copies of his newspaper daily, as the numbers were 
 published. 
 
 Having mentioned the Quakers in his Review, and said, " that 
 they are not only Christians, but many of them better Christians 
 than those who pretend to condemn them," a paltry writer of the 
 street-hawking class brings out the Quakers' Catechism, a penny 
 trash, shoe-horned upon the public for buyers, by the addition of 
 the Shortest Way with Daniel De Foe : " a true printer's cheat, 
 that when people were expecting great things, and some new pro- 
 posal concerning what was to be done with the man that so many 
 want to be rid of, when they come to look into the book, found it 
 to contain nothing but a long rhapsody of Billingsgate language 
 and raillery against the Quakers, which he must have a great talent 
 of self-denial, that can bear the reading." 
 
 De Foe at this time wrote largely in his Review on toleration of 
 religious sects ; but his views on this subject may be compared to 
 those of his political economy : crude, raw, narrow, half- formed, 
 self-taught principles, in some cases ; while in others, collected from 
 the narrow, absurd crudities of previous writers, who wrote before, 
 instead of after, the great political-economic architect, Adam Smith, 
 of honourable memory. 
 
 An Act to prevent Frauds committed by Bankrupts was intro- 
 duced in the early part of 1706 ; which measure had been forwarded 
 greatly by the writings of De Foe ; for it was a subject he had 
 thoroughly studied, both theoretically and practically, most of his 
 life. His career had been a checkered one, from the persecution 
 of political enemies, as well as from his own imprudences ; for I 
 believe him to have been a thoroughly imprudent man. 
 
 The Review of May 21, 1706, was exclusively occupied by the 
 Fight of Ramillies, on which De Foe turns poetic again, in a pro- 
 duction nearly as expeditious as the victory ; the composition costing 
 De Foe only three hours. The 27th of June being appointed as a 
 day of thanksgiving, the Queen went in procession to St. Paul's, 
 while De Foe devoted his Review for that day to another poem, in 
 
LIFE OP DE FOE. 293 
 
 which he ascribes to the God of all victory the praise due unto his 
 name, as the wise Disposer of all events ; while he, at the same 
 time, gives all due honour and praise to the Duke of Marlborough, 
 as a great and successful general. 
 
 On June 8, 1706, De Foe wrote in his Review "a full account of a 
 young woman who was declared mad and conveyed to a private mad- 
 house for the sake of stealing her fortune, by her own mother, two 
 brothers, a doctor, and one or more attorneys ; an assistant or two 
 from Bedlam, and an infamous apothecary, professing to be a doctor 
 of lunatics ; the attorney being the most active man of business in 
 this nefarious affair, obtained a commission of lunacy against her, 
 himself being named one of the commissioners, the proceedings of 
 which commissioners were on a part with the other acts of the 
 plotters ; these men found a jury to their purpose, who brought her 
 in lunatic, without ever seeing her, which they ought to have done, 
 and which some of them may yet like to answer for : one pretence 
 for not bringing her before the jury being, that she was raving mad, 
 and not capable of being brought before a jury. All this while the 
 gentlewoman was quiet, and innocently thinking of anything rather 
 than what was contriving for her ; but lived privately, retired, and 
 very frugal, having saved nearly 600 in five years out of the 
 income of her estate." 
 
 " The design being fully ripe, and completed by the rash verdict 
 of the jury aforesaid, the rest of the scene is all violence and fury; 
 for these people, having provided proper instruments, come up stairs 
 to this gentlewoman into her chamber, on some frivolous pretences, 
 the time unusually late, and on a Saturday night ; they had, to 
 assist them, provided two women and one man : the man, as we 
 are since informed, a doorkeeper in Bedlam, and one of the women 
 a nurse in a madhouse. These coming into her chamber, seize her 
 in a most barbarous manner, handcuff her hands behind her with 
 irons, bind her legs together with cords, and attempt to thrust a 
 handkerchief or cloth into her mouth ; and in this cruel manner 
 carry her away by force, put her into a coach, and hurry her to one 
 of our private Bedlams, putting her into the hands of the aforesaid 
 infamous apothecary ; of whom the world will hear more hereafter. 
 
294 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 " In this house, she continued about six or seven weeks, under 
 the most horrid treatment that ever was heard of, by his express 
 command, and often in his presence ; and we want words to express 
 it to you ; but the further particulars are preparing for the world, 
 and to which we refer you. 
 
 " It may suffice to tell you for the present, they kept her bound 
 hand and foot in her bed, such an one as it was, and tied to the 
 bedpost for several days, reduced to strange extremity, beat and 
 pinched her by cruel and barbarous wretches called nurses, and 
 forced nauseous draughts down her throat, which they called 
 physic ; and which she, being apprehensive they designed her de- 
 struction, and might poison her, refused; but they forced her 
 mouth open with iron instruments, and poured into her what they 
 thought fit, wounding her very much with their violences and 
 inhumanities. 
 
 " In this horrid condition, and under this most villanous treat- 
 ment, they kept her about seven weeks ; no body but whom that 
 apothecary permitted, being suffered to come near her. Her old 
 neighbours, hearing that all was not right at the Bedlam, petitioned 
 the Lord Keeper for qualified persons to visit her; which was 
 granted, and then the poor woman was found in sound mind, but 
 horribly treated in body, and so deeply afflicted at her misfortune ; 
 but clear in her judgment, composed in her mind, and of good 
 understanding. 
 
 " Whereupon a petition was immediately drawn in her name to 
 my Lord Keeper, praying that she might be brought before his 
 lordship, in order to be examined whether she ought to be treated 
 as a lunatic or no. Upon this petition, an order was obtained for 
 her to attend, which she accordingly did ; and in a short time, my 
 Lord Keeper was so fully satisfied in all the particulars aforesaid, 
 and of her being no lunatic, that his lordship was pleased to express 
 himself with the utmost detestation and abhorrence of such villanous 
 proceedings ; ordered the commission of lunacy to be immediately 
 superseded, and all proceedings thereon to be dissolved and made 
 void ; for it is to be observed that the brothers and mother of this 
 young woman had obtained, with their commission of lunacy, an 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 295 
 
 order to have the guardianship of the lunatic committed to them, 
 as also the possession of her estate." 
 
 Such arguments as the above, was De Foe in the habit of using 
 against those private dens of rapine, cruelty, and murder private 
 madhouses. Perhaps it was to this public benefactor of the human 
 family that public attention was most forcibly directed from time 
 to time; for the subject was no mere passing empty speculation of 
 the day ; but an indwelling fixed duty fixed in the heart of this 
 good man, for he was one ; though vain, improvident, volatile, and 
 foolish, in some matters : those hard multiplication, hard-corned 
 facts; which frills, buckles, swords, house, servants, coach, and 
 general swell of RESPECTABILITY, can not fritter away. De Foe 
 was a vain man, but he was a good man. 
 
 De Foe now turned his attention to writing a Preface to a new 
 edition of A Plea for the Nonconformists , by THOMAS DELAUNE, 
 who died in Newgate during his imprisonment for this book, 
 printed twenty years ago, which being seized by the messenger of 
 the press, was afterwards burnt by the common hangman ; and now 
 reprinted from the author's original copy, with a Preface by the 
 Author of the REVIEW. Prefaces to works at this time were fre- 
 quently very important, and in some cases more important than the 
 work intended to be elucidated; and these prefaces, even in our day, 
 after the lapse of one hundred and fifty years, frequently carry a 
 value to a book, which would be low indeed, were it not for the 
 preface attached to it. 
 
 This poor fellow, Delaune, was tried before Judge Jeffreys at the 
 Old Bailey on Jan. 17, 1666, when his book was condemned to be 
 burnt before the Royal Exchange, and he to linger in Newgate for 
 the imposed fine for fifteen months, till he died ; when he formed 
 one of the Martyr Brigade of eight thousand Protestant dissenters 
 who perished in prison in the reign of Charles II. ; and this merely 
 for dissenting from the Church of England. Shade of Privy- 
 Council scheme of educating the people into the church*! Eight 
 thousand people destroyed by Charles II., because they chose to 
 worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences. 
 
 Joint-stock companies appear to have had charms for De Foe ; 
 
296 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 but this would only be for a time, and that time the limit for the 
 complete command of ready money, for the purchase of scrip or deben- 
 tures. Perhaps the hosiery agency, or the pantile trade at Tilbury 
 Fort, might do something to enforce caution for the future. Be 
 this as it may, the mine adventure was incorporated under the name 
 of the " The Governor and Company of the Mine Adventurers of 
 England." These were principally lead and copper mines, on which 
 large sums were advanced, shares allotted, and money borrowed. 
 Capital stock being filled up, mills were erected, and smelting fur- 
 naces ; lands were bought, cottages and dwelling-houses were built, 
 and all, no doubt, at a premium. De Foe being consulted on this 
 scheme, and its probable chances of rubbing off the borrowed capital 
 by the profits, referred to their own printed work, entitled "An 
 Account of the clear Profits of extracting Silver out of Lead, by the 
 Governor and Commissioners of the Mine Adventurers of England; 
 taken from their original Accounts, and signed 'Thomas Horn, 
 Accountant to the Company/ ): On a full investigation of these 
 accounts, De Foe found that the profits of the concern would not 
 pay the perpetual annuitants ; created, I suppose, on their " calling 
 in the scrip," and "consolidating the stock;" for I have some 
 smattering left of these speculating terms from railway-scrip times. 
 In the Review of April 30, 1706, De Foe fully discusses the merits 
 of this bubble ; for such it was, and was proved to be. He did it 
 in all coolness and fairness ; but, as he had acted for the " bears " 
 and a fall in the market followed, he was threatened with violence 
 by certain stockholders in the concern. Poor fellow ! he complains 
 of the treatment threatened, as though he were always wrong, and 
 always in danger from violence for speaking the truth; for he says 
 "I suppose the end is to terrify me from making public what I have 
 further to say upon that head. But in this, also, they will be mis- 
 taken ; and as I have never been over apt to consult my prudentials, 
 when truth and matter of fact are before me, though when much 
 more powerful people are concerned than are here, so I am obliged 
 to acquaint the world, that I think myself bound, to avoid the 
 scandal of being afraid to speak the truth, to go on with my observa- 
 tions on that head ; and, as I shall descend further into particulars 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 297 
 
 than I intended first to do, I shall, perhaps, show such evidence for 
 my calculations, as may inform the world of some particulars, con- 
 cerning which they are at present ignorant, but will be very glad to 
 know. As to threatenings and prosecutions [for depreciating the 
 scrip !], truth is above fear; and, if I say any thing else, I ask no 
 quarter." 
 
 De FOG offers to do the company every reparation in his power if 
 they can pay the annuitants (debenture preference holders, I sup- 
 pose) out of the profits; but, "till then/' he adds, "if ever I come 
 to be keeper of the nation's madhouse, I cannot in justice but set 
 apart one of the largest rooms for the benefit of this company." 
 
 Dr. Thomas Browne, a man I have, many pages back, classed 
 with Ned Ward ; but before the prefix of Dr. had been placed as 
 a set-off or ornament to the plain Thomas, this man wrote A 
 Dialogue between Church and no Church; or, a Rehearsal of the 
 Review. This doctor, like some other doctors carrying more sail 
 than ballast, opens upon De Foe, and terms himself David, and 
 De Foe the Philistines; and he proposes to do great things with "a 
 few smooth stones out of the brook, to smite the brazen forehead of 
 this insulting champion of our Israel." He acknowledges that De 
 Foe " has treated the affairs of the nation, in relation to trade and 
 commerce, particularly in his late Review about bankrupts, with a 
 great deal of compassion towards the unfortunate, and with many 
 home arguments to such unmerciful creditors as would treat their 
 debtors worse than Turks use their dogs; though they are not 
 assured but that the same case they are prosecuting with such 
 severity, may be their own in a few days." This doctor will respect 
 De Foe so long as he keeps to trade and commerce ; but when he 
 launches into the deeps of religion, politics, philosophy, &c., he 
 would reclaim him. 
 
 De Foe makes some remarks in his Review for April 8, on this 
 antagonist, stating that he did not expect to be so honoured in 
 being so noticed by so august an individual, who had the honour to 
 write letters with plain contradictions to ministers of state ; and, 
 that as Dr. Browne had been so fully occupied in bullying the 
 government, lampooning the nobility, affronting my Lord Keeper 
 
298 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 and the Secretary of State ; and in translating Horace, or correcting 
 the false grammar in his former translations,, but all wrong as to 
 conjecture; the doctor being there as an antagonist; DeFoe desires 
 one point for the doctor's consideration; that is, the pen being 
 dipped in falsehood is not quite keeping up the dignity of a gentle- 
 man. Poor Browne ! his paper soon fell; for it was all froth ; he 
 only brought out eight or ten numbers. 
 
 On June 18, 1706, the Theatre Royal Drury Lane gave a benefit 
 towards defraying the expense of repairing the chapel in Russell 
 Court, which had lately been purchased from the dissenters, under 
 the charge of Dr. Daniel Burgess. The landlord, being opposed to 
 dissenters, dispossessed them, at the expiration of their lease, at the 
 instigation of Dr. Lancaster, the vicar of St. Martin's; who per- 
 suaded the parish to purchase the building, and fit it up as a chapel 
 of ease for the Established Church. 
 
 This benefit for the church attracted the notice of De Foe, who 
 wrote freely on the subject in his Review of Thursday, June 20, 
 1 706 ; where he intimates that the victories of Marlborough, being 
 Whig victories, only endangering the church ; as a Tory victory 
 would be a propping up both of chancel and tower ; and this com- 
 bination of comedy and pulpit, both being Tory, must have been to 
 put down dissent. 
 
 " { Towards the defraying the charge of repairing and fitting up the 
 chapel in Russell Court, at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, this 
 present Tuesday, being the 18th of June, will be presented the 
 tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark, with singing by Mr. Hughes, 
 &c. &c., and entertainment of dancing by Monsieur Cherrier, Miss 
 Santlow, his scholar, and Mr. Evans. Boxes, 5s. ; Pit, 3s. ; First 
 Gallery, 2s.; Upper Gallery, Is.' 
 
 " From whence I offer this observation to the serious thoughts of 
 those gentlemen who are apprehensive of the church's danger, viz., 
 If the devil be come over to us and assist to support the church, the 
 devil must be in it, if the church be in danger. And here, gentle- 
 men, let us make a few remarks upon this worthy subject. Certainly, 
 you gentlemen of the High-Church show very little respect to the 
 church, and cannot be such friends to its establishment as you pre- 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 299 
 
 tend to be ; since, though you have the house built to your hands 
 (for this chapel was before, a dissenting meeting-house), yet you 
 must go a-begging to the playhouse, to carry on the work. Or is 
 this a general banter upon the church, that people must be invited 
 to go to the brink of the gulph by the religious argument of his 
 being for the church; as if the lady, that now gives five shillings 
 towards the repairing the church, would not contribute the money 
 unless she could see a play into the bargain ? Or, on the other 
 hand, as if there were not farce enough acted upon that stage, the 
 pulpit, but the hearers must be sent to the theatre to make it up. 
 Some guess, rather, this may be a religious wheedle, to form an 
 excuse for the ladies, and justify their so frequent visits to the 
 theatre ; since, the money being thus disposed of, they gratify their 
 vanity and fancy, they show their piety, please their vice, and smuggle 
 their consciences ; something like that old zeal, of robbing orphans 
 to build almshouses. 
 
 " Hard times, gentlemen, hard times, indeed, these are with the 
 church, to send her to the playhouse to gather pew-money. For 
 shame, gentlemen ; go to the church and pay the money there, and 
 never let the playhouse have such a claim to its establishment as to 
 say the church is beholden to her. Sic tempora mutantur ! Times 
 are finely changed. In the late reigns the church built the play- 
 houses, but now the playhouse builds the church ; from whence I 
 cannot but prophesy, that the time will come, when either the 
 church will pull down the playhouse, or the playhouse will pull 
 down the church, 
 
 " Now, Mr. Leslie, have at the dissenters ; for, if they do not 
 come to this play, they are certainly enemies to the church ; put 
 their negative upon repairing and fitting up the church, which, by 
 Mr. Leslie's usual logic, may easily be proved to be pulling down 
 the church. Now, Mr. Collier, you are quite aground, and all your 
 sarcasms upon the playhouse, all your satires upon the stage, are 
 as so many arrows shot at the church ; for every convert of your 
 making, every one you have been the means of keeping from the 
 playhouse, has so far lessened the church stock, and tended to let 
 the church fall upon our heads. Never talk of the stage any more ; 
 
300 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 for, if the church cannot be repaired nor fitted up without the play- 
 house, to write against the playhouse is to write against the church ; 
 to discourage the playhouse is to weaken the church ; and you rob 
 the church of the people's bounty, which is one of the worst sorts 
 of sacrilege. Nor is it unworthy our remark, to see how all hands 
 aloft are zealous in their calling for the church. Can our church be 
 in danger ? How is it possible ? The whole nation is solicitous 
 and at work for her safety and prosperity. The Parliament address ; 
 the Queen consults ; the ministry execute ; the army fights ; and all 
 for the church ! Peggy Hughes sings ; Monsieur Ramadon plays ; 
 Miss Santlow dances ; Monsieur Cherrier teaches ; and all for the 
 church ! Here 's heavenly doings ! Here 'a harmony ! Your sing- 
 ing psalms is hurdy-gurdy to this music ; and all your preaching 
 actors are fools to these. Besides, there's another sort of music 
 here : the case is altered, the clergy preach and read here, &c., and 
 get money for it of the church. But these sing and dance and act, 
 and talk bawdy, and the church gets money by the bargain ; there's 
 the music of it ! 
 
 " But, to talk more serious. Pray let us put things a little upon 
 the square ; the great law of retaliation comes in here ; and, as the 
 playhouse owes its original and advancement to our late champions 
 of High Church, they can do no less than reverence their founders, 
 and relieve them in the present straitness of their circumstances. 
 And again, in their turn : suppose the playhouse should be burnt 
 down, as it once was, the church could not deny to read a brief in 
 every parish for the rebuilding it, with a ' Pray, remember the great 
 loss by fire!' But pray let us inquire here, how comes the chapel 
 in Russell Court to stand in such ill circumstances, that the play- 
 house must be called upon for this odd and most unusual charity ? 
 Some horrible scandal must lie somewhere. 'Tis plain the chapel 
 was Mr. Daniel Burgess's meeting-house before ; and as the auditory 
 is large, the persons concerned numerous and able, whence comes 
 this deficiency ? It must be from want of sense of the convenience, 
 or want of regard to the church ; 'tis a most scandalous contempt 
 of the church. What, send her a-begging to the playhouse ! Of all 
 the churches in the world, I believe none was ever served thus 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 301 
 
 before. What a reproach is this to the neighbourhood of Russell 
 Court Chapel ! What, gentlemen, nobody to repair the church for 
 you, but those that are every day reproved in it ! Must the play- 
 house boxes build your pews ? the playhouse pit raise your gallery ? 
 This is the ready way to have the people call them both playhouses, 
 and that, though they have different places to officiate in, they are 
 but the same congregation. 
 
 " Charity would fain crowd in here, and say in behalf of this 
 action, that the playhouse is reformed, and that it goes hand-in-hand 
 with the church, and is a true friend to it, as now appears. I do 
 not know, I confess, but that the playhouse may, in some things, 
 conform to the church ; but I hope the church does in nothing go 
 hand-in-hand with the playhouse. 
 
 " Well, 'tis very unhappy that no manner of contribution could 
 have been raised but this, for the building a church ; 'tis like the 
 Italians laying a tax upon their bawdy-houses. In short, this con- 
 tribution is but a civil taking out a license for playhouses ; and they 
 may now claim fairly a liberty, and tax you with ingratitude if you 
 refuse them. 
 
 " It would be worth inquiry now, how the play fills. The players 
 are very familiar with their Maker, here, methinks, and religion 
 comes in, like the poet, for a third day. Now, His observable, that 
 the respect to the poet is shown by the crowds on the poet's day ; 
 if there be a full house then, His a signal of his reputation, and tells 
 the world what a value they put upon his performance. The 18th 
 of June is the church's third day at the play. Now, gentlemen, we 
 shall see what reputation religion has among our playhunters, and 
 whether they value her above common poets or no. I am afraid 
 religion and the church will have but a poor day of it ; on the other 
 hand, there will be room for strange distinctions. First, here you 
 will see who are the best churchmen, High or Low; for are the 
 players High Church, as most allow, if they are of any church at 
 all ; then a thin or full house determines who are the best friends 
 to the church. But, then, here is another misfortune; and I would 
 have the ladies very careful how they brand themselves with the 
 scandal of it that they go to this play for the sake of the church, 
 
302 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 certainly never go to the church ; if they did, they might find ways 
 to give their money into better hands. In short, the observations 
 on this most preposterous piece of church-work are so many, that 
 they cannot come into the compass of this paper. But, if the money 
 raised here be employed to re-edify this chapel, I would have it, as 
 frequent in like cases, written over the door, in capital letters : 
 
 "Tins CHURCH WAS RE-EDIFIED ANNO 1706, AT THE EXPENSE 
 AND BY THE CHARITABLE CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE ENEMIES OF THE 
 REFORMATION OF OUR MORALS, AND TO THE ETERNAL SCANDAL 
 AND MOST JUST REPROACH OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND THE 
 PROTESTANT RELIGION. 
 
 LUCIFER PRINCE OF DARKNESS, 
 
 AND ) Churchwardens" 
 
 HAMLET PRINCE OF DENMARK, 
 
 "j 
 
 * } 
 
 This number of the Review excited a good deal of feeling in cer- 
 tain quarters, where shame was felt for the partnership of Playhouse, 
 Church, and Co. ; and an answer was published, and an attempt 
 made at a satisfactory explanation ; but all to no purpose ; for De 
 Foe only returned to the charge in his next Review, in which he 
 says it is not fair to laugh twice at one jest; but who can help it? 
 for, says he 
 
 " If the playhouse is addicted to acts of charity, why do they not 
 maintain their own poor ? Why not raise a pension for their poor 
 brethren at the Haymarket ; or, which would be something to their 
 honour, make good the subscriptions that are yet unpaid, and dis- 
 charge the debt to the poor workmen who built the house ? This 
 playhouse charity is set with the bottom upward ; like a famous 
 dignified gentleman in England, who ran in debt to honest men, to 
 give alms to knaves. Perhaps it may be said, the actors are not a 
 corporation, and have nothing to do with each other, unless it be to 
 help one to starve the other. Well, but, gentlemen, though you 
 are not a corporation, you are a fraternity ; and as the deviFs broker 
 said to Dr. Griffith, ' You are all of a trade ; you are all the devil's 
 brokers ;' and you ought, in common prudence, and to support the 
 honour of the employment, to have relieved your brethren first, and 
 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 303 
 
 have cleared the prisons of some of the best of them. Besides, I am 
 at a loss for the coherence of the thing : the playhouse and the 
 church ! There 's no manner of philosophy in it ; 'tis yoking the 
 poles; His saying the Christ-cross-row backward; and nobody can 
 tell whether it be to raise the devil or to lay him. There could not 
 have been such a circle-full of angles put together again, and all the 
 men of wit, either in God's church, or the devil's chapel, could not 
 have composed such another piece of discord. 
 
 " Some people have been rummaging their heads for the design 
 of it ; which they say must be something extraordinary ; yet I can 
 see no need for so wild a guess. He that shot this gun, took aim, 
 no doubt ; and what did he aim at, think you ? Why, the money, 
 man ! What should he aim at ? And, whoever he was, whether 
 actor or churchwarden, or a rump of both formed into a junto for 
 this weighty affair, my life for yours, the money was the matter. 
 The players, I allow, had the best prospect of the two ; of which, 
 without doubt, they had a forethought : as, first, a full house, and 
 an united benefit ; and secondly, a snack with the club. And there 's 
 private interests, a new reputation for loyalty to the church, and a 
 screen from justice ; because one good turn deserves another. 
 
 " Again, some say, this is a Low-Church plot upon the High- 
 Church playhouse ; and a pretty banter this makes, indeed ! For 
 the Haymarket building, they say, is a Low-Church playhouse, and 
 Drury Lane a High-Church playhouse. Two things are concluded 
 from hence : 1st : That the High gentlemen are the best friends 
 of the church ; for when did ever the Low-Church players offer to 
 give the church a play at their house ? 'Tis really very kindly done, 
 and their care of the church is so remarkable as to merit being 
 recorded. 2ndly : It necessarily follows, that the church is very 
 much beholden to the playhouse, that they will give away their 
 profits to its assistance. 
 
 " We talk of reforming our manners, and setting up rules of 
 government ; but to attempt it this way, seems to me to make a 
 comedy of the government, and a tragedy of the church. How odd 
 a sight it would be to see bills put up thus : ' At the Theatre Royal 
 in Drury Lane, this present Thursday, being the 27th of June, will 
 
304 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 be acted a new play, entitled THE CHTJRCH, a Tragedy. ' This, I 
 think, is certain ; let the play be what it will, 'tis a tragedy to the 
 church, and one of the shortest ways to pull her clown. What 
 horrid work is here made of religion ! The sacred mask has been a 
 disguise to many hypocrites, but never was put upon the face of the 
 playhouse before. I cannot deny it to be a very quaint invention 
 to persuade people, and a cunning way to fill the house : that 
 they may go to the play for God's sake ! Our children would now 
 have a fair excuse to us, when we refuse them leave to go to the 
 play : ' Why, sir, 'tis for the benefit of the church ; for our money 
 is to be given to build up the church/ ' Excellent excuse, child/ I 
 should say ; ' so you must lay out your money with the devil, that 
 he may build up a house for God with it : sacrifice to vanity for the 
 encouragement of piety. Rare work, indeed.' ' 
 
 In August of this year, some players went to Oxford, and obtained 
 a license from the vice-chancellor to act plays in that city. On 
 which De Foe opened his battery again on the imprudence of the 
 act, and calls upon the heads of colleges to look at their title-deeds, 
 and professed object of the several founders who have endowed the 
 several colleges and halls " for the honour of God, the encourage- 
 ment of learning, the increase of virtue, piety, and true religion, I 
 give and grant," &c. 
 
 " Pray, gentlemen," asks De Foe, "which of all these ends of the 
 founders do these comedians answer? With what face can an 
 English clergyman suffer the habits and vestments of a Christian 
 priest to be seen in the lewd crowd of the admirers of vice ? " 
 
 " How can the loose strumpet tremble at the judgment of God, 
 denounced against her sins by the tongue of her minister, when she 
 saw the same serious countenance that now reproves her, deformed 
 with the smiles of pleasure at the vicious banter of a lewd repre- 
 sentation in a bawdy play? Shall that hand, extended in laying 
 out her crimes, carry any awe with it, which the day before was 
 lifted up to applaud the vile performance of those sons of hell ? 
 Pardon me, if I say, you cannot but lessen the esteem the world has 
 of your virtue, whatever it has of your learning." Vide Review, 
 vol. iii. pp. 377-9. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 305 
 
 Review, vol. iii.p. 397 : " Being launched into the ocean of luna- 
 ticks, in search of that vast fountain of general extravagance from 
 whence all our national frenzies flow ; such various scenes have 
 presented themselves to my view, that really render the account 
 something confused. I have touched at trade lunaticks ; and en- 
 tered a little upon the black scene of the fury of creditors, against 
 even those debtors who are willing freely to strip themselves of all 
 the remnants of their misfortune, that they might be at liberty to 
 work for more. I should inquire, I say, further into these horrid 
 things, were it not that it might seem to be drawing the picture of 
 my own case, which is now upon the stage, than which no man's 
 case, that ever came for relief by this new act of Parliament, has 
 ever been more severe ; and than whom no man is treated worse, 
 on his flying to this sanctuary of the law, for deliverance. 
 
 " I confess myself surprised at my own affair ; and I should not 
 have troubled the world with it, if it were not something never 
 heard of before. Several debtors have been used hardly by cre- 
 ditors, and their discharge vigorously opposed. But was ever the 
 world so mad ! The unhappy author of this, claiming a discharge 
 from old misfortunes on a clear surrender, as by the law is directed, 
 finds himself opposed, not by those he owes money too, but by those 
 that owe him money ; not by those who by disaster are wronged, 
 but by those that have wronged, cheated, and plundered him of that 
 money which should have helped to discharge others ; to whom he 
 never owed a shilling, of whom he never borrowed, but to whom he 
 always lent ; and who have actually defrauded him of near j500, 
 advanced in compassion to save them from destruction. 
 
 " If this paper should acquaint the world how these people have 
 hitherto treated its author ; how they seized upon his writings, left 
 only in trust ; how they conveyed away their relation, a partner, 
 that he might not be an evidence ; and compounded his private 
 debts for his, without which he would not go ; how they have sued 
 him for bonds given, and afterwards discharged in partnership, and 
 sued in the names of the persons to whom they were paid ; without 
 their knowledge ; how, after beginning a suit, they have not dared 
 to go ou ! after proposing a reference, thejfc have not dared to 
 
 20 
 
308 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 stand to it ; though accepted, and offered to be determined by their 
 own arbitrator ; if I should run on into all these particulars, the 
 story would be too black to read." 
 
 I can quote no more. It is the old tale of the light, dressy, 
 devil-may-care spendthrift, which has been told a thousand upon a 
 thousand times ; always persecuted by relations, friends, foes, and 
 strangers, always wrong, always cheated, and never to blame. An- 
 other sacrifice to the black-coated, well-brushed, British god^ 
 Respectability. Daniel De Foe must be respectable yes ! keep 
 his coach upon his pantile trade of Tilbury Fort, and walk Bristol 
 streets on Sunday, with wig, sword, ruffles, and frills, if hid from 
 bailiffs and creditors for the remaining six days of the week, in a 
 garret or a cellar ! 
 
 The lawyer had committed forgery ; the age was mad, and he had 
 been fourteen years in retreat, in jeopardy, in broils, and most of 
 the time in banishment from his family; all his profits from his 
 books had been swallowed up, though that has been very considerable, 
 in making gradual payments to creditors ; and in defending himself 
 against those who would have it not only faster than their fellow- 
 creditors, but even faster than it could be got. From this it would 
 appear, that he had been in pecuniary difficulties, and separated 
 from his family, for the most part, as an improvident husband and 
 spendthrift father, from 1692 ; or ten years before the death of his 
 great benefactor and friend, William III. of glorious memory. 
 
 Well, William came in 1688, and died in 1702; and De Foe in 
 1706, in his Review for August 23, declares that he had been in 
 retreat fourteen years, with jeopardy, broils, and most of the time in 
 banishment from his family ; and after the above, he goes on to say, 
 " that they have since seen him stripped naked by the government, 
 and the foundations torn up, on which he had built the prospect of 
 paying debts, and raising his family ; and yet now, when by common 
 reasoning they ought to believe, the man has not bread for his 
 children, have redoubled their attacks, with declarations, executions, 
 escape warrants, and God knows how many engines of destruction ; 
 as if a gaol and death would pay their debts ; as if money was to be 
 found in the blood of the debtor, and they were to open his veins to 
 find it. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 307 
 
 That bind the ready hands of Industry, 
 Pinion the willing wings, and bid men fly. 
 Resolved to ruin me the shortest way, 
 They strip me naked first, then bid me pay. 
 
 " But if this is not yet all, and though I confess, I did not expect 
 it from anybody ; yet as some whisperings have been spread of a 
 further plot, even against the life of this unhappy debtor, and that 
 among his friends too ; he cannot but take notice of it here, as what 
 he thinks the only proper reason, and is indeed one of the chief 
 reasons of this publication, and which he hopes the world will allow 
 to be a good reason ; and this is a scandalous and vile suggestion, 
 that he made concealments to defraud his creditors ; or, in English, 
 has not made a fair surrender of his effects. Now as, if this be 
 true, he must be the greatest fool, as well as knave, knowing how 
 many bloody enemies, as well as base and hypocritical friends, he is 
 compassed with ; so, if this be not true, the suggestion is a most 
 vile and barbarous scandal. 
 
 1 ' The debtor can be guilty but two ways : either by innocent 
 mistake, or by wilful deceit. For the first, omissions are certainly 
 possible. Gentlemen, the author of this is no more infallible than 
 other men ; he may, and 'tis much if he have not, in the life of 
 constant hurries he has lived ; he may have forgotten, mistaken, 
 wrong stated, wrong cast up, or otherwise erred in some part or 
 branch of his account ; and if this is your charge, gentlemen if 
 you are Christians, if men of like frailties, and whose case one time 
 or other want the same like charity ; if you have anything left in 
 you that is moral or human ; if any compassion for a man in danger, 
 and a family with seven children that must perish in his disaster, 
 help him, gentlemen, help in time, inform him of it, give the need- 
 ful hint ; and in common charity, show him this gulph, this pit of 
 destruction, before it be too late to retrieve it. 
 
 " Pray, gentlemen, come in with your charge at the meeting, and 
 let it appear." 
 
 It would appear from the above, that for fourteen years previous 
 to 1706, De Foe had been running up and down the country an 
 outcast, for the most part, and escaped, as is always the case with 
 
 20* 
 
308 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 such outcasts, from the regular domestic comforts of house and 
 home ; an alien, stranger, intruder on his own hearthstone a poli- 
 tical secret-service official of the government, and party writer for 
 bread; is it so? I should be sorry to detract from one of the 
 greatest philosophers England ever knew, as well as one of her 
 true-born sons ; but yet, I fear, I must say an improvident man, 
 whose necessities compelled him to write for party bread. His 
 father, James Foe, butcher, died in lodgings in 1705, leaving no 
 will, and probably no effects; and Daniel, the subject of this writing, 
 does not account for several years of his own life I think six years 
 from his leaving Mr. Morton's academy, and again appearing as 
 hose-factor in Freeman's Court, Cornhill. Some of. De Foe's bio- 
 graphers have always represented him as a large Spanish, or large 
 Dutch, or large German, or East Indian merchant. I believe 
 nothing of the kind. He was a great philosopher, writer, and 
 statesman (SCOTLAND, and its UNION with ENGLAND, to wit), who 
 never had any means of subsistence; for he was always improvident; 
 he lived a life of usefulness to his country but lived, as he died, 
 without a shilling. 
 
 When De Foe commences the date of his embarrassments I know 
 not. I should suppose he would leave out of the reckoning the 
 period when he carried on the pantile trade at Tilbury Fort, and 
 kept his coach out of the profits. It is certain that Ned Ward, in 
 his Dissenting Hypocrite, places him in Newgate as early as 1689 
 (the year after William III. came as the deliverer of this country), 
 and in Newgate for debt ; for at the collection (as we have seen) in 
 Dr. Daniel Burgess's chapel, it was given out, that Daniel wanted 
 bread, and the collection for that bread was made accordingly. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 IN the Review for July 18, 1706, De Foe announces a work for 
 publication on the following Saturday; and a caution is given 
 against the octavo edition, which was pirated and brought out at 
 the same time ; this work having been announced for publication 
 so early as the year 1 704, and subscriptions received on account of 
 the work, and the work not appearing as announced, and partly 
 subscribed for, great clamour was excited among the subscribers 
 against the work, and against the author ; and this was the folio 
 poem against the divine right of kings, entitled Jure Divino. This 
 work is voluminous and patriotic ; but poor, perhaps, in the art of 
 poetry, as may be accounted for by the fact of his being a prisoner 
 in Newgate for writing the Shortest Way with the Dissenters when 
 it was composed ; and when his time must have been occupied with 
 other subjects. 
 
 We might readily believe that the jovial brutality of the felons' 
 yard at Newgate was not exactly congenial to poetic inspiration on 
 the rights of peoples, or the usurpations of monarchs. No ! but so 
 it was. Jure Divino was written, for the most part, in Newgate, 
 when De Foe was a prisoner there in 1 703 and 1 704 : and at a 
 time when he was greatly occupied with the publication of his 
 Review, and other works ; for at this time he was truly industrious, 
 as his various works fully testify ; and on his release he was taken 
 into diplomatic service by Harley, as a make-up, I suppose, for his 
 forced neglect of his pamphleteer while confined in Newgate. He 
 was liberated in the autumn of 1704; and in the following summer 
 he was sent on some secret mission, fortified by govermental pass- 
 ports, into dangerous if not foreign parts ; where he travelled under 
 the assumed name of Mr. Christopher Hurt. On this dangerous 
 
310 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 secret service he was absent four months, somewhere perhaps in 
 Dorsetshire and Devonshire, taking an active part in the election. 
 
 May we stop to inquire here, what could this mean? Haiiey 
 sending De Foe among the freeholders of Dorsetshire and Devon- 
 shire, to preach up liberalism and self-reliance. Harley had been 
 three times elected Speaker of the House of Commons, and knew 
 better than any living man, the construction and dependencies of 
 that House. Harley dinnered himself into the Speaker's chair, and 
 he dinnered himself likewise into the office of secretary of state. 
 He knew the House well, and the expenses attending the keeping 
 up a working majority from the members of the rotten boroughs ; 
 and it might be convenient for a man as secretary of state to wish a 
 House rather differently constituted, for his own safety or comfort, 
 to that which he might require when an aspiring, turbulent, uneasy 
 Speaker of the House of the Commons, where all the conceivable 
 corruption might be profitable to him as a rising power ; and very 
 depressing to the minister of the time, who had these men to pay 
 or buy up. Be the cause what it may, De Foe was engaged by 
 Harley, when secretary of state, to go into Dorsetshire and Devon- 
 shire, to try to stem that torrent of High-Church jure-divino prin- 
 ciples, which French gold had so fully cherished in the House of 
 Commons during the whole reign of William III. ; even to the buy- 
 ing up of 160 or more members by Cardinal Mazarin, the French 
 minister, for the use and benefit of Louis XIV., his lord and master. 
 Harley, when Speaker, set De Foe upon spreading these High- 
 Church doctrines ; and when De Foe had turned out Lord Notting- 
 ham, and placed Harley in his seat, then Harley, as minister, set 
 De Foe upon undoing the very work he had previously set him upon. 
 
 It was in the summer of 1705, that the elections took place 
 throughout England; and this was the time when De Foe was "upon 
 a journey about his lawful occasions," in Devonshire and the west 
 of England, on an electioneering tour, and under the sanction or 
 protection of government passports, to keep him from the prying 
 annoyances of country justices. All these important missions pre- 
 vented De Foe bringing out his important work, Jure Divino, so 
 punctually as he had intended ; which caused considerable dissatis- 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 311 
 
 faction amongst the subscribers to the work, who had paid their 
 subscriptions for the work nearly two years before its appearance. 
 As the work appeared at a time when De Foe was employed by 
 Harley in electioneering, is it possible to suppose that Harley could 
 have any hand in recommending this work to counteract principles 
 which he found difficult to regulate as minister? Did Harley pro- 
 cure De Foe to write Jure Divino? 
 
 It appears to have been the universal fashion of the time to run 
 down the elaborate work, Jure Divino, and pronounce it to be a 
 failure, even before it made its appearance from the press. Of this 
 De Foe himself complains in a preface to a later edition. This cry 
 was raised in 1 706 ; and it has been continued to our time without 
 contradiction ; and the cry has even been taken up by some of De 
 Foe's biographers, who have probably adopted it without any close 
 investigation into the merits of the book ; which is really no failure 
 at all, but is one of his best productions, and contains sentiments 
 worthy of the best of the Seldens, Miltons, Boyles, Hampdens, or 
 Sidneys. Jure Divino is a thoroughly patriotic work ; but published 
 at a time, in a folio volume too ! when the divine right of kings 
 stood higher in common public opinion than at any other time of 
 our history ; and, thanks to Louis XIV. of France for it ! thanks 
 to his money influencing public opinion in Britain into French 
 principles, and French bondage ; for this bondage was the sole aim 
 of the expenditure ; but, thanks also to the immortal Earl of Danby, 
 frustrated by the skill of an English minister. 
 
 I think this work so very good, that I shall give copious extracts 
 from it; and, if I be wrong in my estimate of the work, I shall 
 stand convicted by the same jury as the author. 
 
 The title, Jure Divino, condemned the book, and not its contents ; 
 but of this the public may judge : 
 
 "PREFACE. This satire had never been published, though some 
 of it has been a long time in being, had not the world seemed to be 
 going mad a second time with the error of Passive Obedience and 
 Non-resistance" So much for preface ; the extract of forty valuable 
 pages ; many of which ought at the time to have been printed in 
 letters of gold. 
 
312 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 THE INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Nature has left this tincture in the blood, 
 That all men would be tyrants if they could ; 
 If they forbear their neighbours to devour, 
 'Tis not for want of will, but want of POWER. 
 The general plague infects the very race, 
 Pride in his heart, and tyrant in his face ; 
 The characters are legible and plain, 
 And perfectly describe the monster Man. 
 
 Nor can he otherwise be understood ; 
 We 'd all be emperors ; 'tis in the blood. 
 Ambition knows no bounds, the meanest hand, 
 If once let loose, would pow'r itself command ; 
 Would storm the skies ; the Thund'rer there dethrone; 
 Be universal lord ; and call the world his own. 
 
 The only safety of society, 
 
 Is, that my neighbour 's just as proud as I; 
 
 Has the same will and wish, the same design, 
 
 And his abortive envy ruins mine. 
 
 The epidemick frenzy has possest, 
 
 By nature one, by nature all the rest. 
 
 We 're all alike, we'd all ascend the skies ; 
 
 All would be kings, all kings would tyrannize; 
 
 Sons would be fathers, fathers rule the states ; 
 
 Servants be masters ; masters, magistrates; 
 
 Ambition 's in the species of the man : 
 
 He always will be master, if he can ; 
 
 And his desire of rule so blinds his pride, 
 
 He scorns to think himself unqualified. 
 
 The strong unbounded lust of sovereign rule 
 Makes him conceit the prince, forget the fool; 
 The cobbler J s not so vile, despised a thing, 
 . But whisp'ring devils this delusion bring ; 
 He fancies he could make a better king. 
 The gen'ral taint infects the very kind, 
 To lordship by eternal gust inclin'd ; 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 313 
 
 The very breed must thus be understood, 
 Nature has left the tincture in their blood. 
 
 Thus, while he aims at gen'ral tyranny, 
 
 Nothing 's so much a wretch, so much a slave as he ; 
 
 Damn'd to the bondage of mechanick vice, 
 
 And meets new masters wheresoe'er he flies ; 
 
 His reason bows before the feet of crime ; 
 
 And lets th' infernal govern the sublime ; 
 
 Cheats his loose judgment with the vile pretence, . 
 
 And worships idol-crime in spite of sense. 
 
 A general slave to universal vice, 
 So fond of chains, does so his fate despise ; 
 He seems to own his slav'ry as his choice, 
 And damns his freedom with subjected voice. 
 
 Usurping hell, the sceptre of his mind, 
 Has from all powers, but doing well, confin'd; 
 A constant bondage bows his couchant neck, 
 His will corrupted) and his judgment weak. 
 
 Th' eternal drudge, the vilest crime obeys, 
 
 And where his sense abhors, his will complies ; 
 
 To all the meannesses of vice submits, 
 
 And, though it shocks his reason, rules his wits ; 
 
 A slave to strong involuntary crime, 
 
 He rules the world, his passions govern him : 
 
 Indwelling mischiefs crowd his abject soul, 
 
 Debauched in part ; and tainted in the whole. 
 
 Ambition flows in the degen'rate seed ; 
 
 Pride swells the heart, and avarice the head ; 
 
 Envy sits regent in the growing spleen, 
 
 And hypochondriack malice boils within ; 
 
 Lust in his baser part obscurely lies, 
 
 And rage and passion sparkle in his eyes ; 
 
 His locomotive faculties obev, 
 
 And organ pays allegiance to the tyranny ; "* 
 
314 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 The hands obey the tyrant in the brain; 
 Reason, when Lust commands, resists in vain ; 
 Unnatural heats o'er all the blood prevail ; 
 This hour they rule the head, and next the tail : 
 With arbitrary force the members guide, 
 The feet to mischief, and the hands to blood. 
 
 i 
 
 What strange extremes has Nature in her womb ? 
 
 From what vast causes must such monsters come ? 
 
 What strange, what wild, ungoverned things are men ? 
 
 And who can all the devil of them explain ? 
 
 Their pride directs them to usurping power, 
 
 And would not only govern, but devour ; 
 
 But if they can't tyrannic hist obtain, 
 
 Because they can't be gods, they wont be men ; 
 
 Abandon reason, let it act by halves, 
 
 And y where they can't be tyrants, will be slaves. 
 
 JURE DIVING; 
 
 A 
 
 SATIRE. 
 
 Then tell us, Satire, let thy lines explain 
 What thing *s a tyrant ; 
 
 Paint th' infernal man. 
 His birth, his fortune, and his fate rehearse, 
 No sinner can describe him like thy verse ; 
 A monster form'd of all the shapes of sin, 
 Something of man without, all devil within ; 
 No phrase his sable mystery can unfold, 
 His story must be felt, it can't be told. 
 
 There Judas, mighty Judas, let him stand, 
 With thirty shining stars in his exalted hand ; 
 No man will his divinity refuse, 
 Call him the patron-god of all the Jews ; 
 Let him the god of treason too appear, 
 And when he reigns, let honest men beware. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 315 
 
 Whoe'er is in his constellation born, 
 
 May storms and gibbets, swords and bullets, scorn ; 
 
 So let the fates decree the wretched elves 
 
 May always be assur'd to hang themselves. 
 
 Peter the Cruel must stand fair for Spain, 
 And great DE ALVA wait another train ; 
 Cortez and he may for the place contend, 
 And both shall have the poet for their friend. 
 Spain has too fruitful been in men of blood, 
 Who equally deserve the title of a god ; 
 These are the heroes history extols, 
 Who mount in flames of crime the heavenly walls ; 
 Millions have fallen by their glorious hands, 
 And by their breath, at once dispeopled lands. 
 
 Prolific France might people all the skies, 
 With villains qualified for deities. 
 BJCHLIEU the new Apollo might have stood, 
 But that his wit was mingled so with blood ; 
 Let him the god of politics appear, 
 And influence all the arts of peace and war ; 
 Who in his government their birthday had, 
 Will both be witty, bloody, wise, and mad. 
 
 Ten mighty monarchs from the Gallic throne, 
 
 For magnitude of crimes might struggle to be shown ; 
 
 They } d all contend for room among the stars, 
 
 And jostle one another from the spheres ; 
 
 In equal vileness their high names excel, 
 
 And in superior crimes, too black for hell. 
 
 But by consent they all at once give way, 
 
 And let immortal LEWIS [XIV.] come in play. 
 
 His ancestor, whom money made a saint, 
 
 And legends full of lies his glories paint, 
 
 Shall willingly his lustre all resign, 
 
 To help th' exalted wretch in orbs to shine, 
 
 See the new growing constellation rise, 
 
316 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 And with a train of tyrants mount the skies ; 
 
 The ancestors of his immortal crimes, 
 
 Blazori'd for heroes by the flattering rhymes 
 
 Of antiquated poesy ; but now 
 
 Sunk down below our praises, and below 
 
 The dignity of high immortal verse ; 
 
 We mightier deeds, in mightier lines rehearse. 
 
 Behold the mighty Thunderer, and know, 
 
 The azure arch can no such hero show ; 
 
 The Great, th' Invincible, are names too small, 
 
 To write his FAME in letters capital ; 
 
 A god 's the only title can explain, 
 
 And suit the mighty, the immortal man. 
 
 Great Jove shall vail his lesser majesty, 
 
 And to his rising godship now give way ; 
 
 His forked lightning he must now resign, 
 
 The title may be his, the thunder 's thine ; 
 
 Witness the ravag'd Belgian, and the plunder'd Rhine. 
 
 If seas of blood, and mighty numbers slain ; 
 
 If nations long oppress'd, if cries of men ; 
 
 If devastation, cruelty, and death, 
 
 And blasting nations with tyrannick breath ; 
 
 If flaming towns, if ravish'd virtue lies, 
 
 As steps to mount a monarch to the skies ; 
 
 LEWIS to reign above the gods may claim, 
 
 And Jove resign his thunder and his name. 
 
 Satire, look back, and search the world awhile, 
 And find a patron-god for Albion* & isle ; 
 Britannia must not all alone remain, 
 Without one star in the celestial train ; 
 Has she so many tyrants borne in vain ? 
 
 Satire, thy country's glory now pursue ; 
 
 If other lands have one, let thine have two; l 
 
 Step back two ages, and exalt on high, 
 
 GREAT JAMES [I.] the modern Bacchus of the sky. 
 
 1 The notoriously dissolute Lord Eochester being the other. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 317 
 
 But give him time, before his ghost appear, 
 
 Lest his uneasy fame bewray his fear : 
 
 Let him be patron of the timorous race, 
 
 Fear in the head, and frenzy in the face ; 
 
 His constellation, where it 's felt beneath, 
 
 Will make men strive to die for fear of death. 
 
 See how we worship in his house of sin, 
 
 His exaltation with his crimes begin ; 
 
 Aloft, 1 we view the bacchanalian King ; 
 
 Below, 2 the sacred anthems daily sing. 
 
 His vast excess the pencil art displays, 
 
 And triumphs in the clouds above our praise ; 
 
 What can with equal force devotion move ? 
 
 We pray below, and he 's debauched above. 
 
 The drunken monarch all our prayers defies, 
 
 And boldly revels in th' exalted skies. 
 
 Satire, thy justice cannot well deny, 
 
 T exalt him here, that 's there set up so high. 
 
 Art had thy verse anticipated there, 
 
 And, godlike, placed the monarch in the air. 
 
 Satire, go back no further, leave a space 
 
 For future heroes of sublimer race ; 
 
 Content thyself with these ; let all men try 
 
 To find out such another galaxy. 
 
 These shall thy class of modern gods complete, 
 
 And these alone enjoy the shining seat, 
 
 Too vile for heaven, and for the world too great. 
 
 If any ask thee what high place remains, 
 And what bright orb thy William's [III.] star contains, 
 Tell 'em that he who pull'd down tyrants here, 
 Proclaims eternal wars against them there ; 
 
 1 The paintings on the ceilings in the Banqueting House represent all manner 
 of bacchanalian excesses, and the King frequently crowned with the triumphs of 
 drunkenness. 
 
 2 The place now turned into a chapel royal, and the divine service sung by the 
 choir of the household. 
 
318 LIFE OP DE FOE. 
 
 Tell 'em he scorns the fiction of divine, 
 
 And lives an age's voyage beyond their line ; 
 
 There he '* a god indeed, for th' heavenly face 
 
 Gives high similitude to the immortal race ; 
 
 There he possesses infinite, complete, 
 
 Whom here he could no more than imitate ; 
 
 A guard of glorious lights form'd his ascent, 
 
 And wond'ring stars ador'd him as he went ; 
 
 The planetary gods, eclips'd and fled, 
 
 Resign'd their light and vail'd the guilty head ; 
 
 Superior glory lighten'd all the way, 
 
 With beams shot out from everlasting day ; 
 
 Harmonious music, form'd in choirs of love, 
 
 From the immortal symphony above, 
 
 In charming measures all his actions sung, 
 
 And with seraphic anthems mov'd along. 
 
 Thus WILLIAM went, I saw the saint ascend, 
 
 And sympathetick joy did optick powers extend : 
 
 I saw th' exalted hero at the gate, 
 
 My soul went up with him ; 'tis hardly come back yet. 
 
 Wonder no more, new raptures fire my pen, 
 
 When WILLIAM'S name I chance to write ; and when 
 
 I search the lustre of his memory ; 
 
 The best of monarchs, and of men to me. 
 
 Here I must pause, not from choice, but necessity. The work 
 is so good, and completely to my taste, that I could quote page after 
 page, so as even to tire out the patience of the most docile reader, 
 not thoroughly bound mind and body to the principle, that a free- 
 holder a British freeholder, was a title more ancient and more 
 sacred than that of king. This was Daniel De Foe's inspired prin- 
 ciple of belief; and, if it would not be too much presumption to 
 apply the same terms to myself, I would humbly hope, 'tis mine. 
 
 If any right directed in this choice, 
 ' Twas property obtain'd the gen'ral voice; 
 He had the justest title to command, 
 Whose property prevail'd and otcn'd the land. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 319 
 
 And so elective power commenced its reign, 
 
 Where equal right of property began. 
 
 The land divided, right to rule divides, 
 
 And universal suffrage then provides ; 
 
 The government lay in the general voice, 
 
 They only had the power that had the choice ; 
 
 The undisputed right is plainly traced, 
 
 Where Nature first had due possession plac'd. 
 
 Thus the collective body of a land, 
 
 In right of property, had power contain'd, 
 
 And all original right with them remain' d. 
 
 They had the right, because the land 's their own, 
 
 And property 's the basis of a throne ; 
 
 He that had all the land, had all the power ; 
 
 The property, the title must secure ; 
 
 If he enjoy 'd in common with the 'rest, 
 
 While right remains in common, title must ; 
 
 No man can claim a power of government, 
 
 Where they that own the land will not consent. 
 
 If any single man possess this land, 
 
 And had the right, he must have the command ; 
 
 If once he was but landlord of the isle, 
 
 He must be king, because he own'd the soil ; 
 
 No man his just succession could dispute ; 
 
 He must both make the laws and execute ; 
 
 No laws could ever be on him impos'd ; 
 
 His claim of right, the people's claim foreclosed ; 
 
 And he that would not to his rule submit, 
 
 Must quit the place, the place was all his right. 
 
 From this just title men might fairly plead, 
 
 Divine succession has a sacred head ; 
 
 For right of property 's a sacred law : 
 
 Nature consents, and reason 's kept in awe ; 
 
 All the just bonds of government in man, 
 
 In this foundation s principle began ; 
 
 Here only right hereditary lies, 
 
 Succession 's born of this, and with it dies ; 
 
 This is divine, and from the first of time, 
 
 By this one title God himself lays claim ; 
 
320 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 He rules the world, because the world 's his own ; 
 And by this claim, first government began ; 
 By this the power descends ; by this 'tis just ; 
 For where the land 's our own, the kingdom must. 
 Wherever Providence transplants a nation, 
 " The government goes always with possession." 
 
 Blest are the days, and wing'd with joy they fly, 
 
 When monarchs join in subject's liberty ; 
 
 When settled peace in stated order reigns, 
 
 And nor the people, nor the king complains ; 
 
 In juster measures both alike combine, 
 
 And mutual interest mutual methods join. 
 
 Tis then the happy nations bless the crown ; 
 
 Tis then the happy monarchs rule their own ; 
 
 No title 's equal to the people's hearts, 
 
 When every branch of power enjoys their proper parts ; 
 
 Encroachments and oppressive arts unknown, 
 
 Kings first support the people ; they the crown ; 
 
 The ends of government in both agree,, 
 
 And these grow great, but just as those grow free : 
 
 And in that very freedom they assent 
 
 To all the essential rules of government. 
 
 Thus legal monarchy in triumph reigns, 
 
 And all the arts of tyranny disdains ; 
 
 Revolving years have crusht the vile design, 
 
 Just princes now with free-born subjects join ; 
 
 The governing and governed agree : 
 
 Those gently rule, these willingly obey ; 
 
 The equal scale of government depends : 
 
 These like the means, and those approve the ends. 
 
 Unbiass'd hands the beam of justice hold, 
 
 And power's iron age is turn'd to gold. 
 
 We must next take the Union of the two Kingdoms England 
 and Scotland, and see what part De Foe took in that important 
 national work. 
 
 In October, 1706, De Foe arrived in Edinburgh along with the 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE, 321 
 
 English Commissioners for treating on the terms on which England 
 and Scotland should be united as one kingdom : the Parliament for 
 arranging the terms assembling in Edinburgh on Oct. 4, 1706. 
 
 That De Foe took great interest in this movement is certain, from 
 the fact of his having published several essays, in Scotland alone, 
 for the removal of national prejudices ; besides what he did from 
 day to day in his Review, and two or three tracts published in Lon- 
 don in the same year, as " The Advantages of the Act of Security, 
 compared with those of the intended Union ; founded on the Revo- 
 lution Principles. By D. De Foe, London: 1706. 4 to." Again: 
 " An Essay at Removing National Prejudices against a Union with 
 Scotland. To be continued during the Treaty here. Part I. London, 
 printed in the year 1706. 4to, pp. 30." Five other parts suc- 
 ceeded this, in this and the early part of the succeeding year. 
 
 We have seen, in the early summer of the year 1705, De Foe 
 writing a long letter to Ilarley on some mysterious journey, for 
 which he was buying horses, and fortifying himself by governmental 
 documents, passports, credentials, or certificates ; and immediately 
 afterwards we find him in the west of England, Dorsetshire, Devon- 
 shire, &c., taking an active part in enlightening the freeholders, so 
 as to make an improvement on the worst House of Commons that 
 ever sat in the English metropolis; for such was the House of 1704. 
 
 As Harley and Godolphin were among the twenty-seven English 
 Commissioners, and as Daniel De Foe, from Stoke Newington, near 
 London, was also there, employed on some undefined, though im- 
 portant and secret services ; it is more than probable that the two 
 ministers above named carried him to Edinburgh to write up the 
 cause, draw up reports, and make financial calculations, tedious, 
 difficult, and voluminous. The appointment, whatever it might be, 
 was so important as to be acknowledged by the Queen, who allowed 
 the honour of an introduction and a kissing of the royal hand, upon 
 the appointment to the office ; of, perhaps, financial calculator, or 
 edger-off of financial bargains, between two nations, both north, and 
 keen higglers. Perhaps a better choice could not have been made ; 
 for De Foe was ready at the pen, either for calculations in figures, 
 or calculations in plausibilities; for if some egregious error had 
 
 21 
 
3.22 LIFi; OF DE FOE. 
 
 been committed (inadvertently, of course), so as to frighten the 
 cautious Scotch; a pamphlet would have been thrown upon the 
 reading public, well written and unanswerable, in a few hours ; so 
 that all cause for alarm or jealousy would be hushed at once, for 
 that time ; and so afford calm for future progress in negotiation, for 
 completion of a bargain, the good effects of which would last so long 
 as the words, England and Scotland, continued to be known in the 
 language of civilized man. 
 
 What those services were is not denned ; but he adds : " I had 
 the happiness to discharge myself in all these trusts so much to the 
 satisfaction of those who employed me, though oftentimes with 
 difficulty and danger, that my Lord Treasurer Godolphin, whose 
 memory I have always honoured, was pleased to continue his favour 
 to me, and to do me all good offices to her Majesty, even after an 
 unhappy breach had separated him from my first benefactor." 
 
 The project of an Union between these two Kingdoms was no 
 new one with De Foe ; for he had once named it to the late King 
 William III., who saw the importance of the measure, but dare not 
 engage in it, on account of the insurmountable difficulties from time, 
 St. Germains, and the temper of the people ; for he only replied, " I 
 have done all I can in that affair ; but I do not see a temper in either 
 nation that looks like it ;" and added, after some other discourse 
 " It may be done, but not yet." 
 
 As this subject is very important, in an estimate of the value of 
 the sagacity and patriotism of De Foe, I consider it to be an impe- 
 rative duty imposed upon me, regardless of all censure, to show 
 the honourable part which the energetic, uncompromising, honest 
 Daniel De Foe took in bringing about the union of the two king- 
 doms, England and Scotland. We have seen this man in Newgate, 
 and on a pillory platform, for his principles ; and we will try if we 
 cannot place him no ! his statue, on some pedestal of honour, in 
 some obscure corner of Britain's sanctuary. 
 
 I will quote freely from his History of the Union : 
 
 " I cannot forbear hinting here, that my curiosity pressed me to 
 take a journey thither, and being by all my friends, to whom I 
 communicated my design, encouraged to think I might be useful 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 323 
 
 there, to prompt a work that I was fully convinced was for the 
 general good of the whole island ; and particularly necessary for the 
 strengthening the Protestant interest ; I was moved purely on these 
 accounts to undertake a long winter, a chargeable, and, as it proved, 
 hazardous journey. I contemn, as not worth mentioning, the sug- 
 gestions of some people, of my being employed thither, to carry on 
 the interest of a party. I have never loved any parties, but with my 
 utmost zeal have sincerely espoused the great and original interest 
 of this nation, and of all nations : I mean truth and liberty; and 
 whoever are of that party, I desire to be with them. However, by 
 this journey I had the opportunity of seeing and hearing all the 
 particulars of the following transactions, and of using my best 
 endeavours to answer the many, many, and I must say of some of 
 them, the most frivolous and ridiculous objections, formed and im- 
 proved there with great industry, against every article of the Union ; 
 and this is my reason for mentioning it here, that I may acquaint 
 posterity how I came to the knowledge of what I write ; and for no 
 ostentation at all ; and, as I had the honour to be frequently sent 
 for into the several committees of Parliament, which were appointed 
 to state some difficult points relating to equalities, taxes, prohibi- 
 tions, &c. ; 'tis for those gentlemen to say, whether I was useful or 
 not ; that is none of my business here ; but by this means I have 
 the greater assurance to relate the circumstances and fact as it stood 
 before them, and cannot be afraid of being detected in any material 
 mistake. And as this is the reason of my making any mention of 
 myself, so the reader cannot but be content to know, from what 
 foundation this relation is handed down to posterity ; and what 
 assurance he has, that the author he reads was capable of giving 
 him a right state of the matter." 
 
 With respect to his work of calculating the relative proportions 
 of excise or custom duties of every conceivable article of commerce, 
 to be borne by each nation ; so that no possible overreach could by 
 design or mistake be perpetrated on the other ; for all these items 
 were weighed and discussed by national, interested, bigoted oppo- 
 nents, who seized every calculation with a hostile feeling, with all 
 the desperation of men who seize any pretext, however trivial, to 
 
 21* 
 
324 
 
 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 create a misunderstanding among the treaters or negotiators ; so as 
 to break up the conference altogether, and thus save the honour of 
 their devoted country, about to be lost to all true Scots for ever ; 
 for in this business negotiating in Edinburgh, Scotland was to lose, 
 and England to gain everything. On this business De Foe adds 
 
 " That while it was thought well done to have a share in stating 
 the proportions of the excise, several persons pretended to the title 
 of being the first contrivers of it ; but when afterwards, on some 
 clamour raised upon the inequalities of the proportions, the con- 
 trivers began to be blamed, and a little threatened a-la-mob ; then 
 it was De Foe made it all, and he was to be stoned for it ; and 
 afterward, when those differences, appearing but trifles, were, by the 
 prudence of the Commissioner, reconciled, they would willingly have 
 reassumed the honour of being the first formers of this affair." 
 
 During the negotiations of the Commissioners of both nations, 
 the Duke of Hamilton was the most conspicuous for his opposition 
 to the whole project; and in consequence became the especial 
 darling of the street mobs of Edinburgh, and received his tribute in 
 kind on his way to and from the Parliament House, especially on 
 the return from the House, when his Grace's carriage was followed 
 by the enthusiastic cheers of exulting thousands ; while the whole 
 wrath and execration of this excited multitude, inflamed and en- 
 raged to the last degree, was poured upon his Grace James Duke of 
 Queensberry, her Majesty's High Commissioner for negotiating this 
 delicate adjustment of national rights, interests, and prejudices 
 THE MAN upon whose judgment and prudence hung the success of 
 the whole negotiation. This has been affirmed by De Foe in his 
 dedication of his History of the Union to his Grace ; and also in a 
 more important place, the House of Lords, by her Majesty from the 
 throne ; when addressing both Houses of Parliament on the auspi- 
 cious event the completion of the Union of the Kingdoms of Eng- 
 land and Scotland. The greatest popular excitement had existed 
 for some days in the streets of Edinburgh ; but 
 
 " On the 22nd of October, they followed the Duke's (Hamilton) 
 chair quite through the city, down to the Abbey gate ; the guards 
 prevented their going further ; but all the way as they came back, 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 325 
 
 they were heard to threaten what they would do the next day ; that 
 then they would be a thousand times as many; that they would 
 pull the traitors (for so they called the treaters of Union at London) 
 out of their houses, and that they would soon put an end to the 
 Union. 
 
 " On the 23rd, they made part of their words good indeed ; for, 
 as the Parliament sat something late, the people gathered in the 
 streets, and about the doors of the Parliament House, and, particu- 
 larly, the Parliament Close was almost full, that the members could 
 not go in or out without difficulty : when the Duke of Hamilton 
 coming out of the House, the mob huzzaed as formerly, and followed 
 his chair in a very great number. The Duke, instead of going down 
 to the Abbey, as usual, went up to High Street, to the Lawn Market, 
 as they call it, and so to the lodgings of the Duke of Athol. Some 
 said he went to avoid the mob : others maliciously said he went to 
 point them to their work. While he went into the Duke of AthoFs 
 lodging, the rabble attended at the door ; and by shouting and noise, 
 having increased their numbers to several thousands, they began 
 with Sir Patrick Johnston, who was one of the treaters, and the 
 year before had been lord provost ; first they assaulted his lodgings 
 with stones and sticks, and curses not a few ; but, his windows 
 being too high, they came up stairs to his door, and fell to work at 
 it with sledges, or great hammers ; and, had they broken it open in 
 their first fury, he had without doubt been torn in pieces without 
 mercy ; and this only because he was a treater in the Commission 
 to England; for, before that, no man was so well beloved as he, 
 over the whole city. 
 
 " His lady, in the utmost despair with this fright, came to the 
 window with two candles, one in each hand, that she might be 
 known ; and cried out, for God's sake, to call the guards. An honest 
 apothecary in the town, who knew her voice, and the distress she 
 was in, and to whom the family, under God, is obliged for their 
 deliverance, ran immediately down to the guard ; but they would 
 not stir without the Lord Provost's order; but that being soon 
 obtained, one Captain Richardson, who commanded, taking about 
 thirty men with him, marched bravely up to them ; and making his 
 
326 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 way with great resolution through the crowd, they flying, but 
 throwing stones, and hallooing at him and his men, he seized the 
 foot of the staircase, and then boldly went up, cleared the stair, and 
 took six of the rabble in the very act ; and so delivered the gentle- 
 man and his family. 
 
 " But this did not put a stop to the general tumult, though it 
 delivered this particular family; for the rabble by this time were 
 prodigiously increased, and went roving up and down the town, 
 breaking the windows of the members of Parliament, and insulting 
 them in their coaches in the streets; they put out all the lights, 
 that they might not be discovered ; and the author of this [Daniel 
 De Foe] had one great stone thrown at him, for but looking out of 
 a window ; for they suffered nobody to look out, especially with 
 any lights, lest they should know faces, and inform against them 
 afterwards. 
 
 " By this time it was about eight or nine o'clock at night ; and 
 now they were absolute masters of the city ; and it was reported, 
 they were going to shut up all the ports ; the Lord Commissioner 
 being informed of that, sent a party of the foot-guards, and took 
 possession of the Nether Bow, which is a gate in the middle of 
 the High Street, as Temple Bar between the city of London and the 
 court. The city was now in a terrible fright, and everybody was 
 under concern for their friends ; the rabble went raving about the 
 streets till midnight, frequently beating drums, and raising more 
 people ; when my Lord Commissioner being informed there were a 
 thousand of the seamen and rabble come up from Leith; and appre- 
 hending, if it were suffered to go on, it might come to a dangerous 
 head, and be out of his power to suppress, he sent for the Lord 
 Provost, and demanded that the guards should march into the city. 
 The Lord Provost, after some difficulty, yielded, though it was 
 alleged that it was what never was known in Edinburgh before. 
 About one o'clock in the morning a battalion of the guards entered 
 the town, marched up to the Parliament Close, and took post in all 
 the avenues of the city ; which prevented the resolutions taken to 
 insult the houses of the rest of the treaters. The rabble were 
 entirely reduced by this, and gradually dispersed; and so the 
 tumult ended." 
 
LIFE Or DE FOE. 327 
 
 " They had been tampering with the soldiery, in order to debauch 
 them from their duty; and some people talked of retiring from the 
 Parliament, and of some great men heading the people ; which, had 
 their patience been more, and their conduct a little more secret, 
 they had, without doubt, effectually brought it to pass ; but they 
 blew their own project up by their precipitation, and so saved their 
 country by their very attempt to destroy it. 
 
 " The author of this [Daniel De Foe] had his share of the danger 
 of this tumult ; and, though unknown to him, was watched and set 
 by the mob, in order to know where to find him ; had his chamber 
 windows insulted, and the windows below him broken by mistake. 
 But by the prudence of his friends, the shortness of its continuance, 
 and God's providence, he escaped. 
 
 " Several of the rabble were seized upon and apprehended ; and 
 there was a discourse of making examples of some of them ; but the 
 mercy of the High Commissioner (his Grace the Duke of Queens- 
 berry), however provoked and abused, prevailed to compassionate, 
 rather than punish, their follies." 
 
 This James Duke of Queensberry was one of that noble phalanx 
 of aristocracy left by William III. for the protection of his poor, 
 credulous, good-natured, priest-ridden successor and sister-in-law, 
 Anne. " This gentleman commanded a regiment of horse at the 
 Revolution ; left King James, at the same time, with the Duke of 
 Ormond ; and joined the Prince of Orange, who made him gentle- 
 man of his bedchamber and captain of the Scots troop of Guards ; 
 and towards the end of King William's reign he had the Garter ; 
 was made secretary of state for that kingdom (Scotland), and com- 
 missioner of that Parliament." Macky's MS. 
 
 Such were the stirring events accompanying the birth of the 
 greatest blessing which could have befallen this United Kingdom. 
 I should not have waded through such a scene of riot and confusion, 
 had I not seen the necessity of doing it, in order to show that Daniel 
 De Foe was not the mere ambidexter mercenary tool of party, 
 which certain mean contemporaries of the pen have pretended; 
 who, whatever they might possess in power of penmanship, never 
 thought proper to risk their skins in Edinburgh in a critical time, 
 
328 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 to see how they could act the character of PATRIOT, and work in 
 that character, without being paid. 
 
 At this time De Foe published his Caledonia, a poem in honour 
 of Scotland and the Scots nation, in three parts ; Edinburgh, 1706 ; 
 folio, pp. 60 : 
 
 In northern heights, where Nature seldom smiles, 
 
 Embrac'd with seas, and buttrest round with isles ; 
 
 Where lofty shores regard th' adjacent pole; 
 
 Where winds incessant blow, and waves incessant roll ; 
 
 First youngest sister to the frozen zone, 
 
 Batter'd by parent Nature's constant frown ; 
 
 Adapt to hardships, and cut out for toil ; 
 
 The best worst climate, and the worst best soil ; 
 
 A rough, unhewn, uncultivated spot, 
 
 Of old sofam'd, and so, of late, forgot ; 
 
 Neglected Scotland shews her awful brow, 
 
 Not always quite so near to heaven as now. 
 
 Circled with dreadful clifts and barbarous shores, 
 
 Where the strong surf, with high impetuous roars, 
 
 Invades the rocks ; and these their rage disdain, 
 
 And with redoubling noise they 're hurried home again ; 
 
 The hollow caverns mutual roars return, 
 
 And baffled Neptune, raging, makes the ocean burn. 
 
 There equally ihey floating worlds defy, 
 
 Bid them stand off and live, advance and die ; 
 
 The hardy wretch, that sees the hint too late, 
 
 Fails not to find his folly in his fate. 
 
 This opportune work of conciliation to a wounded nationality, was 
 dedicated, in all fairness, to her Majesty's High Commissioner, the 
 Duke of Queensberry, who gave the exclusive privilege of selling 
 this poem for the term of seven years, to Daniel De Foe, Esquire. 
 
 It appears that De Foe remained in Edinburgh during the whole 
 year 1707, and devoted all his powers of pen during that year to 
 conciliate the Scottish nation ; for, besides his Scottish pamphlets, 
 he did nothing, except completing his third volume of the Review, 
 and commencing his fourth volume. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 329 
 
 After the completion of the Union of the two Kingdoms, all the 
 small fry of carpers, headed by Leslie, were set upon De Foe, to 
 write him down, and insult him, by dragging him through the refuse 
 of their verbal Billingsgate. He had been to Scotland sent there 
 by a party, or, as he expresses it in his Review for Sept. 2, 1 707 
 " I have, for a long time, patiently borne with the scurrilous prints 
 and scandalous reproaches of the streets, concerning my being in 
 Scotland. To-day I am sent thither by one party, to-morrow by 
 another; this time by one particular person; that, by a body of 
 people; by some one way, by others another; and I have long 
 waited to see if, out of innumerable guesses, they wouJd at last make 
 a discovery of the true, and, to me, melancholy reason of settling 
 myself in a remote corner of the world ; which, if they had done, I 
 should, no question, have been insulted enough upon that head. 
 But since their guesses have too much party malice in them to be 
 right, though there are five or six persons in London who can not 
 only give a true account of my removal, but recall me from this 
 banishment, if they had humanity in them a degree less than an 
 African lion ; I, therefore, cannot but take up a little room in these 
 papers about my own case. There are two sorts of people out of 
 reach by the world : those that are above, and those that are below 
 it ; and they may be equally happy, for aught I know. Of the last 
 sort I reckon myself; and declare, that as I am below their envy, 
 so I seek not their pity. I am, I bless God, secure in my retreat 
 from their fury ; and am fully revenged of the world by despising 
 all the contempt it can throw upon me." 
 
 It would appear from the above, and a good deal more written 
 about this time (1707), that De Foe had gone to Scotland as a 
 volunteer helper to the Commission constituting the English party; 
 and that he worked day and night in the national ranks, but never 
 received any pay for his services. This may be gathered from his 
 Review, published at the time, when Harley and Godolphin, his 
 patrons, were both in power, and able to frown him into truthful- 
 ness, if they had paid him for his services in Scotland. He certainly 
 worked hard enough, among other workers; and yet he repeatedly 
 declares, that he never had received any pay or remuneration for his 
 

 330 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 services when in Scotland ; and he was there twelve months. His 
 stay in the North was prolonged beyond the period required for 
 the national business ; but that was to keep out of the way of his 
 creditors in London. This he admits when glorying in the security 
 of his retreat. 'Tis true, De Foe's name does not appear as attached 
 to the Commission in the capacity of secretary, accountant, clerk, 
 or messenger ; but he was there, acknowledged by the Commission, 
 and worked by them; but unpaid. These declarations of unpaid 
 services are not idle boasts, but truths extorted by malignant, 
 unscrupulous opponents, who worried him into the declaration by 
 their constant attacks on his mercenary conduct and paid party 
 services: some averring that the English Presbyterians had sent 
 him to protect their brethren north of the Tweed. I wonder whether 
 they thought Mr. John Howe's congregation had sent him, to get 
 rid of his opposition to their long-spoon-and-custard usages on lord 
 mayor's day ! 
 
 " If I have been sent hither, as you say, I have been most bar- 
 barously treated; for I profess solemnly, I have not yet had one 
 penny of my wages, nor the least consideration for the time set 
 apart in this service ; nor, had I had the good fortune to have my 
 brains knocked out by the high-flying mob here, do I see any pro- 
 spect of having been canonized as a martyr for the cause ; or of 
 having my name inserted in the Presbyterian Kalendar. The utmost 
 I expect is, what I have met with : ' What business had he with 
 it? What had he to do there? Who sent him?' and the like." 
 
 After an absence of sixteen months, De Foe returned to London 
 in 1 708, in the month of January ; and received from the ministers 
 some appointment under the government, with a fixed salary ; this 
 was done through the influence of Harley ; and the appointment 
 was kept by De Foe after Harley seceded from the ministry; 
 though, when Godolphin took De Foe's department in the adminis- 
 tration, he forgot to pay Daniel his salary ; and the appointment, so 
 far as wages go, appears to have died out through neglect. 
 
 In the month of February, 1708, Harley was dismissed from 
 the ministry by the Duke of Marlborough, Lord Godolphin, and 
 certain leading Whigs about the court, for intriguing with the 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 331 
 
 Queen through Mrs. Masham, his relative ; who was bedchamber 
 woman to the Queen, and cousin to the Duchess of Marlborough, 
 whom she supplanted in the Queen's affections. All this was a 
 source of great consternation to De Foe ; for Harley had been his 
 especial patron since the overthrow of the Earl of Nottingham's 
 secretary-of-stateship by De Foe's Shortest Way with the Dis- 
 senters; at whose instigation alone, I firmly believe, that much- 
 misrepresented though powerful tract was written. As for the 
 leading Whigs, they were not much in the habit of employing 
 writers; for some of them were political writers of a very high 
 order, and did not require the assistance of such talents as De 
 Foe's ; of this class was Lord Somers, William's honest friend and 
 minister. Harley was an ambitious and intriguing man ; one who 
 could use De Foe's talents to some purpose or other, as he could use 
 the stomachs of half the members of the House of Commons, to 
 procure his election to the Speakership in three Parliaments, which 
 made him valuable as a cabinet minister ; he having that stomach 
 gauge of a very ordinary quality of House of Commons, which a 
 better class of statesmen would not care to make himself master of. 
 The thorough command of the bowels of the House of Commons 
 elevated Harley to a seat in the cabinet. 
 
 After the first alarm had subsided, De Foe, through the recom- 
 mendation of the late Secretary of State, Harley, under whose 
 immediate patronage he considered himself to be placed, waited 
 upon the Lord Treasurer Godolphin, and was graciously received ; 
 he observing, with a smile, that he had not seen him of a long while. 
 De Foe explained his position with the late minister as well as he 
 could, and evidently to the satisfaction of the Lord Treasurer, who 
 introduced him a second time to her Majesty, whose gracious hand 
 he was allowed to kiss, on the continuance of the place or appoint- 
 ment enjoyed by him under the late minister; who had always been 
 considered as the head of that particular department. This con- 
 tinuation of an office or employment was granted in consideration 
 of former services of a special nature; which De Foe had successfully 
 carried out, though, as he says, running as much risk of his life as 
 a grenadier upon the counterscarp. Where could he have been? 
 
332 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 in Devonshire, at Exeter assizes ? Scotland ? Edinburgh ? in the 
 Highlands, or at St. Germains? the court of the Pretender? who 
 knows ? He had been somewhere, and for Harley the late minister, 
 and at the imminent risk of his life ! 
 
 On this occasion her Majesty informed De Foe that she had 
 received such satisfaction in his former services, that she had ap- 
 pointed him to another office a better office, but of that the Lord 
 Treasurer would give him the particulars ; and on this he withdrew. 
 
 The next day his lordship ordered De Foe to attend upon him, 
 when he stated that he must go to Scotland immediately, and leave 
 London in three days on his journey. He went as ordered, and at 
 the time too, for Scotland ; but what the business was, has never 
 transpired ; and of course, now, after the lapse of a century and a 
 quarter, never will. 
 
 " And yet my errand was such as was far from being unfit for a 
 sovereign to direct, or an honest man to perform ; and the service I 
 did upon that occasion, as it is not unknown to the greatest man 
 now in the nation, under the King and the Prince ; so I dare say, 
 his Grace was never displeased with the part I had in it, and I hope 
 will not forget it. 
 
 " These things I mention, upon this account, and no other, viz., 
 to state the obligation I have been in all along to her Majesty per- 
 sonally, and to my first benefactor principally ; by which 1 say, I 
 think I was at least obliged not to act against them, even in those 
 things which I might not approve. Whether I have acted with 
 them further than I ought, shall be spoken to by itself. Having 
 said thus much of the obligations laid on me, and the persons by 
 whom, I have this only to add, that I think no man will say, a sub- 
 ject could be under greater bonds to his prince, or a private person 
 to a minister of state ; and I shall even preserve this principle, that 
 an honest man cannot be ungrateful to his benefactor." 
 
 On the prospect of a threatened invasion from France at this 
 time, De Foe published a short tract, entitled the Union Proverb, 
 viz.: 
 
 If Skiddaw has a cap, 
 Scruft'ell wots full well of that. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 333 
 
 te Setting forth 1st, The necessity of uniting; 2ndly, the good con- 
 sequences of uniting; 3rdly, The happy union of England and 
 Scotland, in case of a foreign invasion. Felix quern faciunt aliena 
 pericula cautum. London, 1708." 
 
 "To the true British reader, Skiddaw and Scruffell are two 
 neighbouring hills, or high mountains : the one in Cumberland, in 
 England; the other in Annandale, in Scotland ; and, if the former 
 happen at any time to be capped with clouds or foggy mists, it will 
 not be long ere rain, or the like, fall on the latter. It is also spoken 
 of such who must expect to sympathize in their sufferings by reason 
 of the vicinity of their habitations. 
 
 " It is an excellent lecture of mutual friendship on either side of 
 the Tweed. It ingenuously tells us, what we are to trust to in 
 troublesome times, either of oppression at home, or of miscarriage, 
 affliction, and misfortune, from abroad. It is, likewise, a most 
 politic and prudent caution against foreign invasions. It does 
 not only, and that pathetically too, set forth the necessity of the 
 two kingdoms uniting heartily in all cases of disastrous disturbance, 
 but also manifestly shows the happy consequences of such an entire 
 union, both in point of government and traffic, as will be able to 
 defeat the turbulent designs of our greatest enemies, either in time 
 of peace or of war. This is the main sbck on which our common 
 hopes ought to be grafted, of making Great Britain flourish and 
 fructify in spite of French blasts or caterpillars." 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ON the 31st of March, 1709, De Foe closed his fifth volume of the 
 Review, after it had attained to 158 numbers; which appeared three 
 times in each week. Now, it may be expected that I should go 
 into the merits of the several articles, with all the answers from 
 Tories of all grades, both in England, Scotland, and Ireland- 
 Charles Leslie, the nonjuror divine, taking the lead in prose; and 
 Ned Ward or Tom Browne bringing up the rear in poetic effusions ; 
 and among the crowd of mean worshippers of power stands Dean 
 Swift, witty and unprincipled : a man to be execrated as its repre- 
 sentative for servile meanness, so long as the English language 
 shall be a means of communication between one individual of our 
 species and another. Swift ! Swift the contemptible, must join in 
 the crowd of detractors, and speak of De Foe. Swift, the Dean of 
 St. Patrick's, to speak contemptuously of Daniel De Foe ! 
 
 Well, suffice to say, that the fifth volume of De Foe's Review was, 
 for the most part, taken up in allaying the storm ecclesiastic raised 
 by the Presbyterians with their fears of subjection, and by the Epis- 
 copalians with their hopes of ruling over God's heritage in Scotland. 
 The Act of Union stirred up the old religious party feelings of 
 Scotland from the very dregs ; and De Foe undertook the task, to 
 allay the storm ; and this chiefly in his Review, and more especially 
 in the fifth volume. 
 
 At this time, many thousands of poor persecuted Germans sought 
 refuge in England from the exactions of the French, and were, for 
 convenience or necessity, encamped about Blackheath, to the num- 
 ber of ten thousand, and supplied with tents and subsistence from 
 the government, and the collections made in all the churches, in aid 
 of these poor outcasts, by means of a brief. This kind treatment of 
 the unfortunate added to the supply, till government were compelled 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 335 
 
 to stop its benevolence. Of course, such an importation of water- 
 cress hawkers in our streets would cause great alarm among the 
 unskilled labourers of the metropolis ; and there would be a great 
 cry of ruin to our land, from the staid, quiet, safe politicians of the 
 day, who work upon scripture principles, of the evil of the day being 
 sufficient to it ; so make no hoarding of fusty trash in the mind ; 
 but buy their politics, as they buy their bread, smoking hot, from 
 the leading article of their daily newspaper. Against this inoffen- 
 sive class De Foe had to work in his Review ; and bring up his 
 supplies of political- economic information from the stores of Sir 
 Josiah Child, Thomas Main, and others, the great precursors of 
 Adam Smith, the organizer of the dismembered limbs of the great, 
 the glorious system of vitality Political Economy. De Foe had to 
 write free trade in the summer of 1709; and such free trade as 
 Richard Cobden, John Bright, George Wilson, and others, enun- 
 ciated from the platform of the Free-trade Hall, in Manchester, one 
 hundred and thirty years afterwards. 
 
 " Were the nation so full of people, as that the corn and cattle 
 could not feed them, it would be still better. T^e Dutch plough no 
 land, and sow no seed, comparatively speaking; yet they have no 
 want. Sowing corn is far from being the best improvement of land, 
 as is apparent in England, where ploughed lands, even in the most 
 fruitful parts, are the least valuable." 
 
 In the month of October of this year, the grand jury presented 
 his Review, for his independence in writing freely upon the Episco- 
 palian usurpations upon the Established Presbyterian Church of 
 Scotland. 
 
 In reading the secret history of Arlus and Adolphus, chief minis- 
 ters of state to the Empress of Grand Insula, I find that Harley and 
 Sach ever ell share the sympathy of the writer ; and that to Marl- 
 borough, Godolphin, and their party, the Quinquinvirate, the term 
 of reproach, Leveller, is very freely applied. The spirit of this 
 pamphlet and its associations have caused me to ask myself, whether 
 Dr, Sacheverell, in 1709 and 1710, might not be instrumental in 
 playing the same game, for the same purpose, for Harley, that De 
 Foe played for the same man in 1703 the breaking-up the admi- 
 
336 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 nistration of Lord Godolphin, and the reinstating Harley in power ? 
 And I ask also, is not Harley the writer of this tract ? I believe 
 he is. Sacheverell was tried in 1710, and the trial occupied twenty 
 days ; and this is affirmed in the tract, which was printed directly 
 after that trial, and in the same year, but without a printer's name 
 being affixed to it. Why this? As the tract is curious, and even 
 states, "that Harley had long foreseen and expected to consum- 
 mate his meritorious scheme of redeeming his sovereign from the 
 private ambition of a few men, by turning the stream of government 
 into its proper channel, and by this important crisis." There was 
 in the country such an amount of bigotry and priestly domination, 
 and High-Church jure-divino religion, the wreck of the Reformation 
 of Henry VIII., Mary, and Elizabeth ; and the Stuarts ; for they 
 too, with their Sunday books of sports, and Maypole dancing, re- 
 formed religion in their way ; that a crafty, disappointed, ambitious 
 statesman, like Robert Harley, would well know that the ashes of 
 the Reformation fire, supposed to have been dead out three or more 
 generations, only wanted a good wind or active bellows to fan up 
 the embers into a hot white glow, to consume all the combustibles 
 within its reach. The Whigs were in power, supported by the great 
 mercantile or moneyed interest of the nation the dissenters ; and 
 so, to remove them, the church drum must be beaten, to the 
 threatened destruction of all national institutions, by a brutalized 
 populace being let loose upon the land ! But this must be checked 
 it must be crushed in the bud ; yes, and at once ; but by whom ? 
 The Whigs? Whigs? Levellers? Atheists? Destructives? Whigs? 
 Why ! the church is in danger ; and what Whig can save a falling 
 church ? The church was falling, and Robert Harley knew well 
 that our side only could prop it. Harley knew this, and promptly 
 acted upon the knowledge, as he had done in 1704, when he threw 
 out of office the Earl of Nottingham, and took the place vacated, 
 himself. He did this in 1704, by Daniel De Foe writing for him 
 the book entitled the Shortest Way with the Dissenters. He now, 
 in 1709, repeats the trick, by the writings of Charles Leslie and 
 Swift, with Pope, and the preaching of Dr. Sacheverell ; and thus 
 removes from place and power the Lord High Treasurer, the Earl 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 337 
 
 Godolphin, in order to place himself minister on the Avreck of Earl 
 Godolphin's popularity ; and so made himself Lord High Treasurer 
 of Great Britain. 
 
 What mighty matters spring from little things ! This ! this ! 
 all this proceeds from Harley having the gauge of the bowels of 
 the House of Commons ; for he feasted the members ! 
 
 Passive obedience to the ruling powers, was the text and sermon 
 of Sacheverell : a mass of Toryism hashed up by the broken-down 
 French-pauper adherents of the house of Stuart, the church, and 
 the Maypole ; for " Down with King William's memory, Dutch 
 Presbyterianism, Muggletonians, conventicle-mongers, and Srnec- 
 tymimans, or the Tribe of Adoniram ! " was the daily and hourly 
 prayer of this thoughtless and bigoted and exasperated party; 
 may I add, ruined worth of county families; whose Churchism and 
 Cavalierism, and devotion to a prodigal, worthless race of kings, 
 had spread their patrimonies in ruin, and driven them to despair; 
 a class of men who could not dig, and who to beg were ashamed 
 a ruined race of British nobility a race ruined by Toryism. 
 
 On the 3rd of March, the humble address of the Commons to the 
 Queen represents this sermon (for preaching which Sacheverell was 
 then on his trial) to be an attack upon her Majesty's title; and 
 her administration endeavoured to be rendered odious to the people, 
 and represented as destructive of the church and constitution ; the 
 present establishment and Protestant succession undermined; the 
 resolutions of Parliament treated with contempt ; the governors of 
 the church, and her Majesty as supreme, aspersed and vilified; the 
 toleration exposed as wicked, and sedition insolently invading the 
 pulpit. 
 
 What was the prosecution, and why undertaken ? It would ap- 
 pear from this trial, which lasted twenty days, and which was forced 
 upon the government by the extremely violent proceedings of many 
 of the clergy preaching, Sunday by Sunday, doctrines favourable 
 to the interests of the Pretender, and adverse to the interests of 
 claims of the house of Hanover, the Queen's right to the throne, 
 and the right of William Prince of Orange to render assistance to 
 a people, threatened to be enslaved by their legitimate or hereditary 
 
338 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 sovereign ; through what they considered to be the powers or in- 
 fluences of a false religion the Roman Catholic. 
 
 William III. held, as a fixed principle of the existence of a free 
 people, that a king might be forced from his throne by his people ; 
 when he ceased to govern them on acknowledged constitutional 
 principles. For calling in question the right to the people of Britain 
 to depose their sovereigns, by might and violence, and the assistance 
 of a foreign power (for William III. brought 14,000 armed Dutchmen 
 with him, to assist him by force of arms, if necessary), to drive his 
 father-in-law, James II., from the throne of these realms, with the 
 assistance of the people, threatened to be enslaved by arbitrary prin- 
 ciples in state, and false passive-obedience principles in religion ; and 
 for calling in question this principle of right to depose ; which dis- 
 puted the title of the Queen herself to her throne ; for this disputing 
 a great constitutional question of the sovereignty of the people, was 
 Henry Sacheverell, doctor of divinity, tried by the Lords of England, 
 and found guilty ! Bravo ! Shade of Simon de Montfort, Earl of 
 Leicester ! Bravo ! Shade of Hampden and of Prynne ! Preaching 
 passive obedience to the sovereigns of these realms, is a calling in 
 question the rights of the people of England the rights exercised 
 at the glorious Revolution of 1688; and constitutes, in the opinion 
 of the Lords of England, a high crime and misdemeanor ; and such 
 as will render a subject of these realms liable to impeachment. Such 
 is the British constitution ! Such are the rights of Englishmen ! 
 The majesty of the people is the source of all legitimate power ; and 
 the verdict of guilty, passed by the Lords of England on Henry 
 Sacheverell in 1710, stamps the theory with the brand of legality- 
 it confirms the principle of the sovereignty of the people. Such was 
 the principle in 1649 such in 1688; and such the confirmation of 
 the theory, by a solemn act of the legislature in 1710, in the ver- 
 dict of guilty passed on Henry Sacheverell. He denied the principle 
 on which he was tried and found guilty. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that the trial of Henry Sacheverell, and 
 the verdict of guilty pronounced by the House of Lords, was an 
 accidental break-out of party violence, exercised in a day of dark- 
 ness and lunatic excitement ; it was not ; for four years after this 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 339 
 
 period, on May 4, 1714, the Rev. Mr. Bedford was sentenced, in the 
 Court of King's Bench, to pay a fine of 1000 marks, and to remain 
 a prisoner for three years ; and afterwards be bound in a recogni- 
 zance, with four sufficient sureties, in the sum of 5000, for his 
 good behaviour during his life ; and he was ordered to be brought 
 to all the courts in Westminster with a paper on his head signifying 
 his offence. What was his offence? Publishing a book showing 
 the monarchy of England to be hereditary. Such is the constitution 
 of England ; such is the sovereignty of the people, the source of all 
 legitimate power. 
 
 To show by what influences the growth of passive-obedience 
 principles was advanced in the reign of Queen Anne, I will quote 
 from the speech of the Bishop of Salisbury, delivered in the House 
 of Lords on this memorable trial ; for on speaking of Leslie, he thus 
 addresses himself to the House : 
 
 " By the time the Queen was on the throne, or soon after (1702), 
 the Rehearsal began to be spread over the nation, two of them a 
 week ; which continued for several years together, to be published 
 without check or control. It was, all through, one argument against 
 the Queen's right to the crown ; that, though it was diversified with 
 incidents and digressions, was always kept in view. The clergy 
 were in many places drawn into subscriptions for this paper. This 
 looked like a design, long connived at, to have the Queen's au- 
 thority undermined. Besides this, we had a swarm of pamphlets 
 every year to the same purpose ; and, as we believed, written by the 
 same hand. One, sold at the door of the House, with the title of 
 King William's Exorbitant Grants, did plainly call him an usurper ; 
 and, starting an objection against the Queen's possessing the throne, 
 gave it this answer, ' That she did well to keep it, till she could 
 deliver it up to the righteous heir.' At that time there was quick 
 prosecution of a paper published with the title of the Shortest Way 
 with the Dissenters ; and upon that 1 brought that pamphlet 
 (King William's Exorbitant Grants] to a great minister (the Earl 
 of Nottingham), and offered to show him this passage in it, to see 
 if there should be a prosecution of this ordered. He turned from 
 rae ; so whether he heard me or not, I cannot tell; I am sure, if 
 
 22* 
 
340 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 he says he did not, I will believe him." No prosecution followed, and 
 the Rehearsal went on. The clergy, in many places, met in coffee- 
 houses on Saturdays, to read the Rehearsals of the week, which had 
 very ill effects in most places. 1 know it may be said, that the 
 Queen's learned counsel ought to have looked after these things ; 
 but we all know that he took little by his quotation ; for the Lords 
 and Commons confirmed the principle by their verdict. De Foe 
 was right in his declaration, that if the Parliament of 1705 were as 
 corrupt and unprincipled as the Parliament of 1704 one of the 
 most corrupt, venal, and unprincipled of all English Parliaments 
 the people must open what they alone possessed the magazine of 
 original power. 
 
 Well, Mr. Phipps, counsel for Sacheverell, must try to assist his 
 cause with a quotation from the Review : " The same author, 
 speaking of the family of the Stuarts, calls it ' the line of all the 
 world, fam'd for blood, and that had ravaged the best families in 
 the kingdom/ " Mr. Phipps, drew little from this ; for the part 
 taken by the people of England in the glorious Revolution of 1688 
 only brings a national practical confirmation of a principle or doc- 
 trine enunciated by a private individual ; and not only the con- 
 firmation of the open rebellion of 1688, but the deliberate consi- 
 deration of a twenty days' trial in the House of Lords, such a trial as 
 England has seldom seen ; and the verdict here was for the principle 
 enunciated in De Foe's Review, four years before ; De Foe's prin- 
 ciple being those of the Lords and Commons of England. 
 
 Not content with the above, Mr, Phipps must dip again into the 
 same bag, in hopes of a prize this time : "In another paragraph 
 he says ' In short, if jure divino come upon the stage, the Queen 
 has no more title to the crown than my lord mayor's horse ; all the 
 people are bound by the laws of God to depose her as* an usurper, 
 and restore their rightful and lawful King, James III.' ' ; 
 
 I might almost ask, what could Sachevereirs friends be thinking 
 of, to bring such an exposure of title-deeds as this before the nation? 
 They must have been very fools ; for all they could draw by the 
 inquiry must of necessity be, "that the people are the source or 
 origin of all legitimate power." The very act of the "Revolution of 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 3il 
 
 1688 affirms this; and a denial of this principle, in act and 
 deed, is an exclusion of the house of Hanover from the throne of 
 these realms. De Foe was right ; and Lords and Commons con- 
 firmed him in the doctrine, by their verdict of guilty against 
 Sacheverell. 
 
 On the seventh day, Mr. Phipps, not content with the exposure 
 he had made on the fourth day of the trial, must renew the attack ; 
 but, as if to be beaten by De Foe alone were not humiliating 
 enough, he must join Tutchin of the Observator with him ; thinking, 
 I suppose, with Swift and Pope, that these two liberals must of 
 necessity be clapped together. What a singular coincidence ! 
 because De Foe had stood in the pillory three times j and Tutchin, 
 as I have said before, had been flogged down Dorchester streets, at 
 least once ! Well, Mr. Phipps must try his hand with Tutchin 
 now. We shall see with what success : 
 
 " I submit to your lordships, if the Queen can be safe, when it 
 shall be averred in print, that there is one on the other side of the 
 water, that is a jure-divino king, and hath an hereditary right. 
 Can the Queen or church be safe, when all the whole administration 
 is vilified and abused, as it is in the Observator in this manner : 
 ' Countryman : Have you any more knaves to talk of? Observator: 
 Honest Countryman, what would you have me do ? If I must run 
 through all the lists of knaves, I must bring in all the courts, all 
 the employments, all the classes of public aifairs, in the nation/ ' 
 
 Mr. Phipps ! Mr. Phipps must have been a very fool to bring 
 such a quotation from Tutchin's book. What could he make of 
 such a quotation, but blacken the reputation of the nation, still 
 darker ; for all this was true to the very letter : the Stuarts had 
 converted the nation into a nation of scoundrels, and left them, so 
 converted, a legacy to William III. and Queen Anne ; both of whom 
 they brought to an untimely grave. William was worried to death 
 by the unprincipled contentions of Whigs and Tories ; and the same 
 took place with respect to Queen Anne : she was killed by the con- 
 tentions of unscrupulous and ambitious men at court, her ministers, 
 Harley, St. John, and others. George I. might have been killed 
 too, if he had been made of the same sensitive materials ; but he 
 
342 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 was not ; for when his faithful cook, whom he had brought from 
 Hanover, was about to leave him, because all were thieves in the 
 royal kitchin, the King only replied, that he must not leave on that 
 account, but he must fall to, and become thief likewise ; for Parlia- 
 ment granted the supplies for the royal household on the under- 
 standing, that there were more thieves there than anything else. 
 
 In the time of Tutchin, the nation was at the very lowest ebb for 
 integrity ; and Tutchin wrote this in his weekly paper, and every- 
 body knew it to be true quite true. Yet a simpleton of a barrister 
 named Phipps must quote this truth, as an extenuation of Henry 
 SacheverelPs telling a lie. Poor simple Counsellor Phipps ! try 
 again with another statement, and perhaps you may make a better 
 case out : 
 
 " Can the Queen be safe when the murder of King Charles I. 
 is justified in print, by the Review and Observator (De Foe and 
 Tutchin) ? When the wet martyrdom of King Charles I., and the 
 dry martyrdom of King James II., are said to be all one, and no 
 difference between them? I say, how can her Majesty be safe, 
 when such rebellious principles are so publicly avowed?" 
 
 What a fool you are, Mr. Phipps ! You cannot let gone-byes 
 be gone-byes quietly; but you must sweep the very scaffold of 
 the beheaded monarch Charles I., for a clinching of the most 
 solemn truth in the British constitution, "that the sovereignty of 
 the people is the source, spring, or origin of all legitimate power 
 within these realms." Try again, Mr. Phipps, and with De Foe 
 alone this time try again ; for we are told that it is never too late 
 to mend. 
 
 " Can either Church or Queen be safe, when so great and neces- 
 sary a part of our constitution, our Parliament, is struck at ? When 
 it shall be said, ' that the members sit in the House to do nothing ; 
 making long speeches without meaning; and voting bills without 
 design to have them pass'? And when such rebellious principles 
 are broached, as I mentioned to your lordships upon Friday last, out 
 of the Review, to show the necessity of preaching the doctrine of 
 passive obedience, viz., ' If the next Parliament (that of 1 705) should 
 prove like this (or that of 1704), the nation will be so much nearer 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 3-13 
 
 that crisis of time, when English liberty,, being brought to the last 
 extremity, must open the magazine of Original Power '?" 
 
 " The Stuarts were pensioners of Cardinal Richelieu and of Car- 
 dinal Mazarin, the ministers of France, so long as there were Stuarts, 
 or up to 1688 ; and from that period, when William III. could not 
 be bribed, the French court spent one million sterling in the pur- 
 chase of one hundred and seventy seats or votes in the British House 
 of Commons, till the English House of Commons was a byword or 
 term of reproach to all integrity in Europe ; and De Foe, the sole 
 champion of liberty in England, publicly advocated in his Review, 
 published for years three times in each week, the total abrogation 
 or abolition of the House of Commons, as part of the government 
 of this country, on account of its thorough dishonesty and French 
 subserviency ; a throwing of British liberty at the feet of the 
 House of Lords ; and a trusting to that House alone for a salvation 
 of this nation from French bribery, and other dishonest influences. 
 And Counsellor Phipps thinks passive-obedience sermons were to be 
 the remedy for this state of things : a thorough corruption, brought 
 on by French bribing of the English House of Commons. Not con- 
 tent with the exhibition of Mr. Phipps, another of the counsel of 
 Henry Sacheverell, Mr. Dee, must go into the merits of the Review 
 on the subject of religion, by quoting the following from vol. ii. 
 pp. 447, 448 : 
 
 " Whether our fathers had a necessity to make those exclusive 
 laws (against the dissenters), and impose as necessary their different 
 things acknowledged to be so, as terms of communion : nor is this 
 all; but supposing they had, which, nevertheless, I do not grant; 
 then this address is further pressed to your lordships [the House of 
 Lords evidently addressed here, in 1705 ; for De Foe had long ago 
 done with the Commons those Commons who chose Harley Speaker 
 in three Parliaments, because he fed them. Yes ! he ascended the 
 Speaker's chair through their guts], to examine whether that neces- 
 sity does yet continue or no : either of which will be the same thing; 
 for if there either was a necessity at the time of their enacting, 
 or that necessity does not yet remain; let which will happen to 
 fall out, the Act of Uniformity, imposing such and such indifferent 
 
344 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 things, as terms of communion, will appear scandalous to the church,, 
 injurious to the public peace, and a grievance to the whole nation : 
 
 " Lest it become a new, proverbial jest, 
 To be as wicked as an English priest." 
 
 Again, vol. iii. p. 106 : " I cannot but tell him, should I publish 
 the matters of fact which 1 am master of, with respect to the High- 
 flying gentlemen of the clergy ; should I give a faithful account of 
 the most infamous and scandalous behaviour, the notorious lives, 
 the beastly excesses, and the furious treatment of their brethren, 
 the dissenters, which, on a small search, I have been acquainted 
 with : the inferior clergy of his party [probably SacheverelPs] would 
 appear the most wretched, provoking, abominable crew, that ever 
 God suffered to live unpunished, since he destroyed Sodom and 
 Gomorrha by fire from heaven." 
 
 Now, I am no lawyer ; but yet my common sense will dictate to 
 me, that Mr. Dee, the barrister, is not likely to gain much for the 
 prisoner at the bar, his client, by taking Daniel De Foe by the ears 
 on the inferior clergy, as a set off. 
 
 Again, vol. ii. p. 418 : " If words could be made treason, one- 
 third at least of the inferior clergy in England would be hanged." 
 
 Again, vol. ii. p. 142 : " I again appeal to you, gentlemen, 
 whether, generally speaking, all over this unhappy nation, the clergy 
 are not, three parts in five, in close conjunction with the enemies of 
 the church's peace, and the professed enemies of the government? " 
 This would be written in 1705, or four years before this impeach- 
 ment took place. 
 
 Again, vol. vi. p. 471 : " Others, not so directly, but altogether 
 as fatally, and tending to the same end, with subtle designs to divide 
 and amuse the people, by preaching, writing, and printing, endea- 
 vour to revive the said exploded doctrines of non-resistance, and 
 absolute, unconditional obedience, as things the people of England 
 ought to think themselves obliged by ; which, though in themselves 
 of no force, yet manifestly tend to unravel the constitution, to inva- 
 lidate the Queen's title to the crown, and destroy the legal authority 
 of parliaments in the nation. An eminent proof of which is now 
 [in this impeachment] depending before the House." 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 345 
 
 The trial was a foolish one, and the lawyers selected to defend 
 the prisoner at the bar, could not be wise men. These quotations 
 from De Foe's newspaper, the Review, show that they were not 
 wise men. 
 
 Poor Mr. Dee, the counsel for the prisoner, appears to get deeper 
 into the mud of church corruption every step he takes ; he quotes 
 again from vol. vi. p. 371, as follows : "Drunkenness, oaths, and 
 abominable lewdness ; ignorance, negligence, and scandalous insuf- 
 ficiency; abhorred error, Deism and Socinianism, have overrun 
 the clergy." 
 
 What will Mr. Dee quote next poor man ? What, indeed ? 
 Tutchin' s Observator, vol. iv. No. 89, forsooth ; and much he will 
 get from him; for Tutchin was true to his doctrine, though very 
 abusive. I wish he may make anything more out of him than he 
 has gotten out of De Foe, by his quotations : " You know the 
 church he means is High Church ; which is a fiction, a church of 
 the brain, supported by a little insignificant trifling number of brain- 
 less people ; and the people of England are no more concerned about 
 that church than about the institutions of government laid down 
 in More's Utopia, Harrington's Oceana, or Bacon's New Atlantis ; 
 and all the canons, rites, and ceremonies of that church are no more 
 to be considered by you or me than so many ballads or Duck-Lane 
 penny histories." Such is Tutchin on High Church, about the 
 period of Sacheverell's impeachment. Such is the stuff quoted, to 
 serve the prisoner at the bar ; then on his trial for asserting the 
 divine right of kings to rule in England ! 
 
 De Foe again, vol. ii. page 489 : " The balance between 41 and 
 88 will appear to run against him ; and the difference between the 
 dry martyrdom of King James, by his passive-obedience-church 
 subjects, and the wet martyrdom of King Charles I. by people that 
 never made any such pretence, will appear so small, that it *s not 
 worth Dr. Drake's while to meddle with it." 
 
 These quotations have been too lengthy, perhaps ; yet the occa- 
 sion appears to require justice to be done to De Foe as a writer. 
 For his writings he was confined in Newgate for twelve months, to 
 the ruin of his family ; and, if I can place him side by side with 
 
346 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 such a House of Lords for patriotism as England has seldom seen, 
 I shall only be doing the man some tribute of justice. De Foe's 
 principles were affirmed true by a most illustrious Bench of Bishops, 
 and an equally illustrious House of Lords, by their verdict of guilty 
 on this ever-memorable impeachment. 
 
 This was not the mere trying a parson for being a bigot-puppy, a 
 fool ; but it was testing the principle as to " the people of England 
 being the source of all legitimate power, within these realms ;" and 
 the verdict was given in the affirmative. Yes ! Passive-obedience 
 and jure-divino principles are unconstitutional; and capable of sub- 
 jecting the promulgator of such principles to the impeachment in 
 the House of Lords. This was the trial of Henry Sacheverell this 
 was the object of that impeachment the justice of the Revolution 
 of 1688, and also that of 1641. 
 
 It is somewhat remarkable that in the month of October, 1 709, 
 De Foe's Review was presented by the grand jury as a nuisance, 
 because of his exposing the innovations upon the Scottish Church 
 Establishment. He goes on to say in that Review, that " Either 
 I must oppose the hot party the Jacobite interest, and those that 
 abuse the Queen, in pretending her authority for imposing innova- 
 tions on the Scots ; or I must cease to write at all. Now, I cannot 
 think that a court of justice can be prevailed on to prosecute, or a 
 grand jury to present, any such designs as this, as a nuisance ; and 
 therefore, as I doubt not of justice in all our courts, where the laws 
 are free and open to the meanest subject, so I cannot think that, in 
 the prosecution of these just and necessary truths, I can meet with 
 any oppression from the law ; nay, I might think I have reason to 
 hope for favour/' 
 
 At this period of our history (1710), the social position of England 
 was most unsatisfactory : on the one hand, we see a House of 
 Lords affirming a principle not second to Magna Charta itself 
 the confirmation by legislation of the fundamental doctrine of the 
 Sovereignty of the People. Such was the House of Lords with its 
 Bench of Bishops ; and at this time, too, the House of Commons 
 acting with the Lords, and showing itself to be respectable and 
 honest ; but, on the other hand, the people, for whom the Lords had 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 347 
 
 solemnly affirmed this g % reat principle of national right ; and what 
 do we see there? The dwelling-houses of certain dissenting minis- 
 ters ransacked^ and all their furniture and books destroyed ; and this 
 state of things was not confined to London alone ; for at Wrexham, 
 in Wales, the mob dressed up the effigies of the dissenting ministers, 
 and threw them into bonfires, and even clergymen " Mr. Hoadley, 
 a minister of the Church of England, reverend by his office, styled 
 so by the Parliament, and recommended to her Majesty for further 
 preferment ; a sound preacher, far from a dissenter, having been a 
 zealous disputer against them : this gentleman, guilty of no crime, 
 charged with no immorality, a breaker of no law, only a preacher 
 of liberty ; see how he is treated by the rabble at Wrexham. They 
 dress up a man-of-straw, bring him to the public street of the town, 
 and carry him to the door of a meeting-house, or near it ; here, in 
 profanation of the holy ordinance of baptism, they christened it, 
 some say they sprinkled water upon it ; but they formally gave it a 
 name, and called it Ben Hoadley ; then put a rope about its neck, 
 and, carrying it in triumph, brought it to the whipping-post, and 
 tying it down, as is usual to criminals, scourged it most furiously ; 
 then they carried it up, and set it in the pillory ; and, to finish the 
 tragedy, took it to the water, and drowned it. Before this, they 
 dressed up several effigies of dissenters, as Mr. Daniel Burgess, and 
 Dr. Daniel Williams : the one they burnt, and buried the other alive, 
 as they called it ; and now they came to a churchman. And what 
 had this good man done, to be thus treated ? Nothing but what 
 became him as a churchman and as a minister : he had defended 
 truth and liberty." This I take from the Review, vol. viii. p. 22. 
 
 Duty compels me to give another quotation from the same work, 
 but from the previous volume : 
 
 " Rebellion to defend non-resistance. It stands upon record (yes ! 
 in the sixth chapter of the Review), that, March 1, 1710, the rabble 
 being encouraged for two or three days by the doctor and his friends 
 to wait upon him to and from Westminster, in cavalcade, more like 
 an ambassador of state than a criminal going to the bar of justice ; 
 after they had housed the doctor in great mob-pomp, and had 
 shouted before his door for some time, they separated themselves 
 
348 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 into several bodies, as if detached by command of their directors, 
 and went directly to the dissenting meeting-houses, broke open seven 
 of them, and pulling down the pulpits, pews, galleries, windows, and 
 everything they could demolish, carried them out into the streets, and 
 burnt them. Besides this, they broke open and rifled the dwelling- 
 houses of two dissenting ministers, Mr. Burgess and Mr. Earle, 
 carried away or destroyed their goods, books, &c. ; and as for the 
 meeting-house of the former, having pulled down the pulpit, pewSj 
 wainscot, and all other combustibles, they carried them into Lin- 
 coln's Inn Fields, where they were placed upon a bonfire, crying 
 out, ' High Church and Sacheverell'; several other meeting-houses 
 suffering the same treatment, when the houses of the Lord Chancellor 
 (Cowper), the Earl of Wharton, the Bishop of Sarum (Dr. Burnet), 
 Mr. Dolben, and Mr. Hoadley, were threatened by the mob, who 
 were only prevented carrying their threats into execution by a de- 
 tachment of the Horse Guards ; and these guards being doubled as 
 the excitement increased, from the progress of the trial, and by the 
 City trained bands being placed under arms to assist the guards, if 
 necessary. And now, gentlemen, you see what the Shortest Way 
 with the Dissenters, so long ago (1703), warned you of. Here is 
 another exemplification of SacheverelPs bloody flag. The dissenters 
 and low churchmen for their interest is the same may in this see 
 plainly what they are to expect, and what the true meaning of the 
 non-resistance doctrine is." 
 
 " These (High-Church Tories) are the heads and true originals 
 of our tumults and mob. To these we owe riot to explain non- 
 resistance, and pulling down meeting-houses, as a testimony of 
 their zeal for the indulgence of tender consciences. 'Till this sort 
 of people appeared in the world, there was no such thing known. 
 Even in King Charles the Second's days, they could never bring 
 the mob to pull down the meeting-houses, or rob the dwelling- 
 houses of the dissenters. And, really, in this, the different temper 
 of this party from any that has been known in England will appear. 
 We have had mobs formerly upon various occasions; and I have 
 some thoughts of giving the world a short tract I have had long by 
 me, entitled A History of the Mob; but these mobs always aimed 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 349 
 
 at pulling down some real grievance, and when the work was over, 
 they had no further mischief in view. But this rabble was filled 
 with thieves and murderers, robbers and incendiaries; their rage 
 was bloody, their temper barbarous, and their end plunder and 
 destruction." 
 
 Now ! what can we say to this state of things, in England in 
 1710 : after lessons given line upon line, and precept upon precept; 
 here a little, and there a little ; in the study and upon the scaffold, 
 in the gaol and upon the battle-field, from 1640 to 1710 ; or a period 
 of seventy years what can we say ? 
 
 " On the 22nd of March, 1710, Henry Sacheveiell was found 
 guilty (of calling the sovereignty of the people in question), and 
 was enjoined not to preach for three years ; that his two sermons 
 be burnt before the Royal Exchange, London, by the common hang- 
 man, in the presence of the lord mayor, and the sheriffs of London 
 and Middlesex. This was considered by the mob and their patrons of 
 High Church equivalent to an acquittal, and an indication of the 
 weakness of the Whig government; therefore at night, by way of 
 triumph, several of the streets in London and Westminster were 
 illuminated, and bonfires made, and all passers-by made to drink 
 Dr. SacheverelPs health." 
 
 And during the period of these disturbances, the Queen herself 
 was subjected to the same indignity, by having her carriage stopped 
 and surrounded by the mob, crying " God bless your Majesty and 
 the Church ; we hope your Majesty is for Dr. Sacheverell ; " for these 
 poor tools of the priesthood believed what they had been taught, 
 that the impeachment of Sacheverell was an attempt to overturn 
 the Church of England, and establish the dissenters in its place. 
 
 Once again,, writing at the end of March, immediately after the 
 verdict had been given, De Foe adds : " We have had a most dis- 
 tracting, turbulent time for the last two months, occasioned by the 
 prosecution of a high-flying clergyman. His defence has been 
 carried on with all possible heat, fury, and violence, by the party ; 
 and a strong conjunction of Papists, Jacobites, and High-Ohurch 
 madmen, has made them appear very formidable to the world. 
 Rabbles, tumults, plundering of houses, demolishing meeting- 
 
350 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 houses, insulting gentlemen in the streets, and honest men in their 
 dwellings, have been the necessary consequence of this affair. And 
 after all, I must own, though the man has been condemned, his 
 principles censured, and his sermon burnt, yet it has not been 
 without the most fatal consequences to the nation: as it has revived 
 the heats and animosities which began to be laid asleep." 
 
 This is a deplorable state of things, after eight thousand indi- 
 viduals had died in gaol, or otherwise, for civil and religious liberty 
 during the two reigns of Charles II., and James II., his brother, or 
 in about thirty years, from 1660 ; and only twenty years before 
 these occurrences took place, in 1710. What shall we say? What 
 will kind-hearted critics say to speculations of the political econo- 
 mist, on the twenty centuries of Gothic usage of universal suffrage ? 
 What ! where are the fruits of the poll-takings on the shores of the 
 Baltic among our Gothic ancestors ? I wanted to go back to Gothic 
 usages, in this our land, and this our day ; I wanted to see the old 
 poll of the people taken at the Skire Eak ; and potwalloping or 
 potboiling suffrage established in the land ; but Charles II., and 
 his brother, James II., killed outright eight thousand good men and 
 true ; and a mad, ambitious, coxcomb puppy of a parson, with an 
 English rabble, are attempting to add to the number of the victims ! 
 Yes ! to kill the very men who have planted their bodies a living 
 breakwater against the flood-tide of arbitrary power yes ! kill 
 these men ! Why ? To throw themselves body and soul, as crawl- 
 ing sycophants at the feet of the tyrannical, the outlav/ed, the 
 accursed house of Stuart ; the head of which family was advertised 
 by the British government, and 100,000 sterling offered for 
 his apprehension, only four years after the period 1 am now 
 writing upon ! With universal suffrage I have done : I will never 
 support it. 
 
 Against these outrageous assaults upon the dissenting meeting- 
 houses, De Foe took his stand in the first rank; and, of course, 
 took first-rank honours at the hands of his opponents ; for he was 
 threatened with everything, even death itself, though he laughed in 
 his sleeve at what had happened on the preaching the panic among 
 the dissenters, though it had failed through his writing ; he having 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 351 
 
 written himself into Newgate instead, for twelve months; and Harley 
 into office. 
 
 De Foe writes in his Review as follows, upon his personal dangers 
 at this time, from this senseless High-Church-Stuart-adoring and 
 honest-man-debasing rabble ; the same class we sometimes read of, 
 who cried, at the Jewish priestly dictation, " Not this man, but 
 Barabbas"; and that same debased class also, who cried on another 
 occasion, prompted by the same fraternity, the endowed dominant 
 priesthood of Ephesus, " Great is Diana of the Ephesians": 
 
 " I am not always to be frightened with threatening letters and 
 shams of assassination : ever thinking those people who talk so 
 much of killing, never do it. Though I am not to be classed with 
 those you call fighting fellows, yet I am not in the number of those 
 who are afraid to see themselves die; and may I hope, without 
 being taxed with vanity, profess not to practise non-resistance. I 
 have by me fifteen letters from gentlemen of more anger than honour, 
 who have faithfully promised to come and kill me by such-and-such 
 a day ; nay, some have descended to tell me the very manner ; yet 
 not one of them has been so good as his word. Once 1 had the 
 misfortune to come into a room where five gentlemen had been 
 killing me a quarter of an hour before ; yet, to the reproach of their 
 villanous design, as well as of their courage, they did not dare to 
 own it to a poor defenceless man when he was too much in their 
 power. In short, I here give my testimony, from my own expe- 
 rience, and I note it for the instruction of these five assassins, that 
 their cause is villanous, and that makes the party cowardly. A man 
 that has any honour in him, is really put to more difficulty how to 
 speak than how to act ; in the case of murder and assassination, he 
 is straitened between the extremes of showing too much courage or 
 too much fear. Should I tell the world the repeated cautions given 
 me by my friends not to appear in the streets, nor to show myself; 
 letters sent to bid me remember Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, Mr. 
 Tutchin, and the like ; should I let you know how I have been three 
 times beset and waylaid for the mischief designed, but still I live ; 
 you would wonder what I mean. Wherefore, my brief resolution 
 is this : while I live, they may be assured I shall never desist doing 
 
352 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 my duty, in exposing the doctrines that oppose God and the Revo- 
 lution : such as passive submission to tyrants, and non-resistance in 
 cases of oppression. If those who are at a loss for arguments, are 
 resolved to better their cause by violence and blood, I leave the 
 issue to God's providence ; and must do as well with them as I can. 
 As to defence, I have had some thoughts to stay at home by night, 
 and by day to wear a piece of armour on my back : the first, because 
 I am persuaded these murderers will not do their work by daylight ; 
 and the second, because I firmly believe they will never attempt it 
 fairly to my face. 
 
 " I confess there may be some reason for me to apprehend this 
 wicked party; and therefore, as I thank God I am without a 
 disturbing fear, so I am not without caution. Assassination and 
 murder are, indeed, something more suitable to the high-flying 
 cause, and has been more in use with that party than with other 
 people. 'Tis the cause of tyranny, and tyranny always leads to 
 blood. Oppression goes hand-in-hand with violence ; and he that 
 would invade my liberty, would invade my life as he has oppor- 
 tunity. But I cannot see why they should be so exasperated at the 
 poor Review : a sorry, despised author, to use the words of one of 
 their party, whom nobody gives heed to. Well, then, let your anger 
 be pointed at some more significant animal, that is more capable to 
 wound you ; and do not own this author to be so considerable as to 
 engage your resentment, lest you prove the unanswerable force of 
 what he says, by the concern you are at to suppress him. But, if he 
 were to be sacrificed by your impious hands, truth would never want 
 champions to defend it ; and killing the Review would be like cutting 
 off the monster's head, for a hundred to rise up in the room of it. 
 
 " Upon the whole, as I am going on in what I esteem my duty, 
 and for the public good, I firmly believe it will not please God to 
 deliver me up to this bloody and ungodly party; and, therefore, 
 shall still go on to expose a bigoted race of people, in order to 
 reclaim and reform them, or to open the eyes of the good people of 
 Britain, that they may not be imposed upon. Whether in this work 
 I meet with punishment or praise, safety or hazard, life or death, 
 Te Deum laudamus" 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 353 
 
 In the 7th volume of the Review, De Foe thus calls upon the 
 Whigs, broken in spirit and fleeing before their enemies, to rally 
 and form again, for another charge, in opposition to Toryism and 
 the Stuarts ; for the French interest at St. Germains, the support 
 of the Pretender, in opposition to the Elector of Hanover, was the 
 prize the Tories and High Church were contending for in all this 
 riot and destruction, and opposition to the friends of the late King 
 William of glorious memory : 
 
 " Think ye that the cause of liberty and of truth, that has cost 
 so much blood, and has been twenty- two years in planting, is thus 
 to be pulled up and rooted out? No, never fear it; God will 
 not forsake it; and though the pride and security, the divisions 
 and selfishness, of its friends, have really opened this door of mis- 
 chief, and you have with your hands too much encouraged these 
 enemies, and weakened the hands of those that saved you, yet it is 
 not too late to unite and exert yourselves ; which, if you do, you 
 will with ease trample this contemptible, though numerous and 
 noisy, enemy under your feet. Things are come to that height 
 that we must either defend our cause, or give it up. If it is not 
 the cause of truth, let the Queen and Parliament determine it to be 
 so ; and then, perhaps, it may be time for honest men to think of 
 it. But, if it be the cause of truth, let all the Demas's of the age 
 forsake it ; if my heart does not deceive me, yet would I not cease 
 to own and defend it. I am satisfied the cause of liberty is the 
 cause of truth ; and it is from this principle only that I oppose the 
 High-Church darling, Sacheverell; and do it in the teeth of his 
 mob, when his cause would be thought rising, and when I see men 
 that pretend to revolution principles, cowed and afraid. I have 
 nothing to say to the man ; I owe him neither good nor ill ; it is 
 the temper of insulting the laws, and preaching up tyranny, that I 
 oppose; and this I will oppose, if the tyrant were an emperor." 
 
 To such a pitch had this preaching contest extended ; for it was 
 a contest of Harley against Godolphin ; the Elector of Hanover 
 against the house of Stuart ; or Whig and freedom for the people, on 
 the principle of the people being the source of all legitimate power, 
 against Toryism, divine-right-of-kingism, and passive-obedienceism ; 
 
 23 
 
354 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 the very concentration of Stuartism, and French-pensionism ; with 
 a thorough prostration of all rights, civil and religious, within these 
 realms, at the feet of a dominant, endowed, religious sect : To such 
 a pitch of contention did this preaching contest extend, "that 
 women lay aside their tea and chocolate, leave off visiting after 
 dinner, and, forming themselves into cabals, turn privy councillors, 
 and settle the affairs of state. Every lady of quality has her head 
 more particularly full of business than usual; nay, some of the ladies 
 talk of keeping female secretaries ; and none will be fit for the office 
 but such as can speak French, Dutch, and, which is worse, Latin. 
 Gallantry and gaiety are now laid aside for business; matters of 
 government and affairs of state are become the province of the 
 ladies; and no wonder if they are too much engaged to concern 
 themselves about the common impertinences of life. Indeed, they 
 have hardly leisure to live, little time to eat and sleep, and none at 
 all to say their prayers. If you turn your eye to the Park, the 
 ladies are not there ; even the church is thinner than usual ; for you 
 know, the mode is for privy councils to meet on Sundays. The 
 very playhouse feels the effects of it ; and the great Betterton died 
 a beggar on this account. Nay, the Tatler the immortal Taller, 
 the great Bickerstaff himself, was fain to leave off talking to the 
 ladies, during the Doctor's trial, and turn his sagacious pen to the 
 dark subject of death and the next world; though he has not yet 
 decided the ancient debate, whether Pluto's regions were, in point 
 of government, a ^igdom or a commonwealth. 
 
 " Mobs, rabbles, tumults, possess the streets ; whores, pimps, and 
 cullies, the walks; the dressing, the powdering, the beau monde, is 
 adjourned to the chocolate-houses, and is all among the men. The 
 ladies are otherwise engaged: even the little boys and girls talk 
 politics. Little miss has Dr. SacheverelPs picture put into her 
 Prayer Book, that God and the Doctor may take her up in the 
 morning before breakfast ; and all manner of discourse among the 
 women runs now upon war and government. Tattling nonsense 
 and slander is transferred to the males, and adjourned from the 
 toilet to the coffee-houses and groom-porters. This being the 
 general state of the nation, you must no more wonder that our 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 355 
 
 wiser statesmen, and able ministry, totter in their high posts, and 
 you are every day alarmed with changes at court." 
 
 This national hubbub about divine rights of the Stuart family 
 ended, where it was intended to end by the prime mover in the 
 plot in himself (Harley) being raised to the chancellorship of the 
 Exchequer. So much for treating, feasting, promising, and preach- 
 ing. Harley was the prime mover in all this national disturbance ; 
 and probably with the connivance of the Queen herself, through the 
 influence and confidence of Mrs. Mash am, her bedchamber woman, 
 the relative of Harley. These facts are given in the gross ; for space 
 would not allow to go through all the turmoils of pamphlets, &c., 
 of the period ; suffice to say, the trick took, and Harley obtained a 
 place in the ministry, with a fair prospect of serving the interests of 
 the Pretender, and of obliging the Queen by so doing. 
 
 All this time the nation was in the greatest state of excitement, 
 when Sir Gilbert Heathcote, the governor; Nathaniel Gold, Esq., 
 the deputy governor; Francis Eyles, Esq., and Sir William Scawen, 
 two of the directors of the Bank of England, were introduced by the 
 Duke of Newcastle, lord privy seal, to her Majesty, and represented 
 to her that the public credit could not be supported by the present 
 or new ministry. Vryberge, the Dutch envoy, as well as the 
 Austrian envoy from Vienna, represented the same on behalf of 
 Holland and Austria ; with which interference on the part of these 
 foreign powers her Majesty was highly indignant, as she professed 
 to have a right to change her ministers, and dissolve Parliament too, 
 as she thought proper, without any interference from the States ; 
 and a dissolution of Parliament, a move generally conversed upon 
 at the time, was resolved upon. The moneyed interest of the nation 
 being the dissenters, who sympathized with the late ministers, just 
 superseded by Harley, St. John, and his Tory friends, took alarm, 
 and began to sell out their stock ; so that Bank Stock fell again 
 from 126 to 118, and other securities in proportion, to the great 
 dismay of the City financiers. All this was very offensive to the 
 Queen and the ministry, who took their revenge on the moneyed 
 interest the following session, by passing an act (under pretence of 
 securing the freedom of Parliament) for raising the qualification 
 
 23* 
 
356 LIFE OF DE FOE, 
 
 of a member of the House of Commons to 600 per annum in 
 landed estate, for a county member ; and 300 per annum,, from the 
 same class of property, for a borough member; with exceptions 
 made for peers' sons, and the members of the universities. This 
 was to pack the House of Commons with Tories, who were the land- 
 holders, High-Church supporters of Dr. Sacheverell, and James III., 
 the Queen's half-brother the King of St. Germains ! 
 
 During all this time, De Foe kept manfully to his post at the 
 Review, writing in his paper, twice or thrice in each week, every 
 encouragement to the Whigs and their moneyed friends to keep up 
 their spirits under all discouragements, and support the credit of the 
 country, regardless of party, in power or out ; and in vol. vii. p. 233, 
 of that work, he wrote as follows : 
 
 " I believe no man will deny, that this is the most critical time 
 for any man that writes of public affairs. I know but one man in 
 the world so qualified ; and, find him where you will, this must be 
 his character : He must be one that, searching into the depths o 
 truth, dare speak her aloud in the most dangerous times ; that fears 
 no faces, courts no favours, is subject to no interest, bigoted to no 
 party, and will be a hypocrite for no gain. I will not say I am the 
 man : I leave that to posterity. If I have had any friends, it is 
 amongst those that are turned out ; and if I had the power to lead, 
 perhaps I should bring them all in again. If Tories, Jacobites, 
 High-flyers, and madmen, are to corne in, I am against them. I 
 ask them no favour, I make no court to them ; nor am I going 
 about to please them ; and yet I expect not to oblige those that I 
 think the best of." 
 
 The new ministry hired what talent they could to write them up 
 in public estimation ; and one of their first acts was to present the 
 unprincipled Jonathan Swift, the pamphleteer, to their royal mistress 
 for a bishopric ! 
 
 Perhaps this may be the place for me to pay a just tribute of 
 praise and thanks to one of Daniel De Foe's most ardent admirers, 
 faithful biographers, and assiduous collectors from his stock of two 
 hundred known and acknowledged publications. To this man, 
 Walter Wilson, Esq., I am greatly indebted ; for I have used his 
 work as a landmark for dates and indexes to these several publica- 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 357 
 
 tions of De Foe. From my great desire to avoid the appearance of 
 copying from Mr. Wilson's work, I have omitted scores of minor 
 events connected with De Foe, which, in a great measure, rested 
 upon Mr. Wilson's knowledge of works, pamphlets, lampoons, 
 broadsheets, &c. , and which I could not myself verify in the private 
 collection, the bookshop, or the reading-room of the British Mu- 
 seum. I mention this, because I could not bind myself to take 
 seriatim all De Foe's pamphlets, with all their answers. I have 
 before me a whole page in Wilson, on a pamphlet and its answer, 
 where De Foe is charged with stealing a horse at Coventry election, 
 and riding the same to Scotland, and never owning Coventry again. 
 This, and a score more pamphlets and their answers, I leave to Mr. 
 Wilson ; for I have not the works, and could touch the information 
 on Mr. Wilson's authority only. 
 
 Macaulay's History of England I have never touched never 
 opened for fear of stealing some idea or other; but I know that 
 Macaulay could only drink at the same fountain as myself; for I 
 think I have been at every spring, from Charles Leslie, the most 
 Jesuitical and dangerous man of his day, the source of half the 
 religious contentions of the reign of Anne, and one I suspect to 
 have been used as a tool, occasionally at least, as circumstances 
 might require, by Harley, along with De Foe, Sacheverell, and 
 others, for the furtherance of this man's objects of ambition; I 
 have gone from Leslie, down to Ned Ward, the alehouse poet, who 
 wrote the anthems said to be sung at the Calves' Head feasts of the 
 30th of January, where the dissenters were stated to have sung 
 them at this their club-dinners, over calves' heads and cods' heads, 
 to commemorate the beheading of Charles I. 
 
 ANNIVERSARY ANTHEM FOR 1695. 
 
 i. 
 
 What the devil means all this pother, 
 On this day more than another? 
 See ! the sot to church reels out ! 
 See ! the leacher leaves his whore ; 
 The rogues, that never pray'd before, 
 Arc grown most plaguily devout. 
 
358 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 II. 
 
 Prithee, parson, why those faces, 
 Pious frowns, and damn'd grimaces ? 
 Why so many creeds and masses, 
 
 Collects, lessons, and the rest, 
 
 Of the holy garbage drest, 
 Proper food for mumbling asses ? 
 
 in. 
 
 Oh ! sir, it 's a debt, they say 
 Mother Church must yearly pay 
 To her saint's canonization : 
 
 It was the day in which he fell 
 
 A martyr to the came of hell, 
 Justly crown'd with decollation. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Mirth for us and generous wine ; 
 Let the clergy cant and whine, 
 Preach and prate about rebellion ; 
 
 No more beasts of kings, good Heaven ! 
 
 Such as late in wrath were given, 
 Two curs'd tyrants, and a stallion. 
 
 v. 
 
 Now prepare, my lads, and stand, 
 Each his bumper in his hand ; 
 Brutus ! 'tis a health to thee, 
 
 Thou whose generous arm and sword 
 
 In a cause like ours restor'd 
 Rome's expiring liberty. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Fill the glass with sparkling red ; 
 Look, 'twas thus the tyrant bled ; 
 Thus our fathers let us see 
 
 What before had sacred stood, 
 
 Fawn'd and worshipp'd as a god, 
 Was flesh and blood as well as we. 
 
 Well, but to return to Mr. Wilson as an authority on De-Foe 
 matters. I take the liberty of quoting from p. 183, vol iii 2 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 359 
 
 " A spirit of fanaticism, fostered by the exertions of a bigoted 
 and vicious clergy, pervaded the land, and blighted all that was 
 kind, gentle, and peaceable. The madness that possessed the people, 
 and the dangerous principles that actuated their leaders, are mi- 
 nutely detailed and canvassed by our author, whose zeal for the 
 cause of liberty was unabated in the most perilous times, and 
 exposed him to the rage of the factious. The ascendency of the 
 Tories he viewed with deep regret, but without dismay : being per- 
 suaded that the laws were strong enough to hold them to their 
 duty, and that, if they attempted to break through them, it would 
 convulse the nation, and they would be ruined in the conflict. The 
 violence of the party, and their known hatred to the author, rendered 
 him more circumspect and measured in his language, which some 
 mistook for a desertion of his principles ; but he repels the charge 
 with indignation, and knew the men he had to deal with too well 
 to give them any pretence for the exercise of their vengeance. 
 
 " In these factious times, men of the best principles and of the 
 fairest reputation, found no quarter from their political opponents. 
 It is, therefore, not surprising, that so determined a writer as De 
 Foe should have his full share of opprobrium, and that he was often 
 assailed in other papers. Since Leslie had dropped his Rehearsals, 
 he took but little notice of such opponents, as well from a contempt 
 of their talents, as from a studied neglect of their scurrility. ' It 
 was always my opinion/ says he, 'that when the enemy roared 
 loudest, he was pinched the hardest : and- that when the patient 
 grew sick, the physic worked well/ ' 
 
 At this time, Haiiey was at his wit's end for expedients for 
 carrying on the government; for he well knew that the violent 
 shortsighted Tories would avail him nothing; so in his difficulty 
 he applied to Lord Somers, the most intelligent as well as honest 
 statesman in the kingdom ; but Lord Somers, as independent as 
 honest, declined the connection, he knowing well the dependence to 
 be placed upon the man. 
 
 Things being in this state, a dissolution of Parliament was ine- 
 vitable ; the very mention of which, caused a panic amongst the 
 moneyed interest of the city of London, when the directors of the 
 
360 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 Bank again informed the government, that the very issuing of the 
 writs for a new Parliament would cause a run upon the Bank of 
 England, and force it to close its doors : the panic appearing as 
 prevalent amongst the large foreign stockholders of Amsterdam, 
 Hamburg, &c. ; they being as anxious to sell immediately as the 
 moneyed interest of London, headed by Sir Francis Child, the son 
 or grandson of the great Sir Josiah Child, the political-economic 
 writer of his day, on money matters, banking, funding, &c. 
 
 All was confusion at court in consequence of this state of things ; 
 and, to make affairs no better, the Duke of Somerset, master of the 
 house, resigned his place in the ministry, and went over to the 
 Whigs. 
 
 On the 21st of September, 1710, the proclamation for the disso- 
 lution of the present Parliament appeared ; when the firebrand Dr. 
 Sacheverell employed his whole time to inflame the minds of the 
 people, and raise the very spirit of the lowest hell, to run down 
 civil and religious liberty throughout the land. High Church and 
 Passive Obedience was to be the god of the mob's idolatry; and 
 Dissenters, Presbyterians, Independents, Anabaptists, Muggleto- 
 nians, with Hogan-Mogans or Dutchmen, and Hanoverians, of all 
 others, to be shunned and avoided. 
 
 In this time of national distress, De Foe came to the public 
 rescue, in another pamphlet of caution to the people, entitled " A 
 Word against the New Election ; that the People of England 
 may see the happy Difference between English Liberty and French 
 Slavery ; and may consider well before they make the Exchange. 
 Printed in the year 1710. 8vo, pp. 33." 
 
 He commences by observing : " That the time is come when 
 God has been pleased to give some people up to strong delusions ; 
 and to bring this to pass, that a wicked party of men have, with 
 too much success, assisted the general defection; having first spread 
 a cloud over the eyes of the people, and then dug the pit in their 
 way. In religion, they have been fed with words for substance, 
 politics for doctrine, and railing for application ; taking up prin- 
 ciples of persecution, fury, and abhorrence of their brethren. In 
 government, they embrace tyranny for legal monarchy; hereditary 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 361 
 
 right, instead of parliamentary limitation ; and arbitrary will, for 
 law ; by which they are led blindfold to practise absolute submis- 
 sion, like the true tribe of Issachar, crouching before the load is 
 laid on, courting their own chains, and addressing their sovereign 
 for slavery." 
 
 The Rev. William Bisset, eldest brother of the collegiate church 
 of St. Katharine, and rector of Whiston, in Northamptonshire, at 
 this time wrote a Life of Sacheverell, and a preface ; a quotation 
 from which I will give, as the sentiments of this preface, written and 
 printed in 1710, so fully bear out, what must be concluded from a 
 careful sifting of evidence now, after a lapse of one hundred and 
 fifty years : that the mobs employed by Sacheverell at the elections 
 for members of Parliament in 1710, were not "true natural British 
 mobs." This is my fixed opinion. Harley was in office, a relation 
 of Mrs. Masham, the Queen's confidential female attendant ; and 
 he, too, a favourite and confidential, as well as a minister of the 
 Queen. Sacheverell, the great firebrand, a tool of some one's, 
 agitating through the country for High Church and the Pretender, 
 against, I suppose, the whole moneyed interest of England, the 
 dissenters, and the succession of the house of Hanover. This was 
 the contest. Sacheverell was working under Harley ; Harley was 
 working with the Queen ; the whole country was convulsed yes ! 
 agitated to its very centre ; but who paid the price? for the move- 
 ment was not supposed to have been English. Could the Queen 
 rob the Exchequer for funds; or had she saved money for the 
 purpose ? As for the old gentry, the adherents of the Stuarts, they 
 had, in countless instances, sold, mortgaged, or leased the estates 
 for five thousand years, about 1642, or a little later; when every 
 little landed proprietor was raising his troop of horse for the King, 
 and calling himself Captain. As for the Stuarts at St. Germaius, 
 they had no money; for they were pensioners on the court of 
 France, It is possible that Louis XIV. might again take the field 
 in English politics, and try to possess an interest in the English 
 House of Commons, as he had done before, when he possessed 1 70 
 seats in the House; to support the Spanish Will question, in 
 opposition to the Partition Treaty. I believe Harley set Sacheverell 
 
362 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 at work ; and somebody employed Harley, to serve the interests of 
 the house of Stuart, in opposition to the interests of the house of 
 Hanover; and that this election of 1710 was to decide the point in 
 dispute for ever Hanover or Stuart. 
 
 I will now give an extract from Mr. Bisset's preface : 
 " We have had now a year of extreme violence and confusion, 
 such as cannot be matched, without a civil war, in any history that 
 I have met with ; a year through which nothing but an Almighty 
 Providence could have brought moderate, plain-dealing Protestants 
 alive and unm aimed ; and in which all such might truly be said, 
 like the Jews after Hainan's court intrigue, Est. viii. 11, ' to stand 
 for their life/ I cannot but think it highly unreasonable, that such 
 should always be represented as a stubborn and stiffnecked genera- 
 tion, who have been so tame and passive under so many and such 
 outrageous insults. Had my house (which is my castle in the eye 
 of the law) been attacked, and myself in it (as was threatened, but 
 I happened to be then in the country), I conceive it was not only 
 my right, but my duty too, and a necessary point of distributive 
 justice, impartially to have dispensed the contents of a musquetoon 
 or two (nay, as many as the time would admit) amongst them ; 
 and should think my life well bestowed (as well as in Spain or 
 Flanders) to rid the world of as many such lewd fellows of the 
 baser sort as possible; that the rest who survive might live more at 
 peace, and so die with the Philistines. For, certainly, a Frenchified 
 mob, and a French army, deserve the same acts of hostility ; and 
 His an equal piece of service to the public, to oppose the regular or 
 irregular troops of the grand oppressor (Louis XIV., the patron of 
 the Pretender) . With this view, I cannot but commend a stout 
 and honest friend, who laid about half-a-score of them sprawling 
 at his door, for breaking his windows, and insulting his servant, 
 and threatening further mischief. 
 
 " It can never enter into my head, that the late were true natural 
 British mobs; there are all the signs that can be of an artificial 
 hired mob, like Sir J. Friend's regiment, though kept incognito in 
 and about the town, ready to appear in arms (such arms as the case 
 required) at the first signal or word of command. For, besides that, 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 363 
 
 oue in the chariot with Dr. Sacheverell was said to have scattered 
 money among the crowd ; and he was heard to say, with a most 
 obliging bow and smile, when he dismissed his corps de garde at his 
 lodging in the Temple, ' Good night, gentlemen/ a condescension 
 too great from so very proud a person to porters and cobblers, if 
 there had not been some gentlemen among them. A friend of 
 mine happened to dine at a great table a day or two before the 
 grand rebellion (this city of London election riot), where a young 
 Oxonian, just come to town (as hundreds more were), said, there 
 would be suddenly warm work, and cursed me in particular. Since 
 the first outrages, there has been no stone left unturned, to keep 
 up the ferment till the election ; and one main artifice has been, 
 swarms of libels, to render the fanatics (a name that takes in all but 
 Tories) odious." 
 
 This Sacheverell- Pretender election riot was not an affair of a 
 day, or a week, or a month ; for, as Mr. Bisset observes " Nor 
 was it only a short hurricane (for then we might better have borne 
 it), but a lasting tempest ; and neither sun nor stars for many days 
 appeared. All freedom of conversation has been ever since banished; 
 instead of which, quarrels or shyness have succeeded among the 
 most intimate acquaintance. It has fomented disputes among men, 
 women, and children ; the very boys at school are, ever and anon, 
 fighting in this shameful cause ; and I hear one was almost killed ; 
 and, His to be feared, such offences and grudges have been taken, 
 as will not be easily overcome, till reason and religion begin to 
 recover their former power. Nothing but hectoring, mobbing, 
 brazening, insulting, and burning their neighbours in effigy; a 
 plain indication what they long and hope to be at ; viz., the old 
 Smithfield pastime ; and their fingers itch to be throwing faggots 
 at here ticks ; and, in more instances than I can name, playing the 
 devil in perfection." 
 
 " I have since that been mobbed, that is, insulted in the open 
 streets, with the foulest language, by mere strangers (for cavils of 
 acquaintance I do not take into the account), times without num- 
 ber. The same day the news of the taking Douay came to town 
 (for any success of the allies constantly enrages them) I was insulted 
 
364 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 four times between my home and the Exchange. Once a company 
 of blustering blades bade the people,, again and again, despatch me, 
 by throwing me into the Thames ; and I have been informed, that 
 three armed ruffians have been inquiring for me, and hovering 
 about to waylay me. I bless God, I fear nothing but Him, whilst 
 in the way of my duty ; and hope for nothing but heaven ; for I 
 must not think of -rising (as an honest friend told me) till the 
 general resurrection. Suffice to say, the High Church and the 
 Pretender were the ordinary street pass-words or salutations ; and a 
 stranger, or one ignorant of the requirements of party violence and 
 usurpation, would be certain to be insulted, and perhaps injured in 
 his person, for not responding to the call." De Foe is very active 
 through the whole period of this revolutionary insubordination, and 
 occupies many numbers, in his seventh volume of the Review, in 
 recording the progress of strife ; as thus, in p. 361 of that volume : 
 " I cannot think that any wise man of either side can approve of 
 the riots and tumults practised at the election. Let him go through 
 the streets, and view the houses, how they look like houses of ill 
 fame, with their windows broken, their shutters daubed with dirt, 
 and their balconies full of stones ; as if some public enemy had 
 taken possession of the city. Rage and madness filled the streets,, 
 and every one was exposed to the discretion of the rabble. In the 
 general disorder, no regard was paid either to friend or foe. Let 
 any man view the streets. Are they all Whigs that dwell between 
 Ludgate and Temple Bar ? And was there a house that was not in 
 this manner insulted? And what was it for? All for choosing 
 parliament-men to make laws for good government, protect our pro- 
 perty, and preserve the peace !" 
 
 The new Parliament assembled on the 25th of November; and 
 a great preponderance of Toryism was the manifest strength of the 
 House ; from its first opening, Marlborough and his victories, with 
 the dissenters, being slighted. 
 
 At this period, De Foe was in Scotland, employed by some one, 
 for some purpose. On the 1st of February, 1711, he was empowered 
 by the corporation of Edinburgh to publish the Edinburgh Courant, 
 in the room of Adam Booge, deceased; the privilege of printing 
 
LIFE OF DE-FOE. 365 
 
 news under this title being confirmed to him exclusively, for the 
 past services performed by him, for Scotland or Edinburgh. This 
 undertaking he only continued through forty-five numbers, and 
 then relinquished the undertaking to others ; he, probably, finding 
 that the Review in London, and the Courant in Edinburgh, each 
 published twice or thrice in each week, were more than he could 
 individually well manage ; considering the claims upon his pen from 
 events occurring in either country, which might require his assist- 
 ance in a pamphlet at any moment. 
 
 De Foe, in his Review, vol. vii. p. 454, for Dec. 16, 1710, leaves on 
 record the following testimonial of his treatment by the Pretender's 
 party, now supported manfully by the mean huckter of literary ta- 
 lent, Jonathan Swift, in the Examiner; the man whom Queen Anne 
 could not make a bishop of, even when recommended by all the 
 force of the patronage of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Robert 
 Harley. The Archbishop of York, Dr. Sharpe, formerly of Brad- 
 ford, in Yorkshire, and the Duchess of Somerset, the Queen's 
 favourite, and mistress of the robes, solemnly protested, and the 
 latter with tears and supplications, against the appointment; on 
 account of Jonathan Swift, the author of the Tale of a Tub, being 
 an infidel. 
 
 Swift wrote the following in 1713, or shortly before the Queen's 
 death, showing the period of his acquaintance with St. John and 
 Harley, the ministers, who paid him for writing the Examiner, and 
 for other business in the slandering way; for he was the hired 
 slang writer or actor of his day the buffoon paid to throw dust 
 into the eyes of the people, under pretence of amusing them with 
 light reading : 
 
 'Tis (let me see) three years and more, 
 October next it will be four, 
 Since Harley bid me first attend, 
 And chose me for an humble friend. 
 
 This is the testimony of Jonathan Swift, of the commencement 
 of his acquaintance with Harley and St. John, as a political writer; 
 and, as this was written in 171B, it would appear that their acquaint- 
 
366 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 ance commenced a fortnight before Sacheverell preached his cele- 
 brated Fifth-of- November Sermon, which overthrew the ministry of 
 Lord Godolphin, and placed Robert Harley and St. John in power. 
 Sacheverell was impeached, and found guilty of high treason, as we 
 have before shown the treason of calling in question the funda- 
 mental principle of the British constitution, the sovereignty of the 
 people. He was found guilty by the Lords, but the ministry were 
 too weak to hang him; but suspended him for two years; and 
 retired from power, to make room for Robert Harley, the mainspring 
 of this grand machine of agitation, intended, through the writings 
 of Swift, Pope, and Prior, to overturn the British constitution 
 recall the exiled family of Stuart make the Chevalier Charles 
 Edward the Pretender, King of England and make, likewise, 
 Jonathan Swift, Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 
 This political connection between Harley, St. John, Swift, Pope, 
 and Matthew Prior, continued in close confederation from the 
 preaching of SacheverelPs celebrated Fifth-of-November Sermon, 
 down to a few days previous to the Queen's death : a period of about 
 three years and a half; during which time, Swift resided altogether 
 in London, as the companion of these ministers, and as their paid 
 writer. 
 
 Although Swift, Pope, and Prior, in their Examiner, took great 
 liberties with their opponents, yet it is not to be supposed that they 
 came off scot-free, although supported and paid by the ministers of 
 the day, Harley, St. John, Mrs. Masham, and perhaps Queen Anne ; 
 for it was a Pretender- supporting job altogether. De Foe, in his 
 Review, vol. vii. pp.449 451, writes to these parties: 
 
 " I wonder much to hear an author, who first calls the Observator 
 and the Review stupid and illiterate, should quit his talking to men 
 of sense, to talk to these idiots. Now, what the Observator may do, 
 I say nothing; but as I have all along practised with many other 
 such scurrilous, angry sons of emptiness, so I shall still answer 
 and say nothing " 
 
 " I know nothing that can render a gentleman so contemptible 
 as to lose his breeding ; nor does any difference of persons discharge 
 the obligation of good manners. The author of the Examiner 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE, 367 
 
 haughtily tells me, that he has kept a footman; and, though he 
 does not pretend to say that the Review has been in that capacity, 
 yet he treats him as a man of behaviour would not treat a 
 footman/' 
 
 " How often have I seen a man boast of his letters and his load 
 of learning, and be ignorant of the common necessary acquirements 
 that fit a man for the service of himself and of his country. I know 
 a man at this time, a minister, who is a critic in the Greek and 
 Hebrew, a complete master of Latin; yet it would make a man 
 blush to read a letter from him, sleep to hear him preach, and sick 
 to read hie books. Again : I know another that is an orator in 
 Latin ; a walking index of books ; has all the libraries in Europe 
 in his head, from the Vatican at Rome to the learned collection of 
 Dr. Salmon, at the Fleet Ditch but, at the same time, be a cynic 
 in behaviour, a fury in temper, unpolite in conversation, abusive in 
 language, and ungovernable in passion. Is this to be learned? 
 Then may I still be illiterate." 
 
 Swift found it convenient not to know De Foe's name ; but from 
 the above attack on the Examiner, it is very evident that De Foe 
 both knew the name of Jonathan Swift, and also his nature. When 
 writing the following he had his eye on Swift : " I thought myself 
 master of geography, and to possess sufficient skill in astronomy, to 
 have set up for a country almanac-maker; yet could in neither of 
 the globes find either in what part of the world such a heterogeneous 
 creature lives ; nor under the influence of what heavenly body he 
 can be produced. From whence I conclude very frankly, that either 
 there is no such creature in the world [as Jonathan Swift], or that, 
 according to Mr. Examiner, I am a stupid idiot, and a very illiterate 
 fellow." 
 
 At this time Swift, Pope, and Prior, with Harley and Mrs.Masham, 
 were not the only tools to counteract the advance of the house of 
 Hanover to the throne of these realms. No De Foe, the great 
 champion of liberty at the time the great unpaid, too ; for no man 
 wrote so much for the benefit of the people of England, with such a 
 small return of money, or gratitude. Hear what he says in his 
 Review, vol. vii. p. 490 : 
 
368 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 " It is but lately that I troubled the world with a complaint of 
 the barbarous usage I met with from a villain's waiting and watch- 
 ing for me, under a pretence to arrest, though without a warrant, 
 and whether to murder or deliver me up to those that should, is 
 like, for want of justice, to remain a secret. I took up lately one of 
 these fellows with a sham writ. He had taken money of a man 
 employed by me formerly to treat with him, believing him then to 
 have been an officer. This villain I had long pursued, and at last 
 apprehended. He begged, confessed, offered to refund the money, 
 and pay the charges ; but, not discovering his accomplices, he was 
 carried before a justice of the peace, not a hundred miles from Sir 
 H y B Ids. The justice, when he heard the first complaint, 
 readily granted his warrant ; the case was so black, he could not but 
 resolve to punish it. The rogue is brought before him ; a lawyer 
 appears, makes out the fact, and the justice discovered some, indig- 
 nation at the crime. But as soon as he heard the prosecutor was 
 Daniel De Foe, author of the Review, he calls the gentleman that 
 pleaded a rogue ; though as honest a man as himself, and, by the 
 way, no Whig ; discharges the warrant, and bids the villain keep 
 the money ; which, for all that, he shall not do, nor shall the justice 
 himself escape the shame of his partiality, for giving orders to a 
 cheat to keep what he owned to have been unjustly gotten. Excel- 
 lent justice this, to make a nation nourish ! " 
 
 Well ! this is all on one side, the Whig side too ! because he 
 supported the public credit, even when the Tories were in office ; 
 as if the nation was to be thrown down by every possible means, 
 because the Tories were in office at Downing Street. But not con- 
 sidering this sample of national slavery sufficient, he further relates 
 another case implicating Whigs : 
 
 " On board a ship I loaded some goods. The master is a Whig, 
 of a kind more particular than ordinary. He comes to the port, my 
 bill of lading is produced, my title to my goods undisputed ; no 
 claim, no pretence ; but my goods cannot be found. The ship sailed 
 again, and I am told my goods are carried back ; and all the reason 
 given is, that they belong to ' De Foe, author of the Review, for he 
 is turned about, and writes for keeping up the public credit/ ' 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 369 
 
 From this passage, and several others, it would appear that all true 
 Whigs were expected to damage the public credit by all the means 
 in their power ; and a man who did not do this was a Tory and a 
 turncoat, and received all true Whig resentments accordingly. The 
 Whigs were nothing to De Foe as a party ; and, in his opinion, 
 there was nothing in W'hig patriotism in 1711, worthy of sacrificing 
 all interests and all feelings, in order to keep them in place. He wrote 
 a paper on national questions, and it was his duty to serve the nation, 
 whether Whig or Tory happened to be chancellor of the exchequer 
 or prime minister. De Foe did this ; and lost the estimation of the 
 Whigs, and was called and treated as a Tory. 
 
 I believe at this time of commotion, De Foe acted a truly honest 
 and patriotic part, as the pages of his Review will testify. We have 
 just seen two cases of Whig injustice acted against him, because he 
 supported the national credit ; and was in consequence a Tory. I 
 have before me a letter in the Examiner (SwifVs paper), where De 
 Foe is alluded to as " the Review, the censor of Great Britain ; who 
 resembles the famous censor of Rome in nothing but in espousing 
 the cause of the vanquished, with the crowd of hireling scribblers, 
 who hope, by a few false colours, and a great many impudent asser- 
 tions, at last to persuade the people that the General (Marlborough), 
 the quondam Treasurer (Godolphin), and the Junto, are the only 
 objects of the confidence of the allies, and of the fears of the enemies 
 of the Queen, and the whole body of the British nation: Nos 
 numerus sumus." 
 
 On the disgrace of Harley, and the immediate prospect of the 
 Queen's early demise, Swift skulked off to Reading, in Berkshire, 
 where he remained till the Queen's death, and the dispersion of the 
 elements of discord he himself being the chief. He then retired to 
 his prostituted ill-gotten deanery of St. Patrick's his thirty-pieces- 
 of-silver reward of iniquity ; where he remained for the rest of his 
 life, to sow discord amongst brethren, and write Drapier Letters 
 on Wood's copper Birmingham halfpennies, pronounced by Swift, 
 with such vehemence, to be fraudulent in weight as well as quality 
 of metal, till a Dublin Street beggar dare not receive one as a 
 gift, through fear of exciting personal violence from his order, for 
 
 24 
 
370 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 sacrificing the sacred interests of "Ould Ireland" to the sordid ad- 
 vantage of a Birmingham button -maker ; intent upon supplying the 
 coinage of Ireland from the broken old button stock of his native 
 town. 
 
 As Prior was one of this bright constellation of intriguers who 
 broke poor Queen Anne's heart by their contentions and dissimu- 
 lations, perhaps I could not give a more faithful picture of the 
 design and carrying out of this movement, than by quoting Mr. 
 Prior's own words, taken from his life ; published after the decease 
 of most of the parties concerned : 
 
 " Mr. Harley and Mr. St. John, long before they were advanced 
 to the head of the ministry (in 1710), had entertained thoughts of 
 putting an end to the war, and thereby recommending themselves 
 to the Queen and the nation. They had privately treated with 
 some agents of France ; particularly Mr. St. John with the Sieur 
 Gualtier, a French priest; who for some time was protected by 
 Count Gallas, and afterwards employed by Count Tallard, then a 
 prisoner at Nottingham, to forward letters between him and his 
 court. But in 1710, when these gentlemen were brought into full 
 play, a paper called the Examiner was immediately set up under 
 their influence, and conducted by Mr. Prior, Dr. Swift, Dr. Freind, 
 Mrs. Manley, Mr. Oldsworth, and some others ; the design of which 
 was to aggravate the faults of the late ministry ; to represent them 
 as enemies to the church and constitution ; men who delighted in 
 war ; and to recommend an immediate pacification, which indeed, 
 at that time, began to be much wished for. All the wit, raillery, 
 and even invective, that these great men were masters of, was em- 
 ployed on this occasion ; and it had in general the desired effect, so 
 far as to secure the public voice in their favour. It must be con- 
 fessed, that by artfully blending together the words, Church, Queen, 
 Loyalty, Peace, on the one side ; and Whig, Junto, Republican, 
 Faction, on the other, they had the address to carry everything 
 before them, and to involve all the friends of the late ministry in 
 their accusation." 
 
 It was in 1708, the year before Swift was employed by Harley 
 and St. John to support the Sacheverell agitation, by writing the 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 371 
 
 Examiner, that he became politically acquainted with these men, 
 by writing a pamphlet entitled " A Letter from a Member of the 
 House of Commons in Ireland to a Member of the House of Com- 
 mons in England, concerning the Sacramental Test," in which he 
 speaks of De Foe as " one of those authors (the fellow that was 
 pilloried, I have forgot his name) is indeed so grave, sententious, 
 dogmatical a rogue, that there is no enduring him " thus showing 
 that from 1708 to 1713, De Foe was at his post, doing his duty in 
 his Review, by exciting at this time the personal hostility of Pope 
 and Swift, the companions and fellow- writers in the Examiner with 
 Harley and St. John. 
 
 Poor Tutchin too, a fellow- worker with De Foe, comes in for his 
 share of the poetic venom of Swift and Pope, in 
 Earless on high, stands unabashed De Foe, 
 And Tutchin, flagrant from the scourge, below. 
 
 The Earl of Orrery, in his letters on Swift, states that "Swift was 
 elated with the appearance of enjoying ministerial confidence. He 
 enjoyed the shadow; the substance was detained from him. He 
 was employed, not trusted ; and at the same time that he imagined 
 himself a subtle diver, who dexterously shot down into the pro- 
 foundest regions of politics, he was suffered only to sound the shal- 
 lows nearest the shore, and was scarce admitted to descend below 
 the froth at the top. Perhaps the deeper bottoms were too muddy 
 for his inspection." 
 
 As Swift professed such contempt for De Foe, that he did not 
 know his name ; and as the Examiner was especially the work of 
 Swift for forty -five numbers spread over a considerable period of 
 time I have examined the papers by Swift, and I find them poor ; 
 far below the papers in De Foe's own Review, written, according to 
 the attorney-general's own style of definition, in such " a damned 
 satirical way of writing " a style Jonathan Swift never came up 
 to, for exciting interest in his subject, in his Examiner. It may be 
 presumptuous in one so inexperienced as myself, to give any opinion 
 upon the writings of Jonathan Swift ; be it so ; but yet I have an 
 opinion upon this subject, and it is this that Swift was much 
 inferior to De Foe as a prose-writer, where conviction from writing 
 
 24* 
 
372 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 was more an object than flights of rhetorical display in stringing 
 words together, to set off his quickness of thought or memory ; in 
 an exhibition of tight-rope dancing displays, in contortions of the 
 emanations of the brain. Let any one take the Review and the 
 Examiner, and read ; and on reading, pronounce the book. Yes ! 
 and take Robinson Crusoe, and read that against the Tale of a Tub. 
 Take the Complete Tradesman, and place it against anything Swift 
 ever wrote ; and read the True-Born Englishman too ; and the 
 History of the Plague ; with the Apparition of Mrs. Veal at Canter- 
 bury ; read all or any of these, for interest and instruction ; and 
 read them, one or all, against anything or everything written by 
 Jonathan Swift, and pronounce which was the better writer. 
 
 As a man, Swift was a brute of a churl, without honour, gra- 
 titude, or feeling; and as a writer, he was a quippy slack- wire 
 performer, conjurer, or Mister Merry man, capering and throwing 
 somersets upon the boards of literature. Yes ! Swift could dance 
 the slack-wire, or throw a somerset upon the tight-rope of letters, 
 as a grimy, ruddled, pipeclayed buffoon, or Mister Merry man : he was 
 a very conjurer in rhetorick ; a man of quips and quirks in language ; 
 but, as a writer of the English language, he was far inferior to 
 Daniel De Foe. De Foe wrote to inform and improve his race or 
 generation ; Swift did not no ! he wrote to deceive, and received 
 his reward a deanery in the Church of Ireland. De Foe received 
 no deaneries; he wrote not for a bishopric, but a gaol he wrote, 
 and received his reward, such as it was. He stood in the pillory, 
 and one (immortality rest upon his name) one Finch put him 
 there. Finch immortal ! illustrious name in the fusty, mouldering 
 archives of bigotry and intolerance a name, whether John, Thomas, 
 or Robert, I care not to inquire but Finch illustrious ! down to 
 our time, from keeping Daniel De Foe twelve months in Newgate ; 
 and placing the wooden ruff about his neck at Temple Bar or Tyburn 
 Gate ; because he would not pronounce the two significant words of 
 propelling power ROBERT HA RLE Y. 
 
 Of his treatment from this man Finch, De Foe thus speaks : 
 " Having him at this advantage (a promise of pardon if he would 
 plead guilty), they set upon him their emissaries, to discover to 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 373 
 
 them his adherents, as they called them, and promised him great 
 things on one hand, threatening him with his utter ruin on the 
 other; and the great scribe (the Attorney-General, Sir Simon Har- 
 court) of the country, with another of their great courtiers, took 
 such a low step as to go to him to the dungeon, where they had put 
 him, to see if they could tempt him to betray his friends. The 
 comical dialogue between them there, the author of this has seen in 
 manuscript, exceedingly diverting ; but, having not time to translate 
 it, 'tis omitted for the present ; though he promises to publish it in 
 its proper season, for public instruction. However, for the present, 
 it may suffice to tell the world, that neither by promises of reward, 
 nor fear of punishment, could they prevail upon him to discover 
 anything; and so it remains a secret to this day." No doubt re- 
 mains as to the fact of there being an accomplice, who directed him 
 upon the occasion ; for allusion is made to the fact repeatedly in 
 De Foe's several writings. A tool he had been ; and he had been 
 neglected on the occasion of his imprisonment by some one. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 AT this time the new ministers proposed to levy a tax of one penny 
 upon every half-sheet of printed newspaper and pamphlet ; in order 
 to weight them out of existence, and sink all the small fry of news- 
 papers and pamphlets together; for at this time, all sorts of trash, 
 in the way of broadsheet and pamphlet, inundated the land, on all 
 questions of a political or public nature. 
 
 De Foe took up the matter of stifling the press by taxation, in his 
 Review, and wrote freely upon the iniquity of the project ; in the 
 eighth volume, p. 5, he says, that " he who will speak at all, must 
 speak quickly ; and he that has but little to speak, ought to speak 
 to the purpose. It will be a brand upon any cause, that attempts 
 to suppress printing ; and it will leave it upon record to the infamy 
 of the party that espouses it, as not able to bear the energy and force 
 of truth ; and it is fairly acknowledging that their practices, whether 
 in politics or morals, will not bear the light. It is not only an 
 infringement of the liberty of the subject, which this nation has 
 always been chary of, but it has something of that arbitrary cruelty 
 in it which resembles a late barbarous practice of the same party in 
 Scotland ; who, when they had the power in their hands, and exer- 
 cised it with fury and blood, caused the drums to beat when the 
 poor victims they were sacrificing came to die, that the testimony 
 of their innocence in a dying hour, might not be heard or known 
 by the abused spectators. A design to suppress printing, on either 
 side, can be nothing but a plot to stifle truth ; since, if falsity, 
 scandal, slander, or anything that merits reprehension, is published, 
 the laws are already strong against them ; and if in anything defec- 
 tive, may be easily amended. But to lay an universal load upon 
 everything, or, in plain English, to silence mankind, is a plot against 
 the friends of virtue, learning, and religion, as might be made 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 375 
 
 appear on many occasions. Besides, the attempt will not answer 
 the end; for, though it may suppress useful things, and rob the 
 world of the advantage derived from the labours of honest men, yet 
 party rage will break through ; lampoons, pasquinades, and invete- 
 rate satires, will swarm more than before, and be diligently handed 
 about by parties all over the kingdom ; whose darts will be keener, 
 and poison stronger, than anything printed; and perhaps the more 
 so, as they shall be received with more gust by the people on either 
 side" 
 
 " I appeal to any man, who remembers the days of King Charles 
 the Second, when the license tyranny reigned over the press, whether 
 that age did not abound in lampoons and satires that wounded, and 
 at last went far in ruining, the parties they were pointed at, more 
 than has ever been practised since the liberty of the press. He that 
 does not know it, must be very ignorant of those times, and has 
 heard very little of Andrew Marvel, Sir John Denham, Rochester, 
 Buckhurst, and several others, whose wit made the court odious to 
 the people, beyond what had been possible if the press had been 
 open." 
 
 {f To lay a general prohibition on the press, is to suggest that they 
 (the ministers) have something to do which they dare not let the 
 people hear ; it is to padlock the mouths of the free people of Britain, 
 and to deprive men of their fair and just defence. This, I think, 
 may merit a consideration by itself. 
 
 " It is to invade the property, livelihood, and employment of 
 families innumerable, whose dependence and estates lie in several 
 parts of the printing trade, not at all concerned with the govern- 
 ment; but should in common justice be excepted. Among these 
 are to be reckoned patents, and properties in smaller books, such 
 as almanacks, catechisms, psalms, and little manuals, moral and 
 religious ; the copyrights of which are estates to many families, and 
 to preserve which right from piracy, a very just and necessary law 
 was made in the last Parliament." 
 
 At this time an occurrence took place in the Privy Council 
 Chamber, which added greatly to Mr. Harley's power as a minister ; 
 and that was his being stabbed by the Marquis de Guiscard, a dis- 
 
376 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 appointed Frenchman, then being examined before the Privy Coun- 
 cil on a charge of high treason. This circumstance called for 
 sympathy from all parties, and caused the minister so circumstanced 
 to be looked upon as a martyr to the cause of the state. A des- 
 perate man had stabbed some one for revenge ; and that some one, 
 by chance, happened to be Robert Harley, chancellor of the exche- 
 quer; and this gave him great sympathy with the Queen, who 
 created him Earl of Oxford and Lord High Treasurer, soon after 
 his recovery from a wound which had nearly proved fatal. De Foe 
 takes great interest in the event at the time, and sincerely laments 
 the circumstance in these words : " Every man I meet with, how- 
 ever prejudices and parties lamentably divide us, speaks of this 
 action with abhorrence ; and had it succeeded, God alone can tell 
 the confusion that the public affairs must for a time have fallen 
 into, under the agitation of so many contending parties." Review, 
 vol. vii. p. 602. 
 
 De Foe, who had for years held a considerable share in Mr. Har- 
 ley's confidential state appointments of a secret nature, knew his 
 character well, and respected the man for the many acts of kindness 
 he had received from him ; and so, r on this occasion, published a 
 tract entitled " Eleven Opinions about Mr. Harley ; with Observa- 
 tions. London : printed for J. Baker, 1711." 
 
 On Mr. Harley's recovery, he introduced a measure for paying 
 off the national debt, by trading with the South Seas ; and received 
 great applause at the time, for his penetration and sagacity as a 
 statesman, in devising such a plan. De Foe took up the subject in 
 his Review, and denied Harley's claim to the originating of the 
 scheme ; for it had been suggested by the late minister, Godolphin ; 
 and, besides that, there was nothing great or original in the under- 
 taking : and, besides all this, it was only a scheme which he had 
 himself proposed, some years before, to William III., or his minis- 
 ters ; for in the Review, vol. viii. p. 165, he says : " I had the 
 honour to lay a proposal before his late Majesty King William, in 
 the beginning of this war, for carrying the war, not into Old Spain, 
 but into America; which proposal his Majesty approved of, and 
 fully proposed to put in execution, had not death, to our unspeak- 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 377 
 
 able grief, prevented him. And yet, I would have my readers dis- 
 tinguish with me, that there is always a manifest difference between 
 carrying on a war in America, and settling a trade there; and I 
 shall not fail to speak distinctly to this difference in its turn. And 
 because I purpose to dwell a little upon the subject, and to make 
 what I shall say on this head, as far as my capacity extends, a 
 perfect though short compendium, both of the Spanish and English 
 commerce as they respect each other, either in Europe or America, 
 I shall first lay down what the circumstances of this trade are, how 
 carried on, and by whom, and how far we are concerned in them." 
 
 This may be considered a long quotation on an uninteresting 
 subject ; it is so ; but yet, as the subject is important, as being the 
 first indication of a national movement to what afterwards became 
 the Great South-Sea Scheme, which was worked into a scrip bubble 
 which involved thousands in trouble, embarrassment, and ruin; 
 and, as I believe Daniel De Foe to have been the original projector 
 of a South-Sea adventure in the trade, which years afterwards was 
 worked up into a swindling project by designing and unscrupulous 
 speculators; I should not consider myself justified in passing so 
 important an event in British commercial history, in connection 
 with Daniel De Foe, without some notice. Suffice to say, that in 
 the September following, he published his connected or digested 
 thoughts on this scheme, in a pamphlet entitled " An Essay on the 
 South-Sea Trade. London, 1710." 
 
 Poor De Foe, at this time, had a very difficult game to play, 
 to please his friends out of office, and his friend Harley in office. 
 These two opposing interests he could not serve at the same time ; 
 therefore, whatever he wrote at this time was wrong ; either Swift, 
 Dr. Drake, Prior, Toland, Sacheverell, and others, on the one hand; 
 or Whig scribes, anonymous perhaps, on the other, would find fault 
 with him, and with his principles. He was charged with writing 
 Whig and Tory papers at the same time ; and a writer in the 
 Gentleman 1 s Magazine, vol. iii. p. 20, thus speaks of him : " I 
 have heard that Daniel De Foe would write an answer to books 
 before they were published ; and that once he wrote an answer 
 to a book that was never published ; but I never thought that 
 
378 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 Mr. Danvers would have followed the example of so mercenary a 
 writer, for whom he takes every occasion to express so great a 
 contempt." 
 
 At this time all was party bigotry and subserviency; and De 
 Foe, being a political writer, keeping the constitution as his guide, 
 always fell foul of these disputants : to-day he was Whig, and con- 
 sequently abused by the Tories ; to-morrow he was Tory, and 
 therefore abused by the Whigs ; to-day he is neither, therefore he 
 must be abused by both ; and, in clearing himself from these im- 
 putations, he takes up a considerable portion of the eighth volume 
 of his Review. 
 
 As soon as Harley and his party had fairly disposed of all oppo- 
 sition at home, they set themselves to intrigue secretly with France 
 for a peace, by setting Matthew Prior, as their private negotiator, 
 against the French agent, Moses Mesnager; but, the war being 
 popular with the people at home, their only chance of success was 
 in employing such writers as Swift and Prior to cavil at the expenses 
 of the war, and thus lower the Whigs in public estimation ; and, to 
 assist the power of contention, the drum-ecclesiastic was beaten to 
 the same tune. In this state of party warfare, Mr. Maynwaring 
 published some Reflections on a Quotation out of the Review, which, 
 of course, brought De Foe into the field again, as a writer, in his 
 Review, vol. viii. pp. 345, 354, 366, 370, 375394, on the partition 
 of Spain between France and Austria, its advantages, disadvantages, 
 necessities, and the like papers and quotations which would alone 
 make up a very tolerable volume, about as interesting and as intel- 
 ligible to us, as the asseverations and vagaries of a loyal member 
 of a country Pitt Club of our time. But poor King William of 
 glorious memory, De Foe's especial patron, coming in, of course, for 
 his share of abuse, to assist the party warfare, De Foe, in his defence, 
 published, in December of this year, " The Felonious Treaty ; or, 
 an Enquiry into the Reasons which moved his late Majesty King 
 William of Glorious Memory, to enter into a Treaty at two several 
 times with the King of France, for the Partition of the Spanish 
 Monarchy. With an Essay, proving that it was always the sense, 
 both of King William and of all the Confederates, and even of the 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 379 
 
 Grand Alliance itself, that the Spanish Monarchy should never be 
 united in the person of the Emperor. By the Author of the Review. 
 London, printed and sold by J. Baker. 1711. Price sixpence/' 
 As the whole is the Partition Treaty over again, with all its pros 
 and cons, Whig readings, and Tory readings, I will, out of com- 
 passion to the feelings of my reader, miss the whole ; for they are 
 only the modern Pitt-Club vagaries over again : I mean for us now 
 in the year 1859 ; when light reading and illustrated trash take up 
 the whole of public consideration in the reading way in slang ; or 
 a man's cutting his wife's throat with a Sheffield whittle, 12mo, 
 and only fourpence ! The stand made by De Foe for the late King 
 William, only raised a storm of Whig and Tory detractors in the 
 press; so De Foe wrote in his Review of Nov. 20, 1711 : "The 
 humour of the times is a mighty stream, and we find few that can 
 resist it. The reason is, that it is a dangerous port, full of rocks 
 and shoals to split on ; and not one in twenty ventures the danger- 
 ous voyage, but will be lost in the attempt. Every side is against 
 him. If his courage bears up a while, his reputation will sink ; one 
 side says, he is mercenary, and gone over to the enemy ; the other 
 side says, he is coming over to them, but, not knowing why, thinks 
 him fickle; those that think him honest, say he is mad; so, in 
 short, the man is lost on every side, and no wonder so few dare stand 
 the brush. I am one of those unhappy few, who, guided, as I hope, 
 by truth, and unconcerned at reproach, which men blindly throw 
 out on every side, stand fast in the defence of that true interest of 
 my country, which, I bless God from the bottom of my soul, I 
 espoused in my youth, and never could be frighted by parties, nor 
 bribed by persuasions, no, not of the greatest in the nation. I con- 
 fess I defend it now under very unhappy circumstances, viz., that 
 they say the French and I argue for the same thing; the Tory 
 interest is wrapped up in my argument; and rash men! some 
 will have it I am turned high -flyer." The ministers being anxious 
 for peace with France, and being anxious, too, to oppress the dis- 
 senters; but fearing the House of Lords, which had, from the 
 Restoration, perhaps, or at any rate from the glorious Revolution 
 of 11388, carried the whole belligerent force of British constitutional 
 
380 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 principles within its walls : for the Commons, for a great portion of 
 this period, were utterly helpless, so far as the assertion or defence 
 of a living principle could exist, in a national senate, or chamber of 
 delegates; or the constituted trustees of a nation's rights and interests. 
 For much of this period the Commons of England lay utterly pros- 
 trate before the patronizing and bribing powers of the court of 
 France ; for many of the members received bribes from the French 
 King ; and other members were kept to their fidelity by the prospect 
 of receiving French bribes themselves. For principle, the English 
 House of Commons was utterly corrupt utterly rotten utterly 
 French French in interest, because French in pay. Well, the 
 Harley government of 1711 made twelve new peers in one day; 
 and threatened to make a dozen more if the House should not be 
 sufficiently pliant with the first creation. This swamping of the 
 House by creating new peers appeared to have the desired effect ; 
 for a bill for oppressing the dissenters passed in three days, by a 
 general concurrence of Whigs and Tories. De Foe, in his Review, 
 vol. viii. p. 473, observes : " The case of the dissenters is circum- 
 stanced too similarly (the hand of Brutus being raised against 
 Caesar) ; this mortal state could have been received from no hand 
 but that of a friend (a Whig). The dissenters in England, as 
 they stood united in interest with the Low Churchmen, could 
 have received no fatal blow but from themselves. Three times 
 the united power of their enemies had attacked them, and could 
 never prevail ; but given up by their friends (the Whigs) they fall 
 of course." 
 
 This blow at the dissenters was entitled " An Act for preserving 
 the Protestant Religion, by better securing the Church of England 
 as by law established ; and for confirming the Toleration granted to 
 Protestant Dissenters by an Act, entitled &c., and for supplying the 
 Defects thereof; and for the further securing the Protestant Suc- 
 cession, &c." The dissenters received a severe blow by this measure, 
 got up by Harley, St. John, Har court, and others, the ministers; their 
 object in passing such a measure against the dissenters at this time 
 being ominous; and foreboding evil to civil and religious liberty; 
 for this was the time of all others when the dissenters should have 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 381 
 
 been encouraged and supported ; if for nothing but a sense of grati- 
 tude for past services in 1688, at the glorious Revolution ; and as a 
 check to the threatened inroad from the bigoted Pretender JamesIIL, 
 waiting his opportunity to subject this dominion to Popish super- 
 stition and priestly domination; with arbitrary power, springing 
 from his supposed divine right of kingship. 
 
 This act was most oppressive, and exclusive in spirit ; and, as De 
 Foe says in his Review, " a blow by which they [the dissenters] are 
 excluded from the common concern of fellow- subjects, in the trusts 
 and advantages of the society they live in; by which they are treated 
 as aliens and strangers in the commonwealth, or as persons danger- 
 ous to be trusted by the government they have so faithfully and so 
 largely contributed to support." 
 
 It is utterly impossible for any impartial observer to take a glance 
 at the Harley administration in 1711, without being fully impressed 
 with the conviction, that that administration was bent upon mis- 
 chief; so far as the rights of civil and religious liberty, and the 
 rights of the Hanoverian succession, were concerned. Their first 
 act was to raise the property qualification for a county member of 
 Parliament to ,600 per annum, which was a blow struck at the 
 mercantile and banking interests of the city of London ; it was a 
 disfranchising of the City moneyed interest, which was, for the most 
 part, a Whig and dissenting interest. This, as far as it went, was 
 a lift to the pretensions of the Pretender, James III. Their next 
 act was to intrigue with France for a peace, which was against the 
 national feeling at the time, which had to be overcome by the writing 
 of Dean Swift, Prior, and other hired scribes ; and for carrying on 
 this peace project, the House of Lords had to be gagged by the 
 creation of a dozen new peers in one day, and a threat of a second 
 dozen, if the Lords were not good and dutiful subjects of Harley, 
 St. John, and Company the ministers ; and, on the day of this 
 peer-creating, the Duke of Marlborough, the head of the Whig party, 
 was dismissed from all his employments. All these circumstances, 
 being combined in one twelve months of legislation, would imply a 
 policy which was opposed to the rights of conscience and the rights 
 of civil libertv. 
 
382 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 Dissenters were cut off from all civil employments ; and no person 
 employed by the government was to enter a conventicle under the 
 penalty of loss of place, and a fine of 40 ; and this bill passed the 
 Commons in three days, and received the royal assent in eight days 
 from its first introduction to the Lords. Against this tyranny on 
 the part of the government, and ingratitude on the part of the 
 Whigs, De Foe wrote fearlessly in his Review, and, addressing the 
 Whigs, he says, in the eighth volume, p. 466 : 
 
 " You are against a peace ; will you fortify your political interests 
 by giving up for a prey, those [the dissenters] you have so long 
 espoused, both in their civil and religious liberties ? Methinks I 
 see some people abroad, whose characters have for some years been 
 adorned with the word patriot, strangely easy to give up all these 
 things, that they may but strengthen their party interest. But this 
 is not the first time that some people [Whigs] who call themselves 
 friends to the dissenters, have offered to sacrifice them to their 
 enemies, upon very mean conditions. 
 
 " If persecuting laws are set up ; and the liberty of dissenters, 
 established at the Revolution, is attempted; God forbid that I 
 should cease, though humbly, to complain of the injury, let what 
 human authority soever prohibit it. If they make it criminal, I 
 am ready to suffer; but I will never lose my little share in the 
 liberties of my country, without crying out against both the mischief 
 and the contrivers of it, let them be who they will." 
 
 To avert the threatened bill, De Foe published " An Essay on the 
 History of Parties and Persecution in Britain, &c. London, printed 
 by J. Baker, 1711." 
 
 How true are the words of Solomon, that a fool ground in a 
 mortar will come out fool ground ! This proverb was never better 
 illustrated than in the case of Queen Anne, who was a very weak 
 woman, narrow and bigoted as her father ; for he was a fool, so that 
 she was the daughter of a fool, and she was the grand-daughter of 
 a fool ; and she was, moreover, great-grand- daughter of James I., be 
 he what he might. This silly woman was at war with Louis XIV. 
 of France, and had been for years, because Louis would not acknow- 
 ledge her title of Queen : he affirming, that she was not Queen of 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 383 
 
 England by right of hereditary succession ; he called her an usurper, 
 and treated her as such ; and war was the consequence between the 
 two countries ; and, before peace could be entered upon at the con- 
 ference of Utrecht, the very first step towards negotiation on the 
 part of England, was a declaration drawn up by the Queen's 
 ministers, for acknowledgment by the French court, to the effect 
 that Queen Anne's title to the throne of these realms rested upon 
 the authority of an act of Parliament. I will give the specific 
 demands made by the English court of the French court, as the 
 groundwork of negotiation at the convention of Utrecht : 
 
 "The Most Christian King [Louis] shall acknowledge, in the 
 clearest and strongest terms, the succession to the crown of Great 
 Britain, according as it is limited by acts of Parliament/' &c. 
 
 Again : " The Most Christian King shall promise besides, as well 
 for himself as for his heirs and successors, never to acknowledge any 
 person for King or Queen of Great Britain other than her Majesty 
 now reigning, and those kings or queens who shall succeed her by 
 virtue of the above-said acts of Parliament." 
 
 This was the very groundwork of all negotiation; and the re* 
 cognition of this document and the royal signature of France 
 (Louis XIV.) to the treaty of peace founded on this preliminary, 
 was the acknowledgment of the court of France to the constitutional 
 principle of the British government, " that the people are the source 
 of all legitimate power within these realms." The blood of Charles I. 
 sealed this bond on the scaffold, in Westminster. The abdication of 
 James II., at the Revolution of 1688, sealed this bond ; and now, 
 at the peace of Utrecht in 1713, the signature of Louis XIV. is 
 another witness added to the same document, which acknowledges 
 the sovereignty of the people in England : for in England the people 
 are the source of all legitimate power. This is the fundamental law 
 of the British constitution ; yet, since the accession of Harley and 
 Company, for he is decidedly the first in the firm of fraud, trick, 
 and rascality, in obtaining power in order to oppress the people, and 
 obtain ends through that oppression, not very clearly defined, 
 though great preparations were made this year for something, and 
 these preparations consisted in removing or changing the lord lieu- 
 
384 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 tenants and magistracy, and all offices, however remote or insig- 
 nificant, dependent upon the ministry, or their confidential partisans 
 the High-Church Tories. It was under this system of fortifying 
 the position, that the ministry introduced their Church-of-England- 
 securing Bill that bill I am now writing upon, which enacted that 
 after 25th of March, 1712, any person receiving the emoluments of 
 patent, grant, place of trust or profit, civil or military, under the 
 English government, meeting for worshipping God, where ten per- 
 sons should assemble at a conventicle, should be liable to a penalty 
 of 40 ; and, on conviction, be adjudged incapable from thenceforth 
 of holding any office or employment whatsoever. The ministry took 
 every step they could to organize their party for some particular 
 move ; but were disturbed from time to time, both in the Lords and 
 in the Commons, by certain independent members introducing a 
 resolution affirming the vitality of the act of Parliament passed by 
 William III. in 1701, limiting the succession to the throne of 
 Great Britain to the Protestant line of Hanover. This was done in 
 the Lords by the Duke of Devonshire; and in the Commons, by 
 Mr. Richard Hampden, member for Buckingham; and this thing 
 might be done by other members. These periodical declaratory 
 resolutions on a fundamental bulwark of British liberty, and British 
 security, in a critical period; when a very weak, narrow-minded, 
 bigoted woman filled the throne, and she surrounded by wicked, 
 designing, intriguing, unprincipled men, as her ministers and ad- 
 visers; were highly judicious and prudent, but extremely incon- 
 venient to the ministers, unprepared either to divide the House 
 upon the question by a direct negative ; or, what would have been 
 equally as injurious to themselves and their cause, such an evasion 
 of the declaration as would only show their feelings and intentions, 
 and betray their weakness or inability to carry their designs, if they 
 had any. 
 
 This resolution of the right of the succession to the crown by 
 the Elector of Hanover, having been conferred by the act of 1701, 
 could not, in the opinion of the guardians of British liberty, be too 
 frequently thrown upon the two Houses of Parliament; and these 
 indorsed by them, by direct resolutions confirmatory of this act ; 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 385 
 
 limiting the right of succession. Harley, like a true son of quirk 
 and quibble, readily fell in with what he could not avoid; and so 
 heartily responded to the Duke of Devonshire's resolution con- 
 firming the act of 1701 ; and ministers in the Commons as heartily 
 supported the same resolution, when introduced by Mr. Richard 
 Hampdeii. Opposition would have been useless ; therefore a hearty 
 acquiescence in a declared opinion was both safe and politic. There 
 can be no doubt but this ministry were preparing for some great 
 measure of oppression something adverse to British liberty; but 
 time was not given to them to organize their plans into safe working 
 order. 
 
 The Bishop of Oxford, in recording his opinion on the doctrines 
 promulgated by Henry Sacheverell in his Fifth -of-November Ser- 
 mon, affirmed, in his place in the House of Lords, that "If clergy- 
 men may with impunity publicly in their sermons arraign and 
 condemn the Revolution ; besides the restrictions they cast upon 
 all the worthy patriots that were concerned in that great work, the 
 commonality, gentry, and nobility, lords upon every bench in this 
 House; besides this, it must shake, it must sap the very foundations 
 of our present establishment, as it stands upon the foot of the 
 Revolution, and utterly destroy our future hopes in the Protestant 
 succession, which is founded upon that bottom only." 
 
 On the 29th of July, 1712, De Foe closed the eighth volume of 
 his Review, as follows: "I so fully resolved to lay down this paper 
 at the end of July, when the new tax upon papers begins, as ever 
 I did, or can resolve anything ; and pleased myself with the hopes 
 that, after eight years' struggling with the enemies of the nation's 
 peace, to have enjoyed some peace myself; to have dropped insen- 
 sibly out of public broils, and, as much as possible, to have been 
 forgotten among you. But it is impossible : neither the nature of 
 the thing, nor the nature of the people, will permit it. As to the 
 people, unless I will give leave to the railing spirit, to triumph over 
 me as slain in battle, and let that slander which ceases not to insult 
 me while living, follow me to the grave, I must be still at hand to 
 detect the lies, and oppose the slanders, with which those who can- 
 not otherwise answer me, are daily filling the age. Nor will the 
 
 25 
 
386 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 nature of the thing permit me to lay it down : the crisis is too im- 
 minent, the arguments on both sides too nice, the consequences too 
 fatal, the mischiefs approaching too threatening, and the concern 
 every honest man has too pressing, for any man that has spoken at 
 all, now to hold his peace. He that will save his country from ruin, 
 must do it in the season of deliverance ; he that will prevent the 
 destruction of a town, must cry ' fire ' in time ; and he that will do 
 any service on either side, must now speak, or he may for ever after 
 hold his tongue." 
 
 We now come to the preface to the eighth volume of the Review 
 a part of the performance which seldom in this age takes a second- 
 ary part in importance ; indeed, we know many books written at 
 this period (the year 1700) which are alone valuable for the in- 
 trinsic worth of the preface.' This is a fact well known to all col- 
 lectors of books written about the period we are now writing upon ; 
 and it must be my excuse for taking up what might be considered 
 an unwarrantable space with the preface to the eighth volume of 
 the Review. 
 
 To elucidate the character and times of Daniel De Foe, is my 
 object ; and if, by quoting four or five pages of his own writing, I 
 can further this object, I must avail myself of the opportunity; foi 
 his own words on himself, written at the time, must of necessity 
 stand before anything I can pick up about him, after a lapse of 01 
 hundred and fifty years, as gossip, retailed by Oldmixon, Leslie, 
 L'Estrange, Swift, Pope, Prior, Gay, Arbuthnot, Harley, or Boling- 
 broke, or any other character, not standing very high for feeling 
 truth, or patriotism. These were the men who wrote of De Foe ; 
 for Gay, the friend, student, or disciple of Pope, thus expresses him- 
 self of De Foe, only a few months after this period, when the Review 
 was discontinued altogether, and when De Foe was again immured 
 in Newgate for writing another pamphlet for Harley. Really! one 
 would have thought De Foe had had experience enough, in 1703 
 in showing the Shortest Way to extirpate Dissenters, without trying 
 to extirpate the claims of the house of Hanover, for the same mi 
 nister in 1713, and getting into Newgate a second time. Well, thi 
 Gay remarks: "The poor Review is quite exhausted, and grown so 
 
LIFE OP DE FOE. 387 
 
 very contemptible, that, though he has provoked all his brothers of 
 the quill, none will enter into a controversy with him. The fellow, 
 who had excellent natural parts, but wanted a small foundation of 
 learning, is a lively instance of those wits who, as an ingenious 
 author says, will endure but one skimming." So much for Mr. 
 Gay, the friend of Pope and Swift. This little circumstance shows 
 that from 1703 to 1712 a period of ten years Daniel De Foe had 
 been writing his eight thick quarto volumes of Review, without being 
 degraded by the patronage or friendships of some of the meanest 
 men that England ever knew men talented, but unprincipled; a 
 lot to which Gay attached himself. 
 
 I will now take the Preface above alluded to. 
 
 "I have now finished the eighth volume of this work; and as this 
 particular part has been the subject of as much clamour and noise 
 as any former, though on a different account, and from different 
 people, I cannot close it, without giving some account both of it 
 and of myself. From the beginning of this undertaking, which I 
 have now carried on almost ten years, I have always, according to 
 the best of my judgment, calculated it for the support and defence 
 of truth and liberty. I was not so weak, when I began, as not to 
 expect enemies ; and that by speaking plain, both to persons and 
 things, I should exasperate many against both the work and the 
 author ; and in that expectation I have not been deceived. 
 
 "I confess I did not expect, that if the same truth summoned me 
 to differ from the people I was serving, they would treat me as they 
 do, for it. I own I thought an uninterrupted fidelity, and steady 
 adhering to an honest principle, for near forty years, would have 
 been some plea in my behalf; and if not, that suffering the ship- 
 wreck of my fortunes, which were at that time recovering, and, by 
 the bounty of his late Majesty, in a fair way of being restored; suf- 
 fering all the indignities, penalties, and punishments, an enraged 
 party could inflict upon me, and above three thousand pounds loss ; 
 I say, I thought this might have lodged a little in the breast of my 
 friends, and might have allowed them at least to examine before 
 they condemned me, whether they did me wrong or no. 
 
 "I thought that while 1 had given such proof, that I could neither 
 
 25* 
 
LIKE OF DE FOE. 
 
 be bribed from the truth, or threatened or terrified from my prin- 
 ciples, it might at least be a ground for impartial honest men to 
 examine before they censured me. But I have found all this in 
 vain; and, as if forfeiting my reason as well as my estate were a 
 debt from me to the party I espoused, I am now hunted full cry, 
 Acteon-like, by my own friends, I won't call them hounds, in spite 
 of protested innocence and want of evidence,, against the genuine 
 sense of what I write, against fair arguing, against all modesty and 
 sense ; condemned by common clamour as writing for money, for 
 particular persons, by great men's directions, and the like; every 
 tittle of which, I have the testimony of my own conscience, is abo- 
 minably false, and the accusers must have the accusation of theii 
 own consciences that they do not know it to be true. 
 
 " I cannot say it has not given me a great deal of disturbance 
 for an ungrateful treatment by a people that I had run all manner 
 of risk for, and thought I could have died for, cannot but touch a 
 less sensible temper than I think mine to be; but, I thank God 
 that operation is over ; and I endeavour to make other uses of it 
 than perhaps the people themselves think I do. First, I look in, anc 
 upon the narrowest search I can make of my own thoughts, desires 
 and designs, I find a clear untainted principle, and consequently 
 an entire calm of conscience, founded upon the satisfying sense 
 that I neither am touched by bribes, guided or influenced by fear 
 favour, hope, dependence, or reward from any person or party under 
 heaven ; and that I have written, and do write, nothing but wha 
 is my native, free, undirected opinion and judgment, and which was 
 so many years ago, as I think I made unanswerably appear, by the 
 very last Review in this volume. Next, I look up, and without 
 examining into His ways, the sovereignty of whose Providence 1 
 adore, I submit with an entire resignation to whatever happens to 
 me, as being by the immediate direction of that goodness, and for 
 such wise and glorious ends, as, however I may not yet see through, 
 will at last issue in good, even to me ; fully depending, that I shall 
 yet be delivered from the power of slander and reproach ; and the 
 sincerity of my conduct be yet cleared up to the world ; and if not 
 Te Deum laudamus. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 3S9 
 
 t{ In the third place, I look back on the people who treat me thus 
 who, notwithstanding, under the power of their prejudices, they 
 fly upon me with a fury that I think unchristian and unjust ; yet, 
 as I doubt not the day will still come when they will be again 
 undeceived in me, I am far from studying their injury, or doing 
 myself justice at their expense ; which I could do, with great 
 advantage. It is impossible for the dissenters in this nation to 
 provoke me to be an enemy to their interest ; should they fire my 
 house, sacrifice my family, and assassinate my life, I would ever 
 requite them in defending their cause, and standing to the last 
 against all those that should endeavour to weaken or reproach it. 
 But this is, as I think it, a just and righteous cause, founded upon 
 the great principle of Truth and Liberty, which I am well assured 
 I shall never abandon. Not that I am insensible of being ill treated 
 by them ; or that I make any court to their persons. When any 
 party of men have not a clear view of their own case, or a right 
 knowledge of their own interest, he that will serve them, and knows 
 the way to do it, must be certain not to please them ; and must be 
 able to see them revile and reproach him, and use him in the worst 
 manner imaginable, without being moved, either to return them 
 ill, or refrain from doing them good ; and this is the true meaning 
 of that command which I thank God I cheerfully obey, viz., to pray 
 for them that despitefully treat me. I have not so ill an opinion of 
 myself as not to think I merit better usage from the dissenters ; 
 and I have not so ill an opinion of the dissenters, as not to think 
 they will some time or other know their friends from their enemies, 
 better than they do now. Nor have I so far forgot my friends, as 
 not to own a great many of them do already. I remember the time 
 when the same people treated me in the same manner, upon the 
 book called the Shortest Way, &c. ; and nothing but suffering for 
 them would ever open their eyes. He that cleared up my integrity 
 then, can do it again by the same method ; and I leave it to him. 
 Ad te quacunque vocas is my rule ; my study and practice is patience 
 and resignation; and in this I triumph over all the indignity, 
 reproach, slander, and raillery in the world ; in this I enjoy, in the 
 midst of a million of enemies, a perfect peace and tranquillity ; and 
 
390 LIFE OP DE FOE. 
 
 when they misconstruct my words, pervert the best meaning, turn 
 everything which I say their own way, it gives me no other contem- 
 plation than this : how vain is the opinion of men, either when they 
 judge well or ill ! 
 
 " To return to my own case : I am a stoick in whatever may be 
 the event of things. I '11 do and say what I think is a debt to jus- 
 tice and truth, without the least regard to clamour and reproach ; 
 and, as I am utterly unconcerned at human opinion, the people 
 who throw away their breath so freely in censuring me, may con- 
 sider of some better improvement to make of their passions, than to 
 waste them on a man that is both above and below the reach of 
 them. I know too much of the world to expect good in it; and 
 have learned to value it too little, to be concerned at the evil. I 
 have gone through a life of wonders, and am the subject of a vast 
 variety of providences ; I have been fed more by miracle than 
 Elijah, when the ravens were his purveyors. I have, some time ago, 
 summed up the scenes of my life in this distich : 
 No man has tasted differing fortunes more, 
 And thirteen times I have been rich and poor. 
 
 " In the school of affliction I have learnt more philosophy than at 
 the academy, and more divinity than from the pulpit ; in prison, I 
 have learnt to know that liberty does not consist in open doors, and 
 the free egress and regress of locomotion. I have seen the rough 
 side of the world as well as the smooth ; and have, in less than half 
 a year, tasted the difference between the closet of a king and the 
 dungeon of Newgate. I have suffered deeply for cleaving to prin- 
 ciples; of which integrity I have lived to say, none but those I 
 suffered for, ever reproached me with it. The immediate causes of 
 my suffering have been the being betrayed by those I have trusted, 
 and scorning to betray those who trusted me. To the honour of 
 English gratitude, I have this remarkable truth to leave behind me 
 that I was never so basely betrayed as by those whose families I 
 had preserved from starving ; nor so basely treated as by those I 
 starved my own family to preserve. The same checquer-work of 
 fortune attends me still : the people I have served, and love to serve, 
 cut my throat every day, because I will not cut the throats of those 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 391 
 
 that have served and assisted me. Ingratitude has always been my 
 aversion ; and perhaps, for that reason, it is my exercise. 
 
 "And now I live under universal contempt, which contempt I 
 have learned to contemn; and have an uninterrupted joy in my 
 soul, not at my being contemned, but that no crime can be laid to 
 my charge, to make that contempt my due. Fame, a lying jade, 
 would talk me up, for I know not what of courage ; and they call 
 me a fighting fellow. I despise flattery ; I profess to know nothing of 
 it farther than truth makes any man bold; and I acknowledge, that 
 give me but a bad cause, and I am the greatest coward in the world. 
 Truth inspires nature ; and, as in defence of truth no honest man 
 can be a coward, so no man of sense can be bold when he is in the 
 wrong. He that is honest must be brave ; and it is my opinion 
 that a coward cannot be an honest man. In defence of truth, I 
 think (pardon me that I dare go no further, for who knows himself?) 
 I say, / think I could dare to die ; but a child may beat me if I 
 am in the wrong. Guilt gives trembling to the hands, blushing to 
 the face, and fills the heart with amazement and terror. I ques- 
 tion whether there is much, if any, difference between bravery and 
 cowardice, but what is founded in the principle they are engaged 
 for ; and I no more believe any man is born a coward, than that he 
 is born a knave. Truth makes a man of courage, and guilt makes 
 that man a coward. 
 
 " I have a large family a wife and six children, who never want 
 what they should enjoy, or spend what they ought to save. Under 
 all these circumstances, and many more, too long to write, my only 
 happiness is this : I have always been kept cheerful, easy, and quiet, 
 enjoying a perfect calm of mind, clearness of thought, and satisfac- 
 tion not to be broken in upon by whatever may happen to me. If 
 any man ask me how I arrived to it ? I answer him, in short, by 
 a constant serious application to the great, solemn, and weighty 
 work of resignation to the will of Heaven ; by which let no man 
 think I presume." 
 
 The Treaty of Utrecht was signed on the llth of April, 1713, and 
 caused great dissatisfaction in the nation, particularly amongst the 
 Whig party, who considered the country as betrayed by the ministry 
 
392 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 for the interests of France and the Pretender ; and this dissatisfac- 
 tion was not confined to England and the Whigs ; for " the astonish- 
 ment, indignation, and scorn, with which the plan of peace contained 
 in the Queen's speech before mentioned was received in Holland, 
 is hardly to be expressed ; but the exceptions the Imperialists made 
 to that scheme were fully set forth in a treatise published by order 
 of Count Zinzendorf, entitled the Sighs of Europe ; to which an 
 answer was soon published, and ascribed to De Foe, ' The Groans 
 of Great Britain; being a Second Part to the Groans of Europe, 
 London, 1713. Price one shilling/ The greatest dissatisfaction 
 at the peace of Utrecht prevailed; and it is supposed, that, to 
 drown the clamour in this quarter, a counteracting clamour must 
 be raised, by an effort, real or pretended, to be made for the Pre- 
 tender. This was believed by writers at the time (1713), that, 
 although the ministry escaped thus in a mist (a resolution stolen 
 in a full House in their favour for the treaty of Utrecht), yet some 
 of them rightly foresaw, that this ugly business of trade, which had 
 raised so universal a clamour, would at last end in their ruin ; un- 
 less prevented by more desperate measures ; which 'tis the general 
 opinion, they resolved to pursue. Be that as it may, 'tis certain 
 that from this time the hopes of the Pretender's friends were 
 wonderfully raised, insomuch that they began publicly to list men 
 for his service ; and, on the other hand, addresses from Scotland in 
 favour of the lineal succession were kindly received at court." 
 
 It was at this very time that De Foe wrote his three pamphlets, 
 on or in favour of the Pretender, for which he was taken up on a 
 charge of high treason, and would have been tried on that charge 
 but for the intervention of these men, who pardoned him. Could 
 De Foe have been hired by Harley and St. John for that work, 
 considering that they had already in pay, Swift, Pope, Gay, Ar- 
 buthnot, Dyer, Roper ; and Charles Leslie, a host in himself, for 
 unscrupulous and anonymous writing men who did what they 
 could to defend the ministers, and lampoon Marlborough, 1 Godol- 
 
 1 It was the policy of Harlcy's government to write down any officer in the govern- 
 ment, so as to prepare the public mind for the change ; for before the removal of the 
 Duke of Marlborough from all his employments, in 1711, " he had been so openly 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 393 
 
 phin, Walpole, and the Whig party. Swift was so conspicuous in 
 this service, that the King of Spain and the King of France both 
 thanked him, through the Spanish ambassador, for the good service 
 he had done for them by his writings ; a compliment which Swift 
 took very well. Oldmixon, in an anonymous pamphlet, takes up 
 the side of the Whigs, and abuses De Foe for supporting the 
 ministers ; and charges him also with advocating a Dutch war. To 
 these charges De Foe replies in his Review, vol. viii. p. 825. No 
 doubt the ministers had sufficient talent hired to defend their 
 measures ; for there was one grand feature in the political working 
 of the state machine by Robert Harley. Whether aspiring to the 
 Speakership of the House of Commons, or when enjoying the power 
 of Lord High Treasurer of England, Harley knew what talent was, 
 and what it could do for him, and at what price; and he bought it. 
 This minister had brought this nation to such a pitch of degrada- 
 tion, by his surrounding the executive as a body-guard with such 
 characters as Leslie, Swift, Ridpath, Pope, and the like, that her 
 Majesty had to declare, again and again, on the meeting of Parlia- 
 ment, ' ' how great a license is taken in publishing false and scanda- 
 lous libels, such as are a reproach to any government. This evil 
 seems to be grown too strong for the laws now in force (A.D. 1711) ; 
 it is, therefore, recommended to you, to find out a remedy equal to 
 the mischief." This was the prelude to the tax on pamphlets and 
 newspapers. 
 
 The charging De Foe with advocating a war with Holland was 
 too absurd to require any reply. De Foe was a free-trader, and 
 supported the free-trade resolutions of the Treaty of Utrecht, which 
 was quite sufficient for Oldmixon to draw the inference from that 
 a free trade with France must of necessity mean, war to the knife 
 with Holland and the Protestantism of Europe. This was the 
 reading of De Foe's trading principles, not only of Oldmixon, the 
 Whig, but of all the Whig party; as the Whig opposition at this 
 time to the book Mercator fully proves. Mercator was a valuable 
 
 attacked and aspersed in printed libels, by the mercenary pens employed and counte- 
 nanced by the present managers (ministers?), that bis Grace's removal was certainly 
 resolved upon many months before it took place." 
 
394 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 free-trade book, which was published in numbers, the first number 
 appearing upon the 26th of May, 1713; and was continued upon 
 Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays ; of which Boyer, in his Life 
 of Queen Anne, thus speaks, as one only of the great Whig party, 
 professing the same sentiments; and declaring them, too, on all 
 occasions : " This paper [Mercator] , upon its first appearance 
 abroad, was generally fathered upon the chief manager of the Treaty 
 of Commerce, Arthur Moore, supposed to be assisted by the genius 
 of Dr. Davenant ; but the latter solemnly disowned his having any 
 share in it ; and, indeed, it was soon after discovered to be the pro- 
 duction of an ambidextrous mercenary scribbler, Daniel De Foe ; 
 employed by the Earl of Oxford, who for this dirty work allowed 
 him a considerable weekly salary." 
 
 Oldmixon, in his History of England, vol. iii. p. 519, writing on 
 the same subject, observes : " Foe, as well as the Lord Treasurer, 
 had been a rank Presbyterian ; and their genius was so near akin, 
 that Harley could not but take him into his confidence as soon as 
 he got acquainted with him. He was adored and caressed by that 
 mighty statesman, who gave him, as that mercenary said himself, 
 to the value of j1000 in one year. Foe's business was only to 
 puzzle the cause by mercantile cant and bold sophistry; which 
 several eminent merchants and others being apprised thereof, they 
 desired that Mr. Martin, bailiff of Southwark, an ingenious, judi- 
 cious man, should publish a paper called the British Merchant, which 
 came out twice a week ; wherein, with plain reason, and incontested 
 matters of fact, he exposed the fallacies, blunders, inconsistencies, 
 and ignorance of the hireling Mercator, insomuch that at length 
 the thoughts of true Englishmen about commerce which at first 
 were represented to be the effects of discontent and faction, as was 
 hinted in the Queen's speech appeared to be the universal sense of 
 all traders." 
 
 Tindal, following in the same strain, observes that " the treaty 
 was to be supported at any rate ; the persons concerned in making 
 it either could not, or would not, see their mistake ; and the nation 
 was to be convinced that, through their great skill in trade, they 
 had made an excellent treaty of commerce. To these ends, Daniel 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 395 
 
 De Foe was employed; though as in a weekly paper, published 
 some years before, called the Review, he had very often condemned 
 the French trade as detrimental to this kingdom. He undertook, 
 however, the cause now, and published a paper thrice a week, by the 
 title of Mercator, &c. In this paper he undertook to prove that the 
 trade to France, though contrary to all experience, had always been 
 beneficial to this kingdom, and would be so again, upon the foot of 
 the treaty. And, as he had the art of writing very plausibly, and 
 those who employed him, and furnished him with materials, had the 
 command of all public papers in the Custom-house, he had it in his 
 power to do a great deal of mischief, especially among such as were 
 unskilled in trade, and, at the same time, very fond of French 
 wines, which it was then a crime to be against. Suffice to say, this 
 Mercator, advocating a free trade with France, raised the whole 
 power of the Whig mercantile interest in England by their pub- 
 lishing the British Merchant ; or, Commerce Preserved." And all 
 this in opposition to Daniel De Foe and his paper the Mercator ! 
 
 These old Whig times remind me of oppositions at a more recent 
 period, when great and small attended at their townhalls, to cut 
 down or crush in the bud, Richard Cobden and the Anti-Corn-Law 
 League at Manchester. It brings to mind one Dr. Holland, and 
 his patron, Mr. Beckett Denison, M.P. for Yorkshire. Such a dis- 
 play of names Lord Halifax and General Stanhope ; Sir Charles 
 Cooke, merchant; Sir Theodore Jansen, Bart.; James Milner, 
 Theodore Torriano, Joshua Gee, Christopher Haynes, with David 
 Martin, merchants ; and Charles King, merchant too ! Why, really; 
 it is Doncaster Theatre and Beckett Denison all over ! 
 
 The very fourth number of the British Merchant, the property of 
 the above merchant princes, thus expresses itself: 
 
 " Mr. Daniel De Foe may change his name from Review to Mer- 
 cator from Mercator to any other title; yet still his singular 
 genius shall be distinguished by his inimitable way of writing/' 
 
 In Appeal to Honour and Justice, p. 47, De Foe thus speaks on 
 this subject : 
 
 " There is a mighty charge against me, for being the author and 
 publisher of a paper called the Mercator. I '11 state the fact first, 
 
393 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 and then speak to the subject. It is true, that being desired to give 
 my opinion in the affair of the commerce with France, I did, as I 
 often had done in print many years before, declare, that it was my 
 opinion we ought to have an open trade with France, because I did 
 believe we might have the advantage by such trade; and of this 
 opinion I am still. What part I had in the Mercator is well known; 
 and would men answer with argument, and not with personal abuses, 
 I would, at any time, defend any part of the Mercator which was of 
 my doing. But to say the Mercator was mine, is false : I neither 
 was the author of it, nor had the property, printing, or profit of it. 
 I had never any payment or reward for writing any part of it ; nor 
 had I the power of putting what I would into it ; yet the whole 
 clamour fell upon me, because they knew not who else to load with 
 it. And when they came to answer, the method was, instead of 
 argument, to threaten and reflect upon me, reproach me with 
 private circumstances and misfortunes, and give language which no 
 Christian ought to give, and which no gentleman ought to take. I 
 thought any Englishman had the liberty to speak his opinion in 
 such things ; for this had nothing to do with the public. The press 
 was open to me as well as to others ; and how or when I lost my 
 English liberty of speaking my mind, I know not ; neither how my 
 speaking my opinion without fee or reward, could authorize them 
 to call me villain, rascal, traitor, and such opprobrious names. 
 
 " It was ever my opinion, that were our wool kept from France, 
 and our manufactures spread there upon reasonable duties, all the 
 improvement which the French have made in the woollen manu- 
 facture would decay, and in the end be little worth ; and, conse- 
 quently, the hurt they could do us by them would be of little 
 moment. It was my opinion, that the ninth article of the Treaty 
 of Commerce was calculated for the advantage of our trade; let 
 who will make it, that is nothing to me. My reasons are, because 
 it tied up the French to open the door to our manufactures at a 
 certain duty of importation there; and left the Parliament of Britain 
 at liberty to shut theirs out by as high duties as they pleased here : 
 there being no limitations upon us as to duties on French goods, but 
 that other nations should pay the same. While the French were 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 397 
 
 thus bound, and the British free, I always thought we must be in a 
 condition to trade to advantage, or it must be our own fault. This 
 is my opinion still ; and I would venture to maintain it against any 
 man, upon a public stage, before a jury of fifty merchants, and 
 venture my life upon the cause, if I were assured of fair play in the 
 dispute. But, that it was my opinion, that we might carry on a 
 trade with France to our great advantage, and that we ought for 
 that reason to trade with them, appears in the third, fourth, fifth, 
 and sixth volumes of the Review, above nine years before the Mercator 
 was thought of. I was not thought criminal to say so then ; how it 
 comes to be villanous to say so now, God knows ; I can give no 
 account of it. I am still of the same opinion ; and shall never be 
 brought to say otherwise, unless I see the state of trade so altered 
 as to change my opinion ; and if ever I do, I shall be able to give 
 good reasons for it. 
 
 " The answer to these things, whether mine or no, was all pointed 
 at me ; and the arguments were generally in the terms, villain, 
 rascal, miscreant, liar, bankrupt, fellow, hireling, turncoat, &c. What 
 the arguments were bettered by these methods, I leave others to 
 judge of. Also, most of those things in the Mercator, for which I 
 had such usage, were such as I was not the author of. I do grant, 
 had all the books which have been called by my name, been written 
 by me, I must of necessity have exasperated every side, and perhaps 
 have deserved it. But I have the greatest injustice imaginable in 
 this treatment, as I have in the perverting the design of what I have 
 really written/' 
 
 At this time, De Foe also published another pamphlet, advocating 
 free-trade principles, entitled "An Essay on the Treaty of Com- 
 merce with France; with necessary Expositions, Proverbs xviii. 12. 
 London, printed for J. Baker. 1713. 8vo." In this pamphlet, De 
 Foe advocates free-trade principles, as might be expected, from the 
 position he was taking at the time on the Treaty of Commerce 
 with France, on the settlement of the Treaty of Utrecht. 
 
 Another pamphlet appeared at this time, entitled "A Letter from 
 a Member of the House of Commons to his Friend in the Country, 
 relating to the Bill of Commerce ; with a true Copy of the Bill, and 
 
398 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 an exact List of all those who voted for and against engrossing it. 
 London, printed and sold by J. Baker. 1713. 8vo. :" also ascribed 
 to De Foe by some opponent, supposed to be Oldmixon, who wrote 
 " Remarks on a scandalous Libel, entitled ' A Letter from a Mem- 
 ber of Parliament, relating to the Bill of Commerce/ In which the 
 Trade with France is considered, and the Falsities and Absurdities 
 of the Mercator are exposed. To which is added, a Caution to the 
 Freeholders of Great Britain in their approaching Elections ; and 
 an exact List of this House of Commons, under several Distinctions. 
 London, A. Baldwin, 1713 : 8vo." The writer of the above is very 
 severe on De Foe, whom he professes to answer on his free-trade 
 principles. 
 
 We will now return to the charge laid against Daniel De Foe, of 
 being an advocate of a Dutch war. Really, the thing is too absurd 
 to be replied to for all De Foe's sympathies through a long poli- 
 tical life had been in favour of a league, or union, or combination 
 of the Protestantism of Europe against Popish aggression ; whether 
 proceeding from France, Italy, or Spain. A charge of this kind 
 could only be wilful annoyance thrown at the man, for some feeling 
 of revenge, great or small a principle or a hat better than that 
 worn by the low street miscreant who could throw the dirt. De Foe 
 was an advocate for the combination of the vitality of Protestantism 
 against all aggressions on civil and religious liberty, which he justly 
 considered to be expected, in one form or other, under the pretext 
 or pretence of a conformity in religion; a shackling of the free 
 limbs of the vitality of Protestantism ; for the sake of restricting the 
 free agency of action, and the power of locomotion ; for an end 
 the raising of arbitrary power upon the wreck of civil and religious 
 liberty. De Foe an advocate for a Dutch war ! Let him speak for 
 himself in his own Review his newspaper ; which had now reached 
 825 pages of the eighth volume let him speak : 
 
 " If it be, as some pretend, in the last foreign news, that we are 
 now running headlong into a war with the Dutch which I look 
 upon as the worst circumstance that can befall this nation I shall 
 convince those who would maliciously suggest me to be writing for 
 it, that they are in the wrong. It has been all along my argument, 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 399 
 
 and I have seen no answer to it, that Britain and Holland are the 
 essential strength of the Protestant interest in Europe ; and in that 
 respect their interests are inseparable. It is for uniting these that 
 I have always pleaded against the union of Spain with any Popish 
 power in Europe, I appeal to all who read what I write, that the 
 dividing this great prize has been my aim all along, though re- 
 proached and misunderstood. The safety and prosperity of the 
 Protestant interest depend upon the joint power of the confederated 
 Protestants ; and this must be built upon the union of the British 
 and Dutch." 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OF the peace of Utrecht there were the greatest complaints ; for 
 the ministers had sacrificed the true interests of England to those 
 of France, in allowing the Bourbons of France to retain the whole 
 Spanish monarchy, instead of the half, as designed by the Partition 
 Treaty of William III. : thus giving a preponderance to the Popish 
 party in Europe over the combined influence of Protestantism : a 
 thing much to be deplored by the well-wishers to the vitality of 
 Protestantism in Europe, as a barrier to the encroachments of 
 Papistry, and the strangling, by religious usurpations, all freedom 
 of thought ; and, with it, all civil and religious liberty. 
 
 The peace of Utrecht, De Foe deplored as. much as any English- 
 man could deplore, the increase thus given to the strengthening of 
 the aggressive power of the French monarchy ; but what could he 
 do more ? He was not minister, neither was he connected with the 
 ministry, beyond giving his opinion on a free-trade treaty of com- 
 merce with France ; after the treaty of Utrecht had been disposed 
 of altogether. If De Foe had been prime minister of England, he 
 could not have received more of the malignity of the Whig party, 
 than he did receive ; and this when neither Swift nor Pope knew 
 the man by his name ; beyond the fellow who had had his ears cut 
 off; or who had stood in the pillory. Never was man so basely 
 used as Daniel De Foe ; his talent was made the scapegoat for all 
 talent which could not at once be fixed upon its real owner; and 
 this, too, for the greater portion of his life. He had to stand re- 
 sponsible for all the anonymous talent of his age. Steele, Davenant, 
 and others, might write, and write what they pleased too ; and yet, 
 with a little caution on their parts, in concealing their names, the 
 productions of the pen, however offensive, or however debasing, 
 could be fathered upon the ready wit of Daniel De Foe. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 401 
 
 In his Appeal to Honour and Justice, p. 23, he thus writes : 
 
 " This was the peace I always argued for, pursuant to the design 
 of King William in the-Treaty of Partition ; and to that article of 
 the grand alliance which was directed by the same glorious hand, 
 at the beginning of this last war; viz., that all we should conquer in 
 the Spanish West Indies should be our own. This was with a true 
 design that England and Holland should have turned their naval 
 power, which was eminently superior to that of France, to the con- 
 quest of the Spanish West Indies ; by which the channel of trade 
 and return of bullion, which now enriches the enemies of both, had 
 been ours ; and as the wealth, so the strength, of the world had 
 been in Protestant hands. Spain, whoever had it, must then have 
 been dependent upon us. The house of Bourbon would have found 
 it so poor without us, as to be scarce worth fighting for ; and the 
 people so averse to them, for want of this commerce, as not to make 
 it ever likely that France could keep it. 
 
 " This was the foundation I ever acted upon with relation to the 
 peace. It is true, that when it was made, and could not be other- 
 wise, I thought our business was to make the best of it ; and rather 
 to inquire what improvements were to be made of it, than to be 
 continually exclaiming at those who made it ; and where the ob- 
 jection lies against this part, I cannot see. While I spoke in this 
 manner, I bore infinite reproaches from clamouring pens, of being 
 in the French interest, being hired and bribed to defend a bad 
 peace, and the like ; and most of this was upon a supposition of my 
 writing, or being the author of, abundance of pamphlets, which 
 came out every day, and which I had no hand in. And indeed, as 
 I shall observe again, this was one of the greatest pieces of injustice 
 that could be done me, and which I labour still under, without any 
 redress : that, whenever any piece comes out which is not liked, I 
 am immediately charged with being the author ; and very often the 
 first knowledge I have had of a book being published, has been 
 from seeing myself abused for being the author, in some other 
 pamphlet, published in answer to it." 
 
 This being the state of things at this time (1713), De Foe gave 
 up writing altogether, except in his Review ; but not, I think, till 
 
 26 
 
402 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 after he had written 1. "An Answer to the Question that Nobody 
 thinks of, viz., Bat what if the Queen should die? London, printed 
 for J. Baker, 1713 : pp.44." 2. "Reasons against the Succession 
 of the House of Hanover ; with an Inquiry how far the Abdication 
 of King James, supposing it to be legal, ought to affect the Person 
 of the Pretender. Si populus vult decipi, decipiatur. London, 
 printed for J. Baker, 1713: pp.45." 3. "And what if the Pre- 
 tender should come ? or, some Considerations of the Advantages 
 and real Consequences of the Pretender's possessing the Crown of 
 Great Britain. London, printed for J. Baker, 1713 : 8vo." 
 
 Prom a very careful perusal of two of these most important tracts, 
 " An Answer to a Question that Nobody thinks of, vis,, But what 
 if the Queen should die?" and "Reasons against the Succession 
 of the House of Hanover," I have arrived at the conclusion that 
 De Foe's object was not only honest, but truly patriotic, in writing 
 those two pamphlets. I mention the two only, because the third I 
 have not seen ; for be it remembered, that many of De Foe's more 
 exciting small productions of the pen have been destroyed ; so that 
 it is very difficult to obtain a sight of them on any terms. His 
 object was to arouse the people of England to a sense of their 
 danger ; in the event of the death of the Queen. This was done 
 only a very few months before the Queen did die ; and at a time 
 when her Majesty's health was in a very precarious condition ; and 
 all the world were running mad with jure-divino and passive- 
 obedience doctrines, enunciated from the pulpit and the press. 
 
 As a Mr. William Benson started an impeachment, and as one of 
 our judges stated in open court, that De Foe had subjected himself 
 to be hanged, drawn, and quartered as a traitor; and as I believe 
 De Foe to have been a truly honest man, and fearless patriot, I am 
 compelled to give a larger amount of extract from these books than 
 I otherwise should have given ; to prove the honesty as well as dis- 
 interested patriotism of the writer. Mind ! De Foe in Newgate on 
 a charge of high treason is my defence for long extracts ; feeling, 
 as I do, that short ones would not do justice to an honest man, and 
 a great patriot. 
 
 "That we are to have a peace; or that the peace is made 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 403 
 
 [Utrecht] ; what sort of peace ; or how it has been brought about ; 
 these are questions the world begins to have done with ; they have 
 been so much, so often, and to so little purpose, bandied about, and 
 tossed like a shuttlecock from one party to another, the parties 
 themselves begin to want breath to rail and throw scandal. Roper 
 and Ridpath throw dirt at one another so long, and grope into so 
 many jakes up to their elbows to find it, that they stink now in the 
 nostrils of their own party. They are become perfectly nauseous 
 to read ; the nation is surfeited of them ; and the. people begin to 
 be tired with ill using one another. Would any tolerable face 
 appear upon things, we might expect the people would be inclined 
 to be easy ; and were the eyes of some great men open, they may 
 see this was the opportunity they never had before ; to make the 
 nation easy, and themselves safe. The main thing which agitates 
 the minds of men now, is the Protestant succession and the Pre- 
 tender. Much pains have been taken on both sides, to amuse the 
 world about this remaining dispute : one side to make us believe it 
 is safe, and the other to convince us it is in danger. Neither side 
 hath been able to expatiate upon the part they affirm. Those who 
 say the Protestant succession is secure, have not yet shown us any 
 step taken since these new transactions, for its particular security. 
 Those who say it is in danger, have not so clearly determined, even 
 among themselves, from what particular head of public management 
 that danger chiefly proceeds. Both these uncertainties serve to 
 perplex us, and to leave the thing more undetermined than consists 
 with the public ease of the people's minds. To contribute some- 
 thing to that ease, and bring those whose place it is to consider 
 of ways to make the people easy in this case, this work is made 
 public. 
 
 "Is there any real danger of the Protestant succession ? Is there 
 any danger that the Pretender shall be brought in upon us ? Is 
 there any danger of Popery and tyranny by restoring the son, as 
 they call him, of abdicated King James ? It is well known that 
 there are some people among us, who are so far from allowing that 
 there is any such danger as the said question mentions, that they 
 will have it to be a token of disaffection to the government to put 
 
 26* 
 
404 LIFE OF BE FOE, 
 
 the question; and are for loading whoever shall offer to start such 
 a question, with characters and party marks odious to good men ; 
 such as incendiary, promoter of discontent, raiser of faction, divider 
 of the people, and the like : names which the writer of these sheets, 
 at the same time, both contemns and abhors. He cannot see that 
 he is any enemy to the Queen in inquiring, as diligently as possible, 
 whether there are any attempts to depose her, or dangerous pros- 
 pects of bringing in the hated rival of her glory and dominion. It 
 is so far from that, that it is apparently the duty of every true sub- 
 ject of her Majesty to inquire seriously, whether the public peace, 
 the Queen's safety, her throne, or her person is in any danger from 
 the wicked design of her and her people's enemies. Wherefore, 
 and for the joint concern every Protestant Briton has in this thing, 
 I shall make no difficulty, plainly and seriously to state, and to 
 answer this previous question, viz., whether there is any danger of 
 the Protestant succession from the present measures, and from the 
 present people concerned? I am not ignorant of what has been 
 said by some, to prove that the present ministry cannot be sus- 
 pected of having any view to the Pretender in any of their measures. 
 The best reason which I have seen given upon that subject is, that 
 it is not their interest ; and that, as we have not found them fools 
 that are blind to their own interest, so neither have we found them 
 to be such fools as not to understand or pursue it. This we find 
 handled sundry ways, by sundry authors, and very much insisted 
 upon as a foundation for us to build upon. We shall give our 
 thoughts upon it with plainness, and without fear or favour. 
 
 " Good manners requires we should speak of the ministry with 
 all due regard to their character and persons. This is a tract de- 
 signed to inquire seriously of a weighty and essential, not a trifling 
 thing which requires but a trifling examination; nor shall it be 
 handled here with satire and scurrility. We approve neither of the 
 flatteries of one side, nor the insultings of the other. We shall 
 readily and most willingly join with those who are of opinion, that 
 it is not the interest of the ministry to be for the Pretender ; and 
 that the ministry are not blind to or careless of their own interest ; 
 and, consequently, that the ministry cannot be for the Pretender. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 405 
 
 This I hope may be called a direct answer. When I say cannot, I 
 must not be understood potentially, that they have no moral capa- 
 city ; but they cannot, without such inconsistencies, contradictions, 
 and improbable things happening in, which render it highly irra- 
 tional so much as to suppose it of them. It is far from any reflec- 
 tion upon the ministry to say, that however they may act upon a 
 right, sincere principle for the Protestant succession in all they do, 
 which above we profess to believe ; yet that many of the tools they 
 make use of, are of another make, and have no edge to cut any 
 other way ; no thoughts to move them towards any other end ; no 
 other centre which they can have any tendency to ; that the Pre- 
 tender's interest is the magnet which draws them by its secret 
 influence to point to him as their pole ; that they have their aim at 
 his establishment here, and own it to be their aim ; and so they are 
 not shy to profess it among themselves ; so their conduct in many 
 things makes it sufficiently public. But let the ministry employ 
 these men by what necessity or upon what occasion they will, 
 though it may not follow that the ministry are therefore for the 
 Pretender ; yet it does not also follow that there is no danger of the 
 Protestant succession from the employing those sort of people : For 
 ivhat if the Queen should die ? 
 
 " I believe that there are very few who alarm themselves much 
 with the fears of the Pretender, from the apprehension of his own 
 strength from abroad, or from his own party and friends at home 
 here; were they once sure that he should receive no assistance from 
 the King of France. If, then, the King of France cannot be 
 reasonably supposed either to be inclined or be in a condition to 
 appear for him, or act in his behalf during the life of the Queen ; 
 neither can the Pretender, say some, unless he is resolved to ruin 
 all his friends, and at last to ruin himself, make any attempt of that 
 kind during her Majesty's life. But what if the Queen should die ? 
 
 "By this Revolution of 1688 it is that her Majesty is made our 
 Queen ; the entail of the crown being reserved in the remainder to 
 her Majesty in the Act of Settlement made at the filling up the 
 vacant throne; and by all those subsequent acts which her Majesty's 
 title was confirmed by, during the life of the late king. This Revo- 
 
406 LIFE OF DE FOE, 
 
 lution of 1688 is that upon which the liberties and religion of this 
 nation were rebuilt after the conflagration that was made of them 
 in the calamitous times of King Charles II. and King James II., 
 and from hence to the love of liberty, which is found almost to be 
 naturally placed in the hearts of true Britons ; and upon the view 
 whereof they have acted all along in the late war, and in all their 
 transactions at home, has obtained the title of a REVOLUTION PRIN- 
 CIPLE. Noting this, then, as above, that her Majesty is our Queen 
 by virtue of the Revolution, that establishment alone must be the 
 foundation of all her administration : this must effectually secure 
 us against any apprehension that the persons acting under her 
 Majesty can act in behalf of the Pretender during her Majesty's 
 life; for that they must immediately overthrow the throne, turn 
 the Queen out of it, and renounce the Revolution, upon which her 
 Majesty's possession is established. As the Revolution, therefore, 
 is the base upon which the throne of her Majesty's possession is 
 established; so her Majesty and all that act under her are obliged 
 to act upon the foot of the said Revolution, even will they, nil they; 
 or else they sink immediately out of rightful power to act at all; 
 her Majesty's title would fall to the ground, their own commissions 
 would from that hour be void ; they must declare their royal mis- 
 tress and benefactress a subject to the Pretender, and all her pre- 
 tences of rightful possession injurious and an usurpation. These 
 things being so plain, that he that runs may read them, seem to 
 stop all our mouths, from so much as any suggestion that anybody 
 can attempt to bring in the Pretender upon us during the life of 
 her present Majesty. But what if the Queen should die ? " 
 
 In this style the book proceeds for twenty pages further; en- 
 deavouring to persuade the people to be on their guard against any 
 sudden surprise on the part of the adherents of the Pretender, in 
 case the Queen should die ? 
 
 We will now take the second pamphlet alluded to above, "Reasons 
 against the Succession of the House of Hanover." This pamphlet, 
 like the former, was written to alarm, excite, or ridicule the con- 
 tentions of parties at the time (1713) : a time more contentious, 
 and, thanks to Bolingbroke, Swift, Mrs. Masham, and Mister Pope, 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 407 
 
 more threatening than any times before known in British history ; 
 for, as De Foe well observes in his opening section 
 
 " What strife is here among you all ! and what a noise about 
 who shall be King ; the Lord knows when. Is it not a strange thing, 
 we cannot be quiet with the Queen we have, but we must all fall 
 into confusion and combustions about who shall come after ? Why, 
 pray, folks, how old is the Queen, and when is she to die, that here 
 is this pother about it ? I have heard wise people say the Queen is 
 riot fifty years old, that she has no distemper, but the gout, that 
 is a long-life disease, which generally holds out people twenty or 
 thirty or forty years ; and let it be how it will, the Queen may well 
 linger out twenty or thirty years, and not be a huge old wife 
 neither. 
 
 " ' How ! what V say the people ; ' must we think of living twenty 
 or thirty years in this wrangling condition we are now in?' This 
 would be a torment worse than some of the Egyptian plagues, and 
 would be intolerable to bear, though for fewer years than that. 
 The animosities of this nation, should they go on as it seems they 
 go on now, would by time be come to such a height that all 
 charity, society, and mutual agreement among us, will be destroyed. 
 Christians, shall we be called ? No ; nothing of the people called 
 Christians will be to be found among us. Nothing of Christianity, 
 or the substance of Christianity, viz., charity, will be found among 
 us. The name Christian may be assumed ; but it will be all hypo- 
 crisy and delusion ; the being of Christianity must be lost in the 
 fog and smoke and stink and noise and rage and cruelty of our 
 quarrel about a King. Is this rational ? Is it agreeable to the true 
 interest of the nation ? What must become of trade, of religion, of 
 society, of relatives, of families, of people ? Why, harkye, you folk 
 that call yourselves rational, and talk of having souls, is this a token 
 of your having such things about you, or of thinking rationally ? If 
 you have, pray what is it likely will become of you all ? W T hy, the 
 strife is gotten into your kitchens, your parlours, your counting- 
 houses, nay, into your very beds. You give the folks up ; you 
 please to listen to your cookmaids and footmen in your kitchens ; 
 you shall hear them scolding and swearing and scratching and 
 
408 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 fighting among themselves ; and when yon think the noise is about 
 the beef and the pudding, the dish-water or the kitchen -stuff, alas ! 
 you are mistaken ; the feud is about the more mighty affairs of the 
 government; and who is for the Protestant succession, and who for 
 the Pretender. The poor despicable scullions learn to cry ' High 
 Church ; no Dutch Kings ; no Hanover !' that they may do it dex- 
 terously when they come into the next mob. Here their antagonists 
 of the dripping-pan practise the other side, clamour ' No French 
 peace, no Pretender, no Popery ! ' The thing is the very same up 
 one pair of stairs ; in the shops and warehouses, up the 'prentices 
 stand, some on one side of the shop, and some on the other (having 
 trade little enough), and these then throw High Church and Low 
 Church at one another's heads, like battledore and shuttlecock ; 
 instead of posting their books, they are fighting and railing at the 
 Pretender and the house of Hanover ; it were better for us, certainly, 
 that these things had never been heard of. If we go from the shop, 
 one story higher, into our family, the ladies, instead of their innocent 
 sports and diversions, they are all falling out one among another; 
 the daughters and the mother, the mother and the daughters, the 
 children and the servants, nay, the very little sisters, one among 
 another. If the chamber-maid is a slattern, and does not please, 
 hang her, she is a jade; or I warrant she is a high-flyer; or, on the 
 other side, I warrant she 's a Whig ; I never knew one of that sort 
 good for anything in my life, Nay, go up to your very bedchambers, 
 and even in bed the man and wife shall quarrel about it. People ! 
 people ! What will become of you at this rate ? " 
 
 This being the state of the nation since 1709, when Jonathan 
 Swift entered the service of the ministry as a lampooner or slanderer, 
 down to this time (1713), when De Foe wrote this pamphlet, and asked, 
 as well he might, what difference could it make to such a people, so 
 corrupt, so dishonest, so contentious, as they were, whether the 
 Pretender came or he did not ; for if he did come, he would be good 
 enough for them ; for, when Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed Queen 
 of England, Mary, afterwards Bloody Mary, was the Pretender in 
 the Roman Catholic faith ; and yet the people, Protestant as they 
 were, were too much attached to their hereditary prejudices to 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 409 
 
 defend their Protestant principles, and the consequences were dis- 
 astrous, as we all know. 
 
 " In his own strength, Hanover does not pretend to come ; and if 
 he did, he must miscarry. If not in his own, in whose, then, but 
 the people of Britain? And if the people be a weakened, divided, 
 and deluded people, and see not your own safety to lie in your 
 agreement among yourselves, how shall such weak folk shift him, 
 especially against a strong enemy ? So that it will be your destruc- 
 tion to attempt to bring in the house of Hanover, unless you can 
 stand by and defend him when he is come. This will make you 
 all like Monmouth's men in the west ; and you will find yourselves 
 lifted up to halters and gibbets, not to places and preferments. 
 Unless you reconcile yourselves to one another, and bring things to 
 some better pass among the common people, it will be but to banter 
 yourselves to talk of the Protestant succession ; for you neither will 
 be in a condition to bring over your Protestant successor, or to 
 support him on the throne when you have brought him ; and it will 
 not be denied, that to make the attempt, and not succeed in it, is to 
 ruin yourselves ; and this, I think, is very good reason against the 
 succession of the house of Hanover." 
 
 I feel these quotations to be long and tiresome, and, to the 
 ordinary reader, uninteresting ; yet I feel compelled to make them ; 
 for on these quotations De Foe was committed to Newgate on a 
 charge of high treason and as his former commitment in 1703, 
 for writing the Shortest Way with the Dissenters, must receive an 
 explanation and exculpation, from the style of argument now used 
 in this pamphlet of 1713, I am compelled to dwell on this subject. 
 It is very singular that 1703 and 1713 should have been selected 
 by De Foe for writing as he did, on each occasion; when those 
 occasions were the very times when Harley was requiring some one 
 to write on the very subjects, and at the very times, on which De 
 Foe did write. Yes ! in 1703, to turn out the Earl of Nottingham; 
 and in 1713, to make a diversion for the public mind from the fixed 
 railing disappointment on the disastrous treaty of peace signed at 
 Utrecht ; to the sacrifice of the Dutch, the Germans, the Protestants 
 of Europe, to the Roman Catholics of Spain and France; the patrons 
 
410 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 of Bolingbroke and Swift ! I do not, for one moment, believe 
 Daniel De Foe to have been a High-Church Tory in 1703; neither 
 do I believe that he was indifferent to the claims of the Elector of 
 Hanover in 1 713 ; but yet I believe it to be very possible for him 
 to have written a political pamphlet, to serve a purpose, when he 
 could do this without an abandonment of principle ; for when he 
 called upon the High Church to crush the dissenters, by hanging 
 them all, he abandoned no principle. He affirmed, and affirmed 
 truly too, that if Mr. Howe's church members would so far play at 
 bopeep with God Almighty, by receiving the sacrament once in each 
 year, in order to qualify for the lord-mayorship of London, they 
 would receive forty sacraments in the same establishment within 
 the same time, to save themselves from being hanged. Well, then ! 
 in the two pamphlets I am writing upon, there is no abandonment 
 of principle, as the following close-reasoning quotation will fully 
 testify ; and mind, this close reasoning is as applicable to the pam- 
 phlet of 1703 for which he was placed in the pillory three times, 
 and twelve months in Newgate as to the pamphlets for which he 
 was now a prisoner in Newgate, on a charge of high treason. 
 
 But, then, stop ! There was the Occasional Conformity of Dis- 
 senters Bill. Was De Foe honest and consistent there? We will 
 see ; for his conduct on the Occasional Conformity Bill is as appli- 
 cable to the quotations I am about to give, as the pamphlets which 
 they are intended to defend, and the pamphlet in which they are 
 contained. De Foe either was honest as a man, and consistent as a 
 politician, or he was not one or the other. What was his conduct 
 on the Occasional Conformity Bill of 1702, the first year of the 
 reign of that weak woman, Queen Anne, who ascended the throne 
 by means of the solemn compact entered into between King and 
 People at the glorious Revolution of 1688 a revolution carried for 
 the most part by the dissenters, for the furtherance of the vitality 
 of Protestantism within these realms ; and yet, in the face of this 
 solemn compact, Queen Anne sanctions a bill in Parliament for the 
 depriving of these very dissenters of all their civil privileges as 
 citizens. But what was De Foe's conduct on the occasion ? Why, 
 he published at the time a pamphlet entitled " An Enquiry into 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 411 
 
 Occasional Conformitjr, showing that the Dissenters are no ways 
 concerned in it. London, 1702," which he opens with the following 
 paragraph : 
 
 " He that opposes his own judgment against the current of the 
 times, ought to be backed with unanswerable truths ; and he that 
 has truth on his side, is a fool, as well as a coward, if he is afraid 
 to own it; because of the currency or multitude of other men's 
 opinions." He stood against all the long-spoon-and-custard dis- 
 senters he stood alone, and added, te Who can help it?" He was 
 for the bill as a refiner of the principle; for " those among us who 
 conform to your church for a place or a salary, you are welcome to 
 take among you ; and let them be a part of yourselves. All the 
 converts you can make by the mammon of unrighteousness are 
 your own." 
 
 The dissenters had rights, and De Foe claimed those rights in the 
 whole, as rights ; and not in part, as a compromise, a concession, a 
 toleration granted by a superior power to an inferior, as an act of 
 grace or condescension. He stated the numbers of the dissenters 
 to be two millions ; and he knew that, by a rigorous persecution of 
 equality or vitality, those two millions would speedily become four 
 millions or more ; and then where are your Leslies, your Swifts, 
 your Popes, your Sacheverells, and your Ned Wards and Tom 
 Brownes ; the paid slang- writers, and perhaps actors too, of Harley 
 and St. John ; for the writing down yes ! the acting down a prin- 
 ciple? De Foe knew the object of this Occasional Bill to be 
 oppressive ; but yet he scorned a compromise with the oppressors ; 
 his language and his feeling were, " We are two millions ; do your 
 worst ; and if you will oppress, do it ; and do it heartily ; and we 
 must suffer, so long as you have the power to make us suffer ; but 
 no longer but no longer no longer ! Force us once upon the 
 magazine of Original Power, and another question may be put, as 
 it has been put before, and the last time in 1688 ; when William III. 
 of glorious memory took possession of St. James's Palace at the 
 head of fourteen thousand Dutchmen; and accompanied by the 
 blessings of the united vitality of the Protestantism of Europe-." 
 
 Hear what De Foe says on this business, and judge of his con- 
 
412 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 sistency and honesty as a politician and as a man ; for I maintain 
 him to have been honest and consistent in his political course of 
 action. He saw the tyranny of the Occasional Conformity Bill ; he 
 saw its injustice ; and he felt ; but he scorned to ask for rights as a 
 favour. He ask a favour when he knew WE ARE TWO MILLIONS ! 
 No ! persecute light up your fires store up your faggots force 
 the vitality of Protestantism by persecution yes ! force us into the 
 magazine of Original Power, and take the consequences of your 
 folly and rashness ; but remember 1688, and the foundation-stone 
 of the British constitution, which is what ? The Sovereignty of the 
 People. Queen Anne was a fool, and the daughter of a fool ; for 
 she was daughter of James II. ; and, had it not been for the fore- 
 thought of William III., she would have been an outcast, as well as 
 a fool. She was on the throne of Great Britain in 1702. 
 
 But to return to De Foe's consistency and honesty, which I am 
 now asserting. 
 
 " No, gentlemen," says he, " we don't tell you we like that part 
 of the bill which excludes us from the native honours and prefer- 
 ments of our country, which are our due, our birthright, equally 
 with our neighbours, and to which we should be called by the 
 suffrage of the people; and we cannot but think it a hardship 
 beyond the power of reason to justify. But, since this right must 
 be clogged with so many inconveniences, that we must mortgage 
 our consciences to enjoy them, no man can have any charity left for 
 us, but must presently conclude we shall freely forego such trifles 
 for our consciences, or else that we may have no consciences at all." 
 And he also adds" Is it not very hard that the dissenter should 
 be excluded from all places of profit, trust, and honour, and, at the 
 same time, shall not be excused from those which are attended with 
 charge, trouble, and loss of time? That a dissenter shall be pressed 
 as a sailor to fight at sea, listed as a soldier to fight on shore, and, 
 let his merit be never so much above his fellows, shall never be 
 capable of preferment, so much as to carry a halbert? That we 
 must maintain our own clergy and your clergy ; our own poor and 
 your poor ; pay equal taxes and equal duties ; and not to be thought 
 worthy to be trusted to set a drunkard in the stocks?" 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 413 
 
 Well, having brought the Occasional Bill from 1702 into the 
 same page with De Foe's pamphlets of 1703, and those two of 
 1713; to place as much of the man before us as possible, for one 
 view ; we will now give the quotation so long promised one which 
 I believe to contain the mainspring of all De Foe's political actions 
 of the whole course of his political life. De Foe has long been 
 blamed for his apparent want of consistency ; we have the motive 
 of action in his own language, which I now give; when writing 
 on the Protestant succession of the house of Hanover, or the 
 Pretender : 
 
 " Learned men say, some diseases in Nature are cured by anti- 
 pathies, and some by sympathies ; that the enemies of Nature are 
 the best preservatives of Nature ; that bodies are brought down by 
 the skill of the physician, that they may the better be brought up ; 
 made sick to be made well ; and carried to the brink of the grave 
 in order to be kept from the grave. For these reasons, and in order 
 to these things, poisons are administered in physic, and amputations 
 in surgery ; the flesh is cut that it may heal ; an arm laid open that 
 it may close with safety ; and those methods of cure are said to be 
 the most certain, as well as most necessary in those particular cases; 
 from whence it is become a proverbial saying in physic, ' Desperate 
 diseases must have desperate remedies/ Now, it is very proper to 
 inquire in this case, whether the nation is not in such a state of 
 health at this time, that the coming of the Pretender may not be of 
 absolute necessity, by way of cure of such national distempers as 
 now afflict us, and that an effectual cure can be wrought no other 
 way? If upon due inquiry it should appear that we are not fit to 
 receive such a Prince as the successor of the house of Hanover is, 
 that we should maltreat and abuse him if he were here; and that 
 there is no way for us to learn the true value of a Protestant suc- 
 cessor so well as by tasting a little what a Popish Pretender is, and 
 feeling something of the great advantages that may accrue to us by 
 the superiority of a Jacobite party ; if the disease of stupidity has 
 so far seized us, that we are to be cured only by poisons and fer- 
 mentations ; if the wound is mortified, and nothing but deep inci- 
 sions, amputations, and desperate remedies, must be used; if it 
 
414 , LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 would be necessary thus to teach us the worth of things by the 
 want of them ; and there is no other way to bring the nation to its 
 senses; why, what can be then said against the Pretender? Even 
 let him come, that we may see what slavery means; and may 
 inquire how the chains of French gallies hang about us, and how 
 wooden shoes are to walk in ; for no experience teaches us so well 
 as that we buy dearest and pay for with the most smart. 
 
 " I think this may pass for a very good reason against the Pro- 
 testant succession. Nothing is surer than that the management 
 of King Charles II. and his late brother, were the best ways the 
 nation could ever have taken to bring to pass the happy Revolu- 
 tion ; yet these afflictions to the nation were not joyous but grievous 
 for the time they remained ; and the poor kingdom suffered great 
 convulsions ; but what weighs that, if these convulsions are found 
 to be necessary to a cure ? If the physicians prescribe a vomit for 
 the cure of any particular distemper, will the patient complain of 
 being made sick ? No, no. When you begin to be sick, then we 
 say. ' Oh, that is right \' and then the vomit begins to work. Arid 
 how shall the island of Britain spetf out all the dregs and filth the 
 public digesture has contracted, if it be not made sick with some 
 French physic ? If you give good nourishing food to a foul stomach, 
 you cause that wholesome food to turn into filth, and, instead of 
 nourishing the man, it nourishes diseases in the man, till those 
 diseases prove his destruction, and bring him to the grave. In like 
 manner, if you will bring the Protestant successor into the govern- 
 ment before that government have taken some physic to cleanse it 
 from the ill digesture it may have been under, how do we know but 
 the diseases which are already begun in the constitution may not be 
 nourished and kept up till they may hereafter break out in the days 
 of our posterity, and prove mortal to the nation ? Wherefore should 
 we desire the Protestant successor to come in upon a foot of high- 
 flying menage, and be beholden for their establishment to those who 
 are the enemies of the constitution ? Would not this be to have in 
 time to come, the successors of that house be the same thing as the 
 ages past have already been made sick of, and made to spew out of 
 the government? Are not any of these considerations enough to 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 115 
 
 make any of us averse to the Protestant succession ? No, no ; let us 
 take a French vomit first,, and make us sick ; that we may be well 
 and may afterwards more effectually have our health established. 
 
 " The Pretender will no doubt bring us good medicines,, and cure 
 us of all our hypochondriac vapours that now make us so giddy. 
 But, say some, he will bring Popery in upon us. Popery, say you ? 
 Alas! it is too true: Popery is a sad thing; and that, say some 
 folks, ought to have been thought on before now ; but suppose, 
 then, this thing called Popery : how will it come in ? Why, say the 
 honest folk, the Pretender is a Papist ; and if a Popish Prince come 
 upon the throne, we shall have Popery come in upon us without 
 fail. Well, well; and what hurt will this be to you? May not 
 Popery be very good in its kind ? What if this Popery, like the 
 vomit made to poison, be the only physic that can cure you ? If 
 this vomit make you spew out your filth, your Tory filth, your 
 idolatrous filth, your tyrannic filth, and restore you to your health ; 
 shall it not be good for you ? Here, pray, observe the allegory 
 of physic. You heard before, when you take a vomit, the physic 
 given you to vomit is always something contrary to nature some- 
 thing that, if taken in quantity, would destroy ; but how does it 
 operate ? It attacks Nature, and puts her upon a ferment to cast 
 out what offends her. But, remark it, I pray : when the patient 
 vomits, he always vomits up the physic and the filth together. So, 
 if the nation should take a vomit of Popery, as when the Pretender 
 comes most certain it is that this will be the consequence, they will 
 vomit up the physic and the filth together : the Popery and the 
 Pretender will all come up again, and all the Popish, arbitrary, 
 tyrannical filth, which has offended the stomach of the nation so 
 long, and ruined its digesture, will all come up together. One 
 vomit of Popery will do us all a great deal of good ; for the stomach 
 of the constitution is marvellously foul. Observe, people, this is 
 no new application : the nation has taken a vomit of this kind be- 
 fore now, as in Queen Mary I.'s time ; the Reformation was not 
 well chewed, and, being taken down whole, did not rightly digest, 
 but left too much crudity in the stomach ; from whence proceeded 
 ill nourishment, bad blood, and a very ill habit of body in the con- 
 
416 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 stitution. Witness the distemper which seized the Gospellers in 
 Suffolk, who, being struck with an epilepsy or dead palsy, in the 
 better half of their understanding to wit, the religious and zealous 
 part took up arms for a Popish Pretender against the Protestant 
 successor, upon the wild-headed whimsy of the right line being 
 jure divino. Well, what followed, I pray ? Why, they took a vomit 
 of Popery. The potion, indeed, was given in a double vehicle, 
 namely, of faggots a little inflamed; and this worked so effec- 
 tually, that the nation, having vomited, brought up all the filth of 
 the stomach, and the foolish notion of hereditary right; spewed out 
 Popery also along with it. Thus were Popery and fire and faggot 
 the most effectual remedy to cure the nation of all its simple 
 diseases, and to settle and establish the Protestant Reformation ; 
 and why, then, should we be so terrified with the apprehensions of 
 Popery ? Nay, why should we not open our eyes and see how much 
 to our advantage it may be in the next i-eign, to have Popery 
 brought in, and to that end the Pretender set up, that he may help 
 us to this most useful dose of physic ? These are some other of my 
 reasons against the Protestant succession. I think they cannot be 
 mended. It may perhaps be thought hard that we should thus 
 seem to make light of so terrible a thing as Popery, and should jest 
 with the affair of the Protestants. No, people ! This is no jest ; 
 taking physic is no jest at all ; for it is useful many ways, and 
 there is no keeping the body in health without it ; and the corrup- 
 tions of politic constitutions are as gross and as fatal us those of 
 human bodies, and require as immediate application of medicines. 
 And why should you, people of this country, be so alarmed, and 
 seem so afraid of this thing called Popery, when it is spoken of in 
 intelligible terms, since you are not afraid alternately to put your 
 hands to those things which as naturally tend in themselves to bring 
 it upon you, as clouds tend to rain, or smoke to fire ? What do all 
 your scandalous divisions, your unchristian quarrellings, your heap- 
 ing up reproaches, and loading each other with infamy and with 
 abominable forgeries what do these tend to but Popery? If it 
 should be asked, how have these any such reference? the answer is 
 most natural from the premises. If divisions weaken the nation ; 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 417 
 
 if Whig and Tory, even united, are and have been weak enough not 
 to keep out Popery, surely, then, widening the unhappy breaches, 
 and inflaming things between them to implacable and irreconcilable 
 breaches, must tend to overthrow the Protestant kingdom, which, 
 as our ever- blessed Saviour said, when divided against itself, cannot 
 stand. Besides, are not your breaches come up to that height 
 already as to let any impartial bystander see that Popery must be 
 the consequence ? Do not one party say openly, they had rather be 
 Papists than Presbyterians; that they would rather go to mass 
 than to a meeting-house ; and are they not to that purpose, all of 
 them who are of that height, openly joined with the Jacobites in 
 the cause of Popery ? On the other hand, are not the Presbyterians 
 in Scotland so exasperated at having the abjuration oath imposed 
 upon them, contrary, as they tell us, to their principles, that 
 they care not if he or any one else would come now, and free 
 them from that yoke? What is all this but telling us plainly, that 
 the whole nation is running into Popery and the Pretender ? Why, 
 then, while you are obliquely and by consequences joining your 
 hands to bring in Popery why, oh, distracted folk ! should you 
 think it amiss to have me talk of doing it openly and avowedly ? 
 Better is open enmity than secret guile ; better is it to talk openly 
 for Popery, that you may see the shape and real picture of it, than 
 pretend strong opposition to it, and be all at the same time putting 
 your hands to the work, and pulling it down upon yourselves with 
 all your might. 
 
 "But here comes an objection in our way, which, however weighty, 
 we must endeavour to get over : and that is, what becomes of the 
 abjuration? If the Pretender come in, we are all perjured, and we 
 ought to be all unanimous for the house of Hanover, because we are 
 all perjured if we are for the Pretender. Perjured! say ye; ha! 
 why, do not all these people say we are all perjured already nay, 
 one, two, three, or four times ? What signify oaths and abjurations 
 in a nation where the Parliament can make an oath to-day, and 
 punish a man for keeping it to-morrow? Besides, taking oaths 
 without examination, and breaking them without consideration, 
 hath been so much a practice, and the date of its original is so far 
 
 27 
 
418 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 back, that none, or but very few, know where to look for it. Nay, 
 have we not been called, in the vulgar dialect of foreign countries, 
 the swearing nation ? Note : we do not say the forsworn nation '> 
 for, whatever other countries say of us, it is not meet we should say 
 so of ourselves. But as to swearing and forswearing, associating 
 and abjuring, there are very few without sin to throw the first stone ; 
 and therefore we may be the less careful to answer in this matter. 
 It is evident that the friends of the Pretender cannot blame us ; for 
 have not the most professed Jacobites all over the nation taken the 
 abjuration ? nay, when even in their hearts they have all the while 
 resolved to be for the Pretender ? Not to instance, in the swearing 
 in all ages to and against governments, just as they were or were 
 not in condition to protect us, or keep them out of possession ; but 
 we have a much better way to come off this than that; and we 
 doubt not to clear the nation of perjury, by declaring the design, 
 true intent, and meaning of the thing itself; for the good or evil of 
 every action is said to lie in the intention. If, then, we can prove 
 the bringing-in the Pretender to be done with a real intention and 
 a sincere design to keep him out, or, as before, to spew him out ; 
 if we bring in Popery with an intention and a sincere design to 
 establish the Protestant religion ; if we bring in a Popish Prince, 
 with a single design the firmer and better to fix and introduce 
 the Protestant Hanover succession ; if, I say, these things are the 
 true intent and meaning, and are at the bottom of all our actions 
 in this matter, pray, how shall we be said to be perjured, or to 
 break in upon the abjuration, whose meaning we keep, whatever 
 becomes of the literal part of it ? Thus we are abundantly defended 
 from the guilt of perjury, because we preserve the design and in- 
 tention upright and entire for the house of Hanover; though, as 
 the best means to bring it to pass, we think fit to bring in Popery 
 and the Pretender. But, yet further to justify the lawfulness and 
 usefulness of such kind of methods, we may go back to former 
 experiments of the same case, or like cases ; for nothing can illus- 
 trate such a thing so aptly as the example of eminent men, who 
 have practised the very same things in the same or like cases ; and 
 more especially when that practice has been made use of by honest 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 419 
 
 men in an honest cause, and the end been crowned with success. 
 This eminent example was first put in practice by the late Earl of 
 Sunderland, in the time of King James the Second, and that, too, 
 in the case of bringing Popery into England, which is the very indi- 
 vidual article before us. This famous politician, if fame lies not, 
 turned Papist himself, went publicly to mass, advised and directed 
 all the forward rash steps that King James afterwards took towards 
 the introducing of Popery into the nation. If he is not slandered, 
 it was he advised the setting-up Popish chapels and mass-houses in 
 the city of London, and in the several principal towns of this nation; 
 the invading the right of corporations, courts of justice, universities, 
 and at last the erecting the High Commission Court of Justice, to 
 sap the foundations of the church ; and many more of the arbitrary 
 steps which that monarch took for the ruin of the Protestant reli- 
 gion, as he thought, were brought about by this politic earl purely 
 with design, and as the only effectual means, to ruin the Popish 
 schemes, and bring about the establishment of the Protestant reli- 
 gion by the Revolution ; and, as experience after made it good, he 
 alone was in the right, and it was the only way left, the only step 
 that could be taken ; though at first it made us all of the opinion 
 the man was going the ready way to ruin the country, and that he 
 was selling us to Popery and Rome. This was exactly our case ; 
 the nation being sick of a deadly and otherwise incurable disease, 
 this wise physician knew that nothing but a medicine made up of 
 deadly poison, that should put the whole body into convulsions, and 
 make it cast up the dregs of the malady, would have any effect ; and 
 so he applied himself accordingly to such a cure. He brought on 
 Popery to the very door ; he caused the nation to swallow as much 
 of it as he thought was enough to make her as sick as a horse, and 
 then he foresaw she would spew up the disease and the medicine 
 together ; the poison of Popery he saw would come up with it, and 
 so it did, If this be our case now, then it may be true, that bringing 
 in the Pretender is the only way to establish the Protestant succes- 
 sion ; and upon such terms, and such only, I declare myself for the 
 Pretender." 
 
 There is nothing unconstitutional in these books, for they merely 
 
 27* 
 
420 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 state that the title of her Majesty to the throne was by the compact 
 entered into between William III. and the people, at the Revolution 
 of 1688 ; and that the people should be on their guard against any 
 sudden surprise on the part of any enemies of that Revolution en- 
 deavouring to cheat the people out of the benefits resulting from 
 that solemn compact. To us, unacquainted with all the intricacies of 
 the party malevolence of the reign of Queen Anne, it would be inex- 
 plicable to conceive how any Whig of that day, and friend of the 
 glorious Revolution, could commence legal proceedings against 
 Daniel De Foe for writing such salutary advice as that contained in 
 this one pamphlet. The real point of attack was the Mercator ; for 
 the free-trade principles of that paper threatened the monopoly of 
 rent, and the exclusive interests of landlordism. In this hour of 
 difficulty, De Foe stole away to Halifax, in Yorkshire, where he 
 took up his quarters for some time, at the Rose and Crown, in the 
 Back Lane; where he was known to Dr. Nettleton, an eminent 
 physician and moralist ; and also to the Rev. Nathaniel Priestley, 
 of Ovenden, who had the charge of the then Trinitarian Presby- 
 terian congregation assembling at the Northgate Chapel, Halifax, 
 and also another congregation at Horton, near Bradford : a man 
 esteemed and beloved by his people, as the fact of their declining to 
 part with him, when Ralph Thoresby, the Leeds historian, rode 
 over to Ovenden, to request him to take charge of the congregation 
 assembling at Mill Hill Chapel, in Leeds, on some occasion of a 
 vacancy occurring at that place of worship. It is highly probable 
 that De Foe would not have much of the company of the Rev. 
 Thomas Burton, the vicar ; who was of Harley's appointment, and 
 was distinguished beyond all other English vicars, for sermons 
 degraded by fulsome adulation of royalty and passive obedience of 
 subjects. Dr. Nettleton would be connected with the North Gate 
 Chapel, where De Foe would commence his acquaintance with him, 
 as well as with the minister ; for this full-blown balloon, Thomas 
 Burton, would have nothing in common with Dr. Nettleton. 
 
 Poor De Foe's publisher and printer being arrested, and sworn 
 to the writer ; he had, after some delay, to surrender himself to a 
 judge's warrant, and was committed to Newgate till sufficient bail 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 421 
 
 could be put iu for his appearance at the King's Bench bar for trial. 
 Suffice to say that his old friend the Lord Treasurer Harley came 
 forward to the rescue, with a government prosecution, and finally a 
 free pardon from the Queen. This act of Harley was noble and 
 generous ; for he knew that De Foe had really written for the 
 Hanoverian succession and against the interest of the Pretender ; 
 though I could have been well pleased if De Foe had not trenched 
 upon the subject of the Pretender at this time, for reasons I have 
 given elsewhere ; and so long as Harley had Leslie, Swift, Pope, 
 Gay, Prior, Atterbury, Ridpath, Arbuthnot, Smalridge, and a score 
 more aspirants for the Lord Treasurer's smiles and assistance, he 
 wanted not for talents and obsequiousness in pamphleteers, that he 
 should be driven to enlist poor De Foe, who had done some service 
 to the Utrecht settlement, by his free-trade opinions published in 
 the paper Mercator ; for which he was now made to feel the whole 
 weight of Whig vengeance. His pardon was granted by Harley: 
 
 "Given at our Castle of Windsor, the twentieth day of Novem- 
 ber, 1713, in the eleventh year of our reign. By her Majesty's 
 command, " BOLINGBROKE." 
 
 Such was the termination of this mean, cowardly affair ; perse- 
 cuted for his free-trade principles, and threatened with a trial for 
 high treason by the W r higs ; and rescued by Robert Harley, the 
 Queen's prime minister, as an act of charity ; though De Foe was 
 consistently arranged against Jonathan Swift and the whole hire- 
 ling scribes of the day ; the paid writers of the ministry, the High 
 Church, and the Pretender's patron the King of France. 
 
 De Foe, in his Appeal to Honour and Justice, thus expresses him- 
 self on this disgraceful, cowardly prosecution : 
 
 " Let any indifferent man judge whether I was not treated with 
 particular malice in this matter; being, notwithstanding this, re- 
 proached in the daily public prints with having written treasonable 
 books in behalf of the Pretender; nay, in some of those books, 
 the Queen herself was reproached with having granted her pardon 
 to an author who wrote for the Pretender. I think I might with 
 much more justice say, I was the first man that ever was obliged to 
 
422 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 seek a pardon for writing for the Hanover succession ; and the first 
 man these people ever sought to ruin for writing against the Pre- 
 tender. For if ever a book was sincerely designed to further and 
 propagate the affection and zeal of the nation against the Pretender 
 nay, and was made use of, and that with success too, for that 
 purpose these books were so ; and I ask no more favour of the 
 world to determine the opinion of honest men for or against me, 
 than what is drawn constructively from these books. Let one word 
 written or spoken by me, either published or not published, be pro- 
 duced, that was in the least disrespectful to the Protestant succes- 
 sion, or to any branch of the house of Hanover, or that can be 
 judged to be favourable to the interest or person of the Pretender; 
 and I will be willing to waive her Majesty 's pardon, and render my- 
 self to public justice, to be punished for it, as I shall well deserve. 
 
 " I freely and openly challenge the worst of my enemies to 
 charge me with any discourse, conversation, or behaviour, in my 
 whole life, unbecoming or disrespectful to any of the royal family of 
 Hanover, or the least favourable to the person or designs of the 
 Pretender. Nay, further : I defy them to prove that I ever kept 
 company, or had any society, friendship, or conversation with any 
 Jacobite. So averse have 1 been to the interest, and the people, 
 that I have studiously avoided their company on all occasions. 
 
 " Nothing can be a greater misfortune to me than to be accused 
 and publicly reproached with what is, of all things in the world, 
 most abhorred by me; and that which has made it the more afflicting 
 is, that this charge arises from those very things which I did with 
 the sincerest design to manifest the contrary. But such is my 
 present fate, and I am to submit to it ; which I do with meekness 
 and calmness, as to a judgment from Heaven ; and am practising 
 that duty which I have studied long ago, of forgetting my enemies, 
 and praying for them that despitefully use me." 
 
 At this time the state of the country was most unsatisfactory and 
 unsafe, from the character of the ministry ; at the head of which 
 stood Robert Harley, supported by St. John in office ; and Jonathan 
 Swift, and half the scamp-writers in London, out of office. Pam- 
 phlets and lampoons were showered upon the public as thick as 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 423 
 
 hail, and a deadly, bloody revolutionary contest between the Pre- 
 tender and the Elector of Hanover appeared to be inevitable. 
 England never was at such a pass for unscrupulous writing as at 
 the present time never in such a foreboding for evil, and a scene 
 of terror and anarchy ; and all this brought about by a dishonest, 
 unscrupulous ministry, supported by Swift and Pope ; by which 
 ministry it was brought about " in the third and last session of this 
 PACIFIC and CORRUPT PARLIAMENT," that as the time for limiting 
 Dr. Sacheverell's silence being expired on the 23rd of March, the 
 Commons, to show their dislike of his prosecution, and as a token 
 of their great sense of his merits and sufferings, who was, next 
 "under God and her Majesty, the happy instrument of delivering 
 these nations from the slavery of a late tyrannical faction/' it was 
 ordered that he should be desired to preach before the House of 
 Commons, at St. Margaret's, Westminster, on the 29th following 
 (being the day which the nation commemorated the Restoration of 
 the royal family), which the Doctor readily complied with. This 
 would be the 29th of May, 1713. 
 
 All the sons of faction were delighted with this display, and 
 voted the thanks of the House for the discourse ! And the court, 
 not to be outdone by the obsequious House of Commons, rewarded 
 the Doctor with the rectorship of St. Andrew's, Holborn, a rich 
 living in the gift of the crown. About this time, too, Jonathan 
 Swift, " who had served the present managers in another capacity, 
 viz., by writing several libels against the Whigs and last ministry, 
 was, by the Duke of Ormond, promoted to the deanery of St. Patrick, 
 Dublin ; and also Dr. Francis Atterbury, another warm stickler for 
 the Tory party, was made Bishop of Rochester ; and also Dr. Smal- 
 ridge, another, Dean of Christ Church." 
 
 At the very time that the House of Commons were thanking 
 Dr. Henry Sacheverell for his Twenty-ninth-of-May Sermon, and 
 the Queen was promoting him to a rich rectory; and promoting 
 Jonathan Swift too, and Atterbury and Smalridge, for their Toryism 
 and pamphlet-writing; for these were all of one lot, ready at the 
 pen, and unprincipled; one Helkiah Bedford, a nonjuring clergy- 
 man, was tried and convicted at the Queen's Bench bar at West- 
 
424 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 minster, for writing, printing, and publishing a treasonable book, 
 entitled the Hereditary Right of the Crown of England asserted, &c., 
 for which he was fined and imprisoned ; although the said book was 
 some months before advertised in the London Gazette; not without 
 some suspicion of the connivance of one of the secretaries of state. 
 
 Here we have another instance of the criminality of calling in 
 question the constitutional principle of the sovereignty of the 
 people of England within these realms; or the people being the 
 source of all legitimate power within the realm. 
 
 During the whole time of Harley's power as prime minister, or 
 from 1709 to 1714, every speech from the throne to the Houses of 
 Parliament, or response from the Commons, contained a paragraph 
 to the following effect : 
 
 " We are very sensible how much the liberty of the press is 
 abused, by turning it into such a licentiousness as is a just reproach 
 to the nation ; since not only false and scandalous libels are printed 
 and published against your Majesty's government, but the most 
 horrid blasphemies against God and religion. And we beg leave 
 humbly to assure your Majesty, that we will do our utmost to find 
 out a remedy equal to this mischief, and that may effectually cure it." 
 
 At the convocation of the clergy, held at this time (1712), Dr. 
 Smalridge, one of the initiated in this pamphleteering -slang war- 
 fare, made answer to the above charge : "With faith or conscience, 
 Mr. Prolocutor, can we offer to complain of the licentiousness taken 
 by lay writers, and yet connive at the like offences given by the 
 ministers of our church? I doubt greater offences? For if all 
 the ill books against religion, scriptures, laws of the land, and con- 
 stitution of this church, were here packed up together, I would 
 undertake to pick out the worst of 'em by pointing out those that 
 were written by clergymen ; even of the profanest drollery, as well 
 as of the most serious heresy." Yes, friend Smalridge ! thy 
 brother, Jonathan Swift, was a master-hand at this work; and 
 thou obtainedst promotion through it, in the Church of England, 
 and by the Queen's prime minister 1 
 
 In January, 1713, Colonel Coote, of the Foot Guards, was ordered 
 to sell his company to the adjutant of the regiment, Mr. Blackney, 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 425 
 
 for 1200, for the rejoicings he had assisted at, at the Three Tuns 
 Tavern, Gracechurch Street, on the late King William's birthday. 
 He retired from his regiment applauded and esteemed by all the 
 friends of the Revolution, and the Protestant succession of the most 
 serene house of Hanover. 
 
 The last Parliament of this uneasy reign assembled for business 
 at St. Stephen's Chapel, Westminster, under the Speakership of Sir 
 Thomas Hanmer ; and commenced, as all sessions of Parliament did 
 commence since Haiiey St. John, Swift, Leslie, and Sacheverell 
 undertook the direction of the public mind in November, 1709; 
 when Swift was enlisted by the ministry, to support the pens of 
 Sacheverell and Leslie, and write up the power of France, and the 
 claims of the Pretender to the throne of these realms. 
 
 In consequence of the Queen's indisposition in body, the meeting 
 of Parliament had to be put off from the 10th day of December, 
 1713, to the 12th day of January, 1714; and again from the 12th 
 day of January to the 16th of February; all which occurring at the 
 time of the signing of the treaty of peace at Utrecht, caused a panic 
 in the city of London, and a run on the Bank of England ; when, 
 to calm the public mind, her Majesty wrote, through her Secretary 
 of State, Bolingbroke, the following letter to Sir Samuel Stainer, 
 Knight, lord mayor of the city of London : 
 
 " ANNE R. 
 
 " Right trusty and well-beloved, an aguish indisposition, suc- 
 ceeded by a fit of the gout, has detained us at this place longer 
 than we designed ; yet, since it has pleased Almighty God to restore 
 us to such a degree of health, that we hope to be able soon to 
 return to our usual residence, we continue determined to open our 
 Parliament on Tuesday the 1 6th of this instant February, according 
 to the notice given by proclamation. 
 
 "Thus much we have judged proper to communicate to you, and 
 by you to the Court of Aldermen, and to our other loving subjects 
 of our good city of London, to the intent that you may all, in your 
 several stations, contribute to discountenance and put a stop to 
 those malicious rumours, spread by evil-disposed persons, to the 
 
426 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 prejudice of credit, and to the eminent hazard of the public peace 
 and tranquillity. And so we bid you farewell. 
 
 " By her Majesty's command, " BOLINGBROKE." 
 
 On the appointed day, Tuesday, Feb. 16, 1714, the Parliament 
 assembled at Westminster for the swearing in of members, &c., and 
 then adjourned to the 2nd of March, when the Queen opened the 
 session in person ; when, as usual in her royal speech, she states, 
 among other matters good and bad : 
 
 " I wish that effectual care had been taken, as I have often 
 desired, to suppress those seditious papers, and factious rumours ; 
 by which designing men have been able to sink credit, and the 
 innocent have suffered. 
 
 " There are some who are arrived at that height of malice as 
 to insinuate that the PROTESTANT SUCCESSION IN THE HOUSE OF 
 HANOVER is IN DANGER UNDER MY GOVERNMENT. 
 
 " Those who go about thus to distract the minds of men with 
 imaginary dangers, can only mean to disturb the present tran- 
 quillity, and to bring real mischiefs upon us. 
 
 " After all I have done to secure our religion and your liberties, 
 I cannot mention these proceedings without some degree of warmth; 
 and I hope you will all agree with me, that attempts to weaken my 
 authority, or to render the possession of the crown uneasy to me, 
 can never be proper means to strengthen the Protestant succession/' 
 
 To this address from the throne the Commons return a dutiful 
 answer, containing the following, that " they will, as far as in them 
 lies, disappoint the designs of malicious and unreasonable men ; they 
 will, on all occasions, show their just abhorrence of the licentious 
 practices in publishing scandalous papers, and spreading seditious 
 rumours. And, as your Commons will always support and main- 
 tain the Protestant succession in the house of Hanover, they can't 
 but be astonished at the malicious insinuations of any who would 
 suggest that succession to be in danger under your Majesty's most 
 auspicious government." 
 
 During the discussions on the address from the throne, the Earl 
 of Wharton, out of respect to her Majesty's views on seditious 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 427 
 
 papers, complained to the House of a scandalous libel entitled " The 
 Public Spirit of the Whigs set forth in their Generous Encourage- 
 ment of the Author of the Crisis (Sir Richard Steele) ; with some 
 Observations on the Seasonableness, Candour, Erudition, and Style 
 of that Treatise. Printed for John Morphew, near Stationers' Hall, 
 1714." The Union with Scotland; the Scotch; and in particular 
 the Earl of Argyle, who had altogether gone over to the Whig 
 party, appeared to come in for that part of the libel complained 
 of, "containing very ungentlemanlike expressions concerning the 
 poverty of the Scotch nation in general ; and comparing that country 
 (England) with which it was incorporated, to a person of quality, 
 that had been prevailed upon to marry a woman much his inferior, 
 and without a groat to her fortune." The author of it likewise had 
 the assurance to affirm therein, "that the pensions and employ- 
 ments possessed by the natives of that country (Scotland) now 
 among us, amount to more than the whole body of their nobility 
 spent at home ; and that all the money that was raised there upon 
 the public, was hardly sufficient to defray their civil and military 
 lists ; and also said, he could point out some with great titles, who 
 affected to appear very vigorous for dissolving the Union, though 
 their whole revenues before that period would have ill maintained a 
 Welsh justice of the peace ; and had since gathered more money 
 than ever any Scotchman, who had not travelled, could form an 
 idea of." 
 
 This complaint made by the Earl of Wharton being warmly 
 espoused by the majority of the House, the Lord High Treasurer 
 (Harley) protested he knew nothing of that pamphlet ; exclaimed 
 against the malicious insinuations contained in it; and readily 
 joined in an order for taking up Mr. John Morphew, the printer, 
 and putting him into the custody of the Black Rod. 
 
 On the above, Richard Steele, Esq., observes : " There were not 
 wanting persons in that august assembly who were too well ac- 
 quainted with a certain great man's veracity, not to suspect anything 
 in him, rather than want of knowledge ; and it was whispered about 
 that he that wrote it, had said grace more than once (Swift), and 
 fouled many a plate, at a nobleman's table in York Buildings " (the 
 Lord High Treasurer's residence). 
 
428 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 On the investigation proceeding, Barber, the printer, was examined 
 by the House; and on his declaration that he had no information to 
 give, " None at all, upon my honour," which put the House into 
 a violent fit of laughter, from the meanness of the person that 
 made the answer, and the air of quality which he gave himself in 
 making it. 
 
 The Peers were very diligent in tracing out such footsteps as 
 might best lead to the fountain-head from whence these streams of 
 scandal and detraction first sprung; and they omitted nothing to 
 make the discovery ; yet such were the counter-practices of some 
 whose business it was to have the author concealed, that her Majesty 
 was prevailed upon to take cognizance of that affair into her own 
 hands in one of her courts at Westminster; and on the 6th of 
 March, 1714, the Earl of Marr, one of the principal secretaries of 
 state, had it in command to acquaint the House, that orders had 
 been already given for the prosecution of John Barber; which put a 
 stop to all further inquiries about that matter in a parliamentary way. 
 
 Three days after, Barber and Morphew were, upon their humble 
 request, enlarged from confinement ; and on the 9th, the same day 
 of their enlargement, pardoned ; the Lords resolved upon an address, 
 which was reported and agreed to on the llth, and on the 15th, 
 presented, on the subject ; detailing what steps they had taken in 
 the matter. The whole affair ended in an address to her Majesty, 
 that she would be pleased to issue out her proclamation for that 
 purpose; which her Majesty complied with; offering a reward 
 of 300; but Jonathan Swift, the supposed author, remained 
 undiscovered. 
 
 The Commons also took up the Queen's speech, which ended in 
 long discussions on three pamphlets by Richard Steele, Esq., a 
 member of that House; namely, the Englishman, the Crisis, and 
 also another number of the Englishmnn ; when the following reso- 
 lution was proposed to the House, and carried by all the force of 
 the government, by 245 votes against 152, which ended in the expul- 
 sion of Richard Steele, Esq., from the House of Commons : 
 
 "That a printed pamphlet, entitled the Englishman, being the 
 close of a paper so called ; and one other pamphlet, entitled the 
 Crisis, written by Richard Steele, Esq., a member of that House, 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 429 
 
 were scandalous and seditious libels, containing many expressions 
 highly reflecting upon her Majesty, and upon the nobility, gentry, 
 clergy, and universities of the kingdom, maliciously insinuating that 
 the Protestant succession in the house of Hanover was in danger 
 under her Majesty's administration ; and tending to alienate the 
 affections of her Majesty's good subjects, and to create jealousies 
 and divisions among them." 
 
 The state of national affairs at this time was truly alarming, 
 the present House of Commons being more corrupt than the last ; 
 and the House of Lords being led by the Earl of Wharton (on the 
 Protestant succession being in danger), he being the successor, for 
 this motion, of the late William Cavendish, the first Duke of Devon- 
 shire, who, when alive, appeared to think the motion his own, session 
 by session ; backed as he was in the Commons with the same 
 motion by Richard Hampden. 
 
 In the beginning of April, the Lords took into consideration the 
 state of the nation, particularly " whether the Protestant succession 
 was in danger from her Majesty's administration;" which, being 
 put to the vote, was carried in the negative by twelve votes. On 
 the 12th, they addressed her Majesty, " humbly beseeching her, 
 that, whenever she should judge it necessary, she would issue a 
 proclamation, promising a suitable reward to any person who should 
 apprehend and bring the Pretender to justice, in case he should 
 land, or attempt to land, either in Great Britain or Ireland." To 
 this the Queen answered, " It would be a real strengthening to the 
 succession in the house of Hanover, as well as a support to my 
 government, that an end were put to those groundless fears and 
 jealousies which have been so industriously promoted. I do not at 
 this time see any occasion for such a proclamation; whenever I judge 
 it to be necessary, I shall give my orders for having one issued." 
 
 Poor Queen Anne ! a good, pious, confiding woman, in the hands 
 of bad men. From 1702 till 1710, the church was always falling ; 
 either the chancel or the steeple had given way ; always, in season 
 and out of season, " The church was in danger," 
 
 till all the town, 
 
 To save the church, had pulled the steeple down. 
 
430 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 Now, in 1710, the church was saved by Harley, St. John, Leslie, 
 Swift, Prior, Gay, and others; when the cry ceased; but then the 
 cry of the throne was in danger was raised in the House of Lords, 
 in the Commons, and through the country; till the poor Queen's life 
 must have been truly miserable, and it did, in fact, hasten her end ; 
 for she died at an age not exceeding fifty years. This poor woman 
 was fairly worried to death, as we shall presently see. The Com- 
 mons forced the poor Queen to offer a reward of 100,000 for the 
 apprehending the Pretender whenever he should land, or attempt to 
 land, in her Majesty's dominions. The Lords backed this procla- 
 mation and reward ; and the Earl of Wharton, holding the procla- 
 mation in his hand, spoke with great force upon the occasion. 
 
 The state of things, both in Parliament and out, had arrived at 
 an awful crisis; which Richard Steele, Esq., thus describes, March 30, 
 1714 : " According to the situation of affairs, nothing but Divine 
 Providence can prevent a civil war within a few years ; and against 
 such disasters there can be no remedy but preparing our minds for 
 the incidents we are to meet with, with cheerfulness." 
 
 These ministers, to fortify their position still more, made an 
 attempt to disfranchise the dissenters, by passing a bill through both 
 Houses for forcing all dissenters within the pale of the Church of 
 England ; which would place a badge of servitude or serfdom upon 
 dissenters, act upon their feelings of respectability, or feeling of 
 prosperity ; and so be the means of educating dissenters' children 
 in church principles ; which was professed to be a " Bill to prevent 
 the Growth of Schism" perhaps I might call it a Privy-Council 
 education scheme for the year 1714 : the old French plot of 
 Louis XIV. revived ; that plot which Cardinal Richelieu imported 
 into France from the Medici of Florence ; where it was created for 
 Inquisition purposes by Ignatius Loyola. 
 
 This church-propping act enjoins 
 
 " That no person in Great Britain and Wales shall keep any 
 public or private school, or seminary, or teach or instruct youth, as 
 tutor or schoolmaster, that has not first subscribed the declaration 
 to conform to the Church of England, and has obtained license from 
 the respective diocesan or ordinary of the place ; or upon failure of 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 431 
 
 so doing may be committed to prison without bail or mainprize. 
 And that no such license shall be granted before the party produces 
 a certificate of his having received the sacrament according to the 
 communion of the Church of England, in some parish church, within 
 a year before obtaining such license, and hath subscribed the oaths 
 of allegiance and supremacy. 
 
 " That if any person, having complied with these points, shall 
 knowingly or willingly resort to any conventicle, or be present in 
 any assembly where the Queen is not prayed for, should be liable 
 to the penalty of this act, and from thenceforth be incapable to keep 
 any seminary, or instruct any youth, as tutor or schoolmaster. And 
 if any person teaches any other catechism than what is set forth in 
 the Common Prayer, his license shall be thenceforth void; and he 
 be liable to the penalties of the act ; but no person to be punished 
 twice for the same fact. Any person convicted by this act, con- 
 forming to the church for one year without having been present at 
 any conventicle, shall be again capacitated." 
 
 This bill met with great opposition in the Lords, many lords 
 entering their protests against it ; but yet it soon became law, and 
 was to come into effect on the 1st of August, the day on which the 
 Queen died. God's name be praised; this weak woman, this tool 
 for mischief, was called to her rest; and the act was repealed as 
 soon as her successor George I. came to the throne. 
 
 What is this but a Privy-Council scheme for educating dissenters' 
 children into Church-of-England principles ? te That no person in 
 Great Britain and Wales, shall keep any public or private school 
 or seminary, or teach or instruct youth, as tutor or schoolmaster, 
 that has not first subscribed the declaration to conform to the 
 Church of England ; and has obtained license from the respective 
 diocesan or ordinary of the place ; or, upon failure of so doing, may 
 be committed to prison without bail or mainprize." 
 
 We live in 1859, and Lord Derby is our prime minister, and he 
 appoints the several diocesans or licensers of schoolmasters he 
 appoints what he likes, from the Dean of York upwards he he 
 the Earl of Derby holds the whole education of the country be- 
 tween his finger and thumb. Blood of Simon de Montfort ! In 
 
432 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 the face of Magna Charta ; in the face of the Bill of Rights ; in the 
 face of the Protestant Dissenters of England I ask : should this be 
 so? In the reign of Charles II. and James II., no less than eight 
 thousand Protestants were sacrificed yes ! they and their children 
 were sacrificed for their principles principles which drove James II. 
 into exile, and caused him and his son to die paupers and pensioners 
 upon the bounty of France ; and yet Queen Anne, who owed her 
 throne entirely from the compact of the glorious Revolution of 
 1688, can wipe out the feeling of gratitude to a free people ; anni- 
 hilate their rights and privileges ; and place those rights and privi- 
 leges in the hands of her prime minister ! Disgraceful ! By the 
 betrayed blood of Sir Walter Raleigh ; by the blood of John Hamp- 
 den ; of Algernon Sidney ; and Lord William Russell No ! Lord 
 Derby indeed ! Lord Derby might edge off the odds on a horserace; 
 or sell a favourite two days before the event, and get his head 
 knuckled for doing it; but for Lord Derby, or any other prime 
 minister of England, to hold the future destinies of England at the 
 beck or nod of his patronage, is truly absurd ; is truly insulting. 
 
 Mr. Bromley, one of the secretaries of state, offered to compomise 
 the matter, by withdrawing this bill, if the dissenters would forego 
 their privileges of voting for members of Parliament ; and their 
 privileges, too, of sitting in the House as members. This comes of 
 allowing the executive to tamper with the education of the people; 
 the principle is dangerous; and, if carried out, unconstitutional. 
 Whenever we see a government attempting to shackle, by any 
 means whatever, the vitality of Protestantism, we may rest assured 
 that the whole machinery for enslaving the people is concealed 
 somewhere near at hand. The pretence may be religion, or it may 
 be education ; but the reality will be found to be slavery, at the 
 hands of priestly domination. It is one sect attempting to lord it 
 over all other sects. It may be the Church sect, or the Quaker sect, 
 or the Methodist sect, the Roman Catholic sect, or th e Unitarian 
 sect ; Independent or Presbyterian ; Adoniram or Muggletonian : 
 call it by what name you like there it is, and there it will remain; 
 so long as the people of England allow it to remain. It is priest- 
 craft all over : cant is its means, and oppression is its end. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 433 
 
 While these plots against civil and religious liberty were being 
 concocted in the Commons, under the name and pretence of educa- 
 tion, a pamphlet appeared " A Letter to the Dissenters. London, 
 sold by John Morphew, near Stationers' Hall, 1715. Price 6d. 
 8vo : " a letter written against the Whigs for their neglect on the 
 bill against occasional conformity. The object of this pamphlet 
 was to prepare the dissenters for what they might expect, and also 
 to warn them from trusting in the Whigs for real assistance. It 
 is not known who wrote this book ; but common report at the time 
 ascribed it to Daniel De Foe ; and Oldmixon, who was a good judge 
 of De Foe's movements for he watched him narrowly with the eye 
 of a Whig partisan and well-paid official Oldmixon, in his " Re- 
 marks on the Letter to the Dissenters ; by a Churchman ; London, 
 1714; 8vo :" observes: "It is very easy to discover that the 
 author of the f Letter to the Dissenters ' is some inconsiderable 
 wretch, that has sold both his principles and pen to a faction, 
 enemies to the liberty of their country. I am ashamed to mark 
 out the person on whom this libel is fathered : net so much on 
 account of his being rendered infamous by law, as for the greater 
 infamy he has loaded himself with, of late years, in the service of 
 France and her friends." Oldmixon was a well-fed and well-paid 
 Whig partisan, or political runner ; and of course looked up to the 
 party as his paymasters ; but De Foe stood higher, and looked upon 
 the Whigs as I look upon the Three Tailors of Tooley Street the 
 self-styled people of England. De Foe knew the party of Whigs, 
 and despised them. I have seen something of the party, after the 
 lapse of one hundred and fifty years ; and I have not an exalted 
 opinion of the party. No ? Why not ? Lord John Russell's Church 
 Reform Bill, which was a fraud a fraud ? Yes dishonest ; before 
 God and man, I say, dishonest. A bad shilling passed for a good 
 one, upon a confiding people ! It was not necessary that Lord John 
 Russell should give a reform in the Church of England ; but, if he 
 did give such a measure, that measure should have been honest ; 
 but it was not honest. 
 
 Well, again, when Cobden, Bright, Wilson, Rawson, and some 
 hundreds more, stepped out from the ranks to carry the repeal of 
 
 28 
 
434 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 the corn laws, how did certain Whig gentry and Whig M.P.'s act? 
 May I say meanly and cowardly; in going before large constituen- 
 cies of unbought and unbuyable Englishmen at the election time ; 
 and seizing upon the laurels of that victory which Richard Cobclen 
 and John Bright had won? Did Whigs do this? And am I right 
 when I say that Whigs were mean, cowardly, and contemptible, 
 when they did this? The Oldmixons of our days, the hired runners 
 of party, may rail at the De Foes; but the act of cowardice remains. 
 Richard Cobden and John Bright fought the battle ; and you have 
 had the meanness to assume the honours of the victory. Did many 
 leading Whig politicians, aspiring statesmen, do this, on the corn- 
 law agitation ? 
 
 On the 27th of July, 1714, Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford and 
 Mortimer, was removed from his office of Lord High Treasurer of 
 Great Britain. This was done through the intriguing of Boling- 
 broke and Mrs.Masham, the Queen's confidential friend; these two 
 being especially interested, along with the Queen, in the success of 
 the pretensions of the Pretender, to the exclusion of the pretensions 
 of the house of Hanover to the throne, on the Queen's demise. 
 This removal of the Lord Treasurer from office was accompanied 
 with great confusion and loud contention in the council- chamber ; 
 where warm expostulations and most bitter reproaches passed in 
 the Queen's hearing between the falling minister, the Lord Chan- 
 cellor, and Lord Bolingbroke. These contentions were carried on 
 in the royal presence on the night of the 27th of July, till two 
 o'clock the following morning. The following day (July 28th), 
 another council was held ; but nothing could be fixed upon as to 
 the successor to the Earl of Oxford. A third cabinet council was 
 appointed to be held the next day, but was adjourned on account of 
 her Majesty's indisposition, which she herself imputed to the fatigue 
 and disturbance this affair had created ; she intimating the same to 
 her physicians and nearest attendants, and adding that "she should 
 hardly outlive it." 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE poor Queen was now very ill, the physicians and surgeons 
 summoned, and a privy council called; to which the Dukes of 
 Somerset and Argyle went uninvited, they claiming their privilege 
 as privy councillors ; others followed their example in quick suc- 
 cession ; Bolingbroke and Mrs. Masham were outmarched by their 
 opponents : the Queen was dead ; and the council was seized by a 
 strong majority of adherents of the house of Hanover; and from 
 this moment down went the prospects of the Pretender. 
 
 Immediate steps were at once taken for the security of the cities 
 of London and Westminster, even two days before the Queen's 
 death ; and orders were given to the heralds at arms, and the Life 
 Guards (for the Queen might die at any moment), to be in readi- 
 ness to mount at the first warning, in order to proclaim the Elector 
 of Hanover, King of Great Britain ; and as Portsmouth had been 
 left in a defenceless state (perhaps on purpose), six hundred men, 
 out-pensioners of Chelsea Hospital, were marched there under 
 Colonel Pocock, and such half-pay officers as were at hand ; Briga- 
 dier Whetham was ordered off to Scotland ; and the same day the 
 fleet was placed under the command of the Earl of Berkeley. 
 
 Her Majesty expired on the 1st of August, in the fiftieth year of 
 her age ; a good woman as wife, mother, and queen ; but yet not 
 a woman of a strong mind No ! she was a weak-minded woman, 
 the prey of bad, designing men. While all this was going on at 
 court, Dr. Jonathan Swift was skulking off to Reading, in Berk- 
 shire, till the Queen should die, and be buried; when he further 
 skulked to Ireland, to his deanery of St. Patrick's, the proceeds of 
 his iniquity ; where he remained for the remainder of his life. 
 
 De Foe, in his Appeal to Honour and Justice, affirms, " that no 
 sooner was the Queen dead, and the King, as right required, pro- 
 
 28* 
 
436 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 claimed, but the rage of men increased upon me to that degree, 
 that the threats and insults I received were such as I am not able 
 to express. If I offered to say a word in favour of the present 
 settlement, it was called fawning and twining round again. On the 
 other hand, though I have meddled neither one way or other, nor 
 written one book since the Queen's death, yet a great many things 
 are called by my name; and I bear every day the reproaches which 
 all the answerers of those books cast, as well upon the subject as 
 the authors. I have not seen nor spoken to my Lord of Oxford 
 but once since the King's landing, nor received the least message, 
 order, or writing, from his lordship, or any other way corresponded 
 with him; yet he bears the reproach of my writing in his defence; 
 and I the rage of men for doing it. I cannot say it is no affliction 
 to me to be thus used, though my being entirely clear of the fact, 
 is a true support to me." 
 
 From the above quotation it would appear that the public believed 
 De Foe to be connected with the ministry when he wrote the three 
 pamphlets on the Pretender's coming; and also that they believed 
 him to be in favour of the Pretender when he wrote those pamphlets. 
 
 On the appearing shortly afterwards of the Secret History of the 
 White Staff, the public were only confirmed in their previous 
 opinion of that connection subsisting between the late ministry and 
 De Foe; on which Oldmixon, in his History of England, vol. iii. 
 p. 537, observes : " One cannot doubt but the Secret History of the 
 White Staff, a pamphlet Foe wrote soon after King George's acces- 
 sion to the throne, was by the Earl of Oxford's directions; and that 
 the most natural hints for it came from him, because the whole 
 treatise is calculated for his vindication ; and Foe depended upon 
 him too much to dare to publish any such thing without his parti- 
 cipation and consent." 
 
 As the tide of popular feeling had fully set in against De Foe 
 after the writing (as was supposed) in favour of the Pretender ; and 
 also his writing a vindication of Harley in his administration of 
 public affairs; he, poor fellow, was fairly hooted from the ground of 
 politics ; that ground on which he had done more than any living 
 man on behalf of civil and religious liberty ; and he had done it for 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 437 
 
 the detraction of all parties, and without the thanks of any mortal 
 man. He lived isolated for thirty years as a politician ; neglected 
 by Whigs and abhorred by Tories. Howe would not pray with 
 him when in Newgate, in 1703 ; and Jonathan Swift did not know 
 the fellow' 's name ! 
 
 De Foe now wrote " An Appeal to Honour and Justice, though 
 it be of his worst Enemies. By Daniel De Foe. Being a true 
 Account of his Conduct in Public Affairs. Jer. xvii. 18. London, 
 printed for J. Baker, 1715. 8vo, pp. 58 :" in which he commences 
 by hoping " the time is come at last, when the voice of moderate 
 principles may be heard. Hitherto the noise has been so great, and 
 the prejudices and passions of men so strong, that it had been but 
 in vain to offer any argument, or for any man to talk of giving a 
 reason for his actions; and this alone has been the cause why, when 
 other men, who, I think, have less to say in their own defence, are 
 appealing to the public, and struggling to defend themselves, I alone 
 have been silent under the infinite clamours and reproaches, cause- 
 less curses, unusual threatenings, and the most unjust and injurious 
 treatment in the world. 
 
 "I hear much of people calling out to punish the guilty; but 
 very few are concerned to clear the innocent. I hope some will be 
 inclined to judge impartially, and have yet reserved so much of the 
 Christian as to believe, and at least to hope, that a rational creature 
 cannot abandon himself so as to act without some reason, and are 
 willing not only to have me defend myself, but to be able to answer 
 for me; when they hear me causelessly insulted by others, and, 
 therefore, are willing to have such arguments put into, their mouths 
 as the cause will bear. 
 
 "I.I think I have been long enough made fabula vulgi, and 
 borne the weight of general slander; and I should be wanting to 
 truth, to my family, and to myself, if I did not give a fair and true 
 state of my conduct, for impartial men to judge of, when I am no 
 more in being to answer for myself. 2. By the hint of mortality, 
 and by the infirmities of a life of sorrow and fatigue, I have reason 
 to think I am not a great way from, if not very near to, the great 
 ocean of eternity, and the time may not be long ere I embark on 
 
438 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 the last voyage. Wherefore, I think I should have even accounts 
 with this world before I go, that no actions (slanders) may lie 
 against my heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns, to disturb 
 them in the peaceable possession of their father's (character) in- 
 heritance. 3. I fear God grant I have not a second sight in it 
 that this lucid interval of temper and moderation, which shines, 
 though dimly too, upon us at this time, will be but of short con- 
 tinuance, and that some men, who know not how to use the advan- 
 tage God has put into their hands with moderation, will push, in 
 spite of the best prince in the world, at such extravagant things, 
 and act with such an intemperate forwardness, as will revive the 
 heats and animosities which wise and good men were in hopes should 
 be allayed by the happy accession of the King to the throne." 
 
 " I come next to the general clamour of the ministry being for 
 the Pretender. I must speak my sentiments solemnly and plainly, 
 as I always did in that matter, viz.) that if it was so, I did not see 
 it, nor did I ever see reason to believe it ; this I am sure of, that if 
 it was so, I never took one step in that kind of service ; nor did I 
 ever hear one word spoken by any one of the ministry, that I had 
 the honour to know or converse with, that favoured the Pretender ; 
 but have had the honour to hear them all protest, that there was no 
 design to oppose the succession of Hanover in the least. It may be 
 objected to me, that they might be in the interest of the Pretender 
 for all that ; it is true they might ; but that is nothing to me. I 
 am not vindicating their conduct, but my own ; as I never was em- 
 ployed in anything that way, so I do still protest, I do not believe 
 it was ever in their design ; and I have many reasons to confirm my 
 thoughts, which are not material to the present case. But, be that 
 as it will, it is enough to me that I acted nothing in any such 
 interest, neither did I ever sin against the Protestant succession of 
 Hanover in thought, word, or deed ; and if the ministry did, I did 
 not see it, or so much as suspect them of it. It was a disaster to 
 the ministry, to be driven to the necessity of taking that set of men 
 by the hand, who, nobody can deny, were in that interest ; but as 
 the former ministry answered, when they were charged with a 
 design to overthrow the church, because they were favoured, joined 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 439 
 
 with, and were united to the dissenters ; I say they answered, that 
 they made use of the dissenters, but granted them nothing (which, 
 by the way, was too true) ; so those gentlemen answer, that it is 
 true they made use of the Jacobites, but did nothing for them. But 
 this by the bye. Necessity is pleaded by both parties for doing 
 things which neither side can justify. I wish both sides would for 
 ever avoid the necessity of doing evil ; for certainly it is the worst 
 plea in the world, and generally made use of for the worst things. 
 
 " I have often lamented the disaster which employing Jacobites 
 was to the ministry ; and certainly it gave the greatest handle to 
 their enemies. But there was no medium. The Whigs refused 
 to show them a safe retreat, or to give them the least opportunity 
 to take any other measures, but at the risk of their own destruc- 
 tion ; and they ventured upon that course in hopes of being able to 
 stand alone at last, without help of either the one or the other ; in 
 which, no doubt, they were mistaken. However, in this part, as I 
 was always assured, and have good reason to believe, that her 
 Majesty was steady in the interest of the house of Hanover; so, as 
 nothing was ever offered to me, or required of me, to the prejudice 
 of that interest, on what ground can I be reproached with the secret 
 reserved designs of any, if they had such designs, as I verily believe 
 they had not?" 
 
 Poor De Foe ! his unfortunate connection with the late ministry, 
 and the odium that connection threw upon him, preyed so upon his 
 spirits, as to bring on an attack of apoplexy; which endangered his 
 life for a long period, and laid him up altogether from literary pur- 
 suits for many months ; the attack leaving him in a very precarious 
 and shattered condition of health for a long time. 
 
 In the early part of the year 1715, "The Family Instructor; in 
 three Parts; with a Recommendatory Letter by the Rev. S. Wright. 
 London, sold by Emanuel Matthews, at the Bible in Paternoster 
 Row," appeared; the work being divided into three portions: 
 1 : To Father and Children. 2 : To Masters and Servants. 3 : To 
 Husbands and Waives. This work had a great run for many years, 
 and passed through twenty editions or more ; and especially in years 
 
440 LITE OF DE FOE. 
 
 soon after the accession of George I. to the throne ; because the 
 name of the author (Daniel De Foe) was studiously kept out of 
 sight; the author fearing that his name and reputation would 
 damage the usefulness of the book, in the domestic family circle. 
 The royal children of the court of George I. were instructed in it ; 
 and the copy used in the royal nursery is still kept as a relic in the 
 British Museum. I would gladly have given a long quotation from 
 so truly valuable a book; but the dialogue style and lengthy subject 
 prevent the extracts being made profitably ; especially when there 
 are books which will imperatively call for copious extracts. 
 
 In 1718, De Foe published a second volume to the above, entitled 
 ( ' The Family Instructor ; in two Parts. 1 : Relating to Family 
 Breaches, and their obstructing Religious Duties. 2 : To the great 
 mistake in mixing the Passions in the Management and Correcting 
 of Children. With a great variety of Cases relating to setting ill 
 Examples to Children and Servants. Vol. ii. London, printed for 
 Emanuel Matthews, at the Bible in Paternoster Row, 1718." 
 
 In 1719 appeared the work which has been the most read; and 
 which alone would have handed the name of the author as one of 
 England' s greatest geniuses to the furthest posterity and that book 
 is entitled "The Life and strange surprising Adventures of ROBIN- 
 SON CRUSOE, of York, Mariner ; who lived eight-and -twenty years 
 all alone in an uninhabited Island on the Coast of America, near 
 the Mouth of the Great River Oroonoque; having been cast on 
 shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. 
 With an Account how he was at last strangely delivered by Pirates. 
 Written by Himself, London, printed for William Taylor, at the 
 Ship, in Paternoster Row, 1719." The first edition was issued with 
 the following modest preface : 
 
 " If ever the story of any private man's adventures in the world 
 were worth making public, and were acceptable when published, the 
 Editor of this account thinks this will be so. The wonders of this 
 man's life exceed all that he thinks are to be found extant ; the life 
 of one man being scarce capable of a greater variety. The story is 
 told with modesty, with seriousness, and with a religious application 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 441 
 
 of events to the uses to which wise men always apply them, viz., to 
 the instructions of others by example; and to justify and honour the 
 wisdom of Providence in all the variety of their circumstances, let 
 them happen how they will. The Editor believes the thing to be a 
 just history of fact ; neither is there any appearance of fiction in it. 
 However this may be, for all such things are disputed, he is of 
 opinion that the improvement of it, as well as the diversion, as to 
 the instruction of the reader, will be the same; and as such, he 
 thinks, without further compliment to the world, he does them a 
 great service in the publication/' 
 
 Shortly afterwards appeared " The Further Adventures of ROBIN- 
 SON CRUSOE ; being the Second and last Part of his Life, and the 
 strange surprising Accounts of his Travels round three Parts of the 
 Globe. Written by Himself. To which is added, a Map of the 
 World, in which is delineated the Voyages of Robinson Crusoe. 
 London, printed for William Taylor, 1719." The following is the 
 Preface to this Second Part : 
 
 " The success the former part of this work has met with in the 
 world, has yet been no other than is acknowledged to be due to the 
 surprising variety of the subject, and the agreeable manner of the 
 performance. All the endeavours of envious people to reproach it 
 with being a romance, to search it for errors in geography, incon- 
 sistency in the relation, and contradictions in the fact, have proved 
 abortive, and as impotent as malicious. The just application of 
 every incident, the religious and useful inferences drawn from every 
 part, are so many testimonies to the good design of making it 
 public, and must legitimate all the parts that may be called inven- 
 tion, or parable, in the story. The second part, if the Editor's 
 opinion may pass, is (contrary to the usage of second parts, every 
 way as entertaining as the first, contains as strange and surprising 
 incidents, and as great a variety of them. Nor is the application 
 less serious or suitable ; and doubtless will, to the sober as well as 
 ingenious reader, be every way as profitable and diverting. And 
 this makes the abridging this work as scandalous as it is knavish 
 and ridiculous ; seeing, while to shorten the book that they may 
 
442 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 seem to reduce the value, they strip it of all those reflections, as 
 well religious as moral, which are not only the greatest beauties of 
 the work, but are calculated for the infinite advantage of the reader. 
 By this, they leave the work naked of its brightest ornaments ; and 
 if they would, at the same time, pretend that the author has sup- 
 plied the story out of his own invention, they take from it the 
 improvement which alone recommends that invention to wise and 
 good men. The injury these men do the proprietor of this work, is 
 a practice all honest men abhor ; and he believes he may challenge 
 them to show the difference between that and robbing on the high- 
 way, or breaking open a house. If they can't show any difference 
 in the crime, they will find it hard to show why there should be any 
 difference in the punishment ; and he will answer for it, that nothing 
 shall be wanting on his part to do them justice/' 
 
 These two books on Robinson Crusoe were followed by yet another 
 named " Serious Reflections during the LIFE and surprising Ad- 
 ventures of ROBINSON CRUSOE, with his VISION of the ANGELICK 
 WORLD. London, printed for William Taylor, at the Ship and Black 
 Swan, in Paternoster Row, 1720." This work is believed to con- 
 tain many events gathered from his own life ; perhaps his remarks 
 on solitude, slander, &c. ; and also the twenty-eight years passed by 
 an individual, with whom he was acquainted, would be very appli- 
 cable to himself; besides the description of the Thanksgiving Day 
 at St. Paul's, when Queen Anne went in state to offer praises to the 
 
 God of all victories, on the victory of being obtained, 
 
 when he paid three guineas for a seat to see the mummeries per- 
 formed there. Perhaps the domestic fireside of the poet or book- 
 writer is not the place we should go to in search of domestic hap- 
 piness ; for the poet is always absorbed in thought ; annoyed at 
 slight noises from the wife or children ; irritable from want of 
 exercise, and perhaps sleep ; neglectful of the ordinary cares and 
 attentions to the means of subsistence for the family; annoyed by 
 the dunning visits of printers and paper-merchants, connected with 
 the getting up of the last two books ; besides the claims of the land- 
 lord, the baker, butcher, schoolmaster, and a host of others, however 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 443 
 
 small, all looking for a periodical settling of their small accounts, 
 independent of the sale of a poem or a satire, a history or a romance. 
 What does the kitchen know or care about Robinson Crusoe of York, 
 Moll Flanders, Captain Singleton, or Duncan Campbell ? And the 
 poor poet's wife, too, soon begins to compare notes with Mrs. Clark 
 of the bakehouse, or Mrs. Jebb, the butcher's wife; when poetry and 
 embarrassments and rags are to be laid in the opposite scale to 
 money, good trade, increasing circumstances, and a happy disposi- 
 tion, with a cheerful countenance ; when family discord follows ; 
 the poet is a butt in his own house for wife and children, who look 
 upon their poor father as a crazling and a fool ; he returns the com- 
 pliment in thought and word, " he having married a fool, and all the 
 children braiding after the mother for at their house they had 
 naught but fools." 
 
 This supposed description of a poet's family is as follows : 
 " I have heard of a man, that upon some extraordinary disgust 
 which he took at the unsuitable conversation of some of his nearest 
 relations, whose society he could not avoid, suddenly resolved never 
 to speak any more. He kept his resolution most rigorously many 
 years ; not all the tears or entreaties of his friends, no, not of his wife 
 and children, could prevail with him to break his silence. It seems it 
 was their ill behaviour to him at first was the occasion of it ; for 
 they treated him with provoking language, which frequently put 
 him into indecent passions, and urged him to rash replies ; and he 
 took this severe way to punish himself for being provoked, and to 
 punish them for provoking him. But the severity was unjustifiable : 
 it ruined his family, and broke up his house. His wife could not 
 bear it, and, after endeavouring by all the ways possible to alter his 
 rigid silence, went first away from him ; and afterwards away from 
 herself, turning melancholy and distracted. His children separated, 
 some one way and some another way, and only one daughter, who 
 loved her father above all the rest, kept with him ; tended him, 
 talked to him by signs, and lived almost dumb, like her father, 
 nearly twenty-nine years with him ; till being very sick and in a 
 high fever, delirious as we call it, or light-headed, he broke his 
 
444 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 silence, not knowing when he did it, and spoke, though wildly at 
 first. He recovered of the illness afterwards, and frequently talked 
 with his daughter, but not much, and very seldom to anybody else. 
 
 " Yet this man did not live a silent life with respect to himself. 
 He read continually, and wrote down many excellent things, which 
 deserved to have appeared in the world ; and was often heard to pray 
 to God in his solitudes very audibly, and with great fervency; but the 
 injustice which his rash vow, if it was a vow of silence, was to his 
 family, and the length he carried it, was so unjustifiable another way, 
 that I cannot say his instructions could have much force in them/' 
 
 Now, this is very likely to have been taken from his own life, for 
 he read continually, and wrote down many excellent things ; which is 
 true of De Foe : he read continually. He was as a man always con- 
 versing with the dead ; he made his bed among the tombs ; his 
 family would be comparatively strangers to him ; and the feelings 
 of the one would be alien to the other. He was a poet a writer 
 and a philosopher ; and his family felt this, and they made him feel 
 it too ; for he, their father, was not like other fathers : he wrote and 
 read and ran away ; while they worked and stayed at home ; as 
 Mrs. Pikelet, the baker's wife, would sometimes tell Mrs. Foe, what 
 her husband often said, that it would not do for him to be sitting 
 all day through, cross-legged, reading a book by the fireside. This 
 poetic life must have involved misery to all father, mother, and 
 children ; for the butcher could not be paid, and the offer of a deposit 
 of the last impression of Mother Ross as a security, would only be 
 a poor consolation to a butcher wanting ready cash, with which to 
 enter Smithfield Market as a purchaser ; for what could he do with 
 five hundred copies of Mother Ross in sheets, there ? 
 
 This poetic genius, who had to take off from his creditors for 
 weeks, months, and years together (for twenty-eight years, as has 
 been stated), except on Sundays, when a man cannot be arrested for 
 debt, wrote largely on Honesty ; and went so far as to classify the 
 varieties of this moral quality, till he had arrived at thirty-eight 
 sorts, which he was preparing to lay before the public in an elabo- 
 rate book on the subject. 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 445 
 
 In the work now before us, we have several chapters on Honesty; 
 but not that elaborate classification of genus, species, and variety, as 
 might have been expected from the elaborate book on this subject, 
 promised by the author. 
 
 Speaking of the genus Honesty, or class honesty, or honesty in 
 general, he says : 
 
 "This true honesty, too, has some little difference in it, according 
 to the soil or climate in which it grows ; and your simplers have 
 had some disputes about the sorts of it; nay, there have been great 
 heats about the several kinds of this plant, which grows in different 
 countries, and some call that honesty which others say is not ; as par- 
 ticularly they say, there is a sort of honesty in this country York- 
 shire honesty; which differs very much from that which is found in 
 these southern parts about London. Then there is a sort of Scots 
 honesty, which they say is a meaner sort than that of Yorkshire. 
 In New England, I have heard they have a kind of honesty which 
 is worse than the Scottish, and little better than the wild honesty, 
 called cunning, which I mentioned before. On the other hand, they 
 tell us, that in some parts of Asia, at Smyrna and at Constantinople, 
 the Turks have a better sort of honesty than any of us. I am sorry 
 our Turkey Company have not imported some of it, that we might 
 try whether it would thrive here or no." 
 
 After going through several sorts of honesty, he at last comes to 
 Relative Honesty, on which he says that 
 
 " A wife and children are creditors to the father of the family ; 
 and he cannot be an honest man that does not discharge his debt 
 to them, any more than he could if he did not repay money bor- 
 rowed to a stranger ; and not to lead my reader on to intricate and 
 disputed particulars ; I instance principally in those that nobody 
 can dispute ; as, first, EDUCATION. By this I mean, not only put- 
 ting children to school, which some parents think is all they have 
 to do with or for their children ; and indeed, with some, is all that 
 they know how to do or are fit to do ; I say, I do not mean this 
 only, but several other additional cares, as 1 : Directing what 
 school, what parts of learning, is proper for them ; what improve- 
 
446 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 ments they are to be taught. 2 : Studying the genius aud capaci- 
 ties of their children in what they teach them : some children will 
 voluntarily learn one thing, and can never be forced to learn 
 another; and, for want of which observing the genius of children, 
 we have so many learned blockheads in the world, who are mere 
 scholars, pedants, and no more. 3 : But the main part of this debt, 
 which relative honesty calls upon us to pay our children, is the debt 
 of Instruction, the debt of government, the debt of example. He 
 that neglects to pay any of these to his family, is a relative knave ; 
 let him value himself upon his honesty in paying his other debts as 
 much as he will. 
 
 " Secondly : After the debt of Education, there is the debt of IN- 
 DUCTION due from us to our children. The debt from a parent is 
 far from ending when the children come from school, as the brutes 
 who turn their young off from them when they are just able to pick 
 for themselves. It is our business, doubtless, to introduce them 
 into the world, and to do it in such a manner as suits the circum- 
 stances we are in, as to their supply, and the inclinations and capa- 
 cities of our children. This is a debt, the want of paying which 
 makes many children too justly reproach their parents with neglect- 
 ing them in their youth, and not giving them the necessary intro- 
 duction into the world, as might have qualified them to struggle 
 and shift for themselves. Not to do this, is to ruin our children 
 negatively, on one hand, as doing it without judgment, and without 
 regard to our family in circumstances and our children's capacities, 
 is a positive ruining them on the other. 
 
 " I could very usefully run out this part into a long discourse on 
 the necessity there is of consulting the inclinations and capacities 
 of our children, in our placing them out in the world. How many 
 a martial spirit do we find damned to trade; while we spoil many a 
 good porter, and convert the able limbs and bones of a blockhead 
 into the figure of a long robe, or a gown and cassock ? How many 
 awkward, clumsy fellows do we breed to surgery, or to music, whose 
 figures and joints, Nature originally designed, and plainly showed 
 it us by their size, were better fitted for the blacksmith's sledge 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 447 
 
 or the carpenter's axe, the waterman's oar or the carman's whip ? 
 Whence comes it to pass, that we have so many young men brought 
 up to the bar, and to the pulpit, with stammering tongues, hesita- 
 tions and impediments in their speech, unmusical voices, and no 
 common utterance; while, on the other hand, Nature's cripples, 
 bow-legged, battle-ham'd, and half-made creatures, are bred tum- 
 blers and dancing-masters? 
 
 "I name these, because they occur most to our common observa- 
 tion, and are all miserable examples where the children curse the 
 knavery of their fathers in not paying the debt they owed to them 
 as parents ; in putting them to employments tluat had been suitable 
 to their capacities, and suitable to what Nature had cut them 
 out for. 
 
 " I came into a public-house once in London, where there was a 
 black Mulatto-look'd man sitting talking very warmly among some 
 gentlemen, who, I observed, were listening very attentively to what 
 he said ; and I sat myself down and did the like. 'Twas with great 
 pleasure I heard him discourse very handsomely on several weighty 
 subjects ; I found he was a very good scholar, had been very hand- 
 somely bred, and that learning and study were his delight ; and, 
 more than that, some of the best science was at that time his em- 
 ployment ; at length I took the freedom to ask him if he were born 
 in England ? He replied with a great deal of good humour in his 
 manner, but with an excess of resentment at his father, and with 
 tears in his eyes, ' Yes, yes, sir, I am a true-born Englishman, to 
 my father's shame be it spoken ; who, being an Englishman him- 
 self, could find in his heart to join himself to a Negro woman ; 
 though he must needs know the children he should beget would 
 curse the memory of such an action, and abhor his very name for 
 the sake of it. If it had not been for this black face of mine/ said 
 he, then smiling, 'I had been bred to the law, or brought up in the 
 study of divinity ; but my father gave me learning to no purpose, 
 for he knew I should never be able to rise by it to anything but a 
 learned valet-de-chambre. What he put me to school for, I cannot 
 imagine ; he spoiled a good tarpawling w r hen he strove to make me 
 
448 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 a gentleman. When he had resolved to marry a slave, and lie with 
 a slave, he should have begotten slaves, and let us have been bred 
 as we were born. But he has twice ruined me : first, with getting me 
 with a frightful face; and then going to paint a gentleman upon me/ 
 
 " It was a most affecting discourse indeed, and as such I record 
 it ; and I found it ended with tears from the person who was in 
 himself the most deserving, modest, and judicious person that I ever 
 met with under a Negro countenance in my life. 
 
 " After this story, I persuaded myself I need say no more to this 
 case. The education of our children, their instruction, and the 
 introducing them into the world, is a part of honesty a debt we 
 owe them ; and he cannot be an honest man that does not, to the 
 utmost of his ability and judgment, endeavour to pay it." 
 
 That chapter on Dishonesty in Religion contains a very amusing 
 account of the Queen's visit to St. PauPs, to return thanks for 
 certain victories obtained by sea and land, at the commencement 
 of her reign. This public demonstration was blazoned forth on all 
 hands as the grand event of the reign ; so De Foe makes his 
 Robinson Crusoe attend, to see what difference he could perceive be- 
 tween civilized life in London, and savage life on a desolate island. 
 
 Robinson Crusoe observes on his warm inquiries after religion, 
 
 "that a thanksgiving on the battle of , for the victory 1 gained 
 
 by the English forces and their confederates, over the French, was 
 to be celebrated or performed in all state, at St. Paul's ; and it so 
 happened, that while he was thus warm in his inquiries after this 
 religious exhibition, a proclamation came out in London for appoint- 
 ing this General Thanksgiving for this great victory. 
 
 " I started at the noise, when they cried it in the streets. ' Hah/ 
 said I, ' then I have found it at last ; ' and I rejoiced in particular, 
 that having looked so much abroad for religion, I should find it out 
 at home. I then began to call myself a thousand fools, that I had 
 not saved myself all this labour, and looked at home first ; though, 
 by-the-bye, I had done no more in this than other travellers often, 
 
 1 This modest retiring routing of the French ; this victory of ! Could it 
 
 be one of Sir George Rooke's, the Lord High Admiral of England ? 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 449 
 
 or indeed, generally do, viz., go abroad to see the world, and search 
 into the curiosities of foreign countries, and know nothing of their 
 own. 
 
 "I was resolved to see the ceremonies of this pious piece of work 
 (the thanksgiving for the victory of ) ; and, as the prepara- 
 tions for it were prodigiously great, I inquired how it would be ; 
 but nobody could remember that the like had ever been in their 
 time before. Every one said it would be very fine ; that the Queen 
 would be there herself, and all the nobility ; and that the like had 
 never been seen since Queen Elizabeth's time. What, thought I, 
 can be the reason of that ? and, musing a little, ' O ! ' says I to 
 myself, ' now I have found it : I suppose nobody gives God thanks 
 in our country but queens/ But this looked a little harsh, and I 
 rummaged our histories a little for my further satisfaction ; but 
 could make nothing of it. At last, talking of it to a good old 
 Cavalier, that had been a soldier for King Charles ; ( O/ says he, 
 ( I can tell you the reason of it : they have never given thanks/ says 
 he, f because they have had nothing to give thanks for. Pray/ says 
 he, ' when have they had any victories in England since Queen 
 Elizabeth's time, except two or three in Ireland in King William's 
 time ; and then they were so busy ; had so many other losses with 
 them abroad, that they were ashamed to give thanks for them/ 
 This I found had too much truth in it; however bitter, the jest of 
 it but still heightened my expectations, and made me look for some 
 strange seriousness and religious thankfulness in the appearance 
 tbat was to be on the occasion in hand ; and accordingly I secured 
 myself a place, both without and within the church, where I might 
 be a witness to every part of the devotion and joy of the people. 
 
 " But my expectations were wound up to a greater pitch, when I 
 saw the infinite crowds of people throng with so much zeal ; as I, 
 like a charitable coxcomb, thought it to be, to the place of the 
 worship of God ; and, when I considered that it was to give God 
 thanks for a great victory, I could think of nothing else than the 
 joy of the Israelites, when they landed on the banks of the sea, 
 and saw Pharaoh's army, horses, and chariots, swallowed up behind 
 them | and I doubted not I should hear something like the song of 
 
 29 
 
450 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 Moses and the children of Israel on the occasion ; and should hear 
 it sung with the same elevation of soul. 
 
 "But when I came to the point, the first thing I observed was, 
 that nine parts of ten of all the company came there only to see the 
 Queen and the show ; and the other tenth part, I think, might be 
 said to make the show. 
 
 " When the Queen came to the rails, and descended from her 
 coach, the people, instead of crying out ' Hosannah ! blessed be the 
 Queen that cometh in the name of the Lord ' I say, the people 
 cried ' Murder/ and ' Help, for God's sake ! ' treading upon one 
 another, and stifling one another, at such a rate, that in the rear 
 of the two lines of crowds of people, through which the Queen 
 passed, it looked something like a battle, where the wounded were 
 retired to die ; and to get surgeons to come to them ; for there they 
 lay, heaps of women and children dragged from among the feet of 
 the crowd, and gasping for breath. I went among some of them, 
 and asked them, what made them go into such a crowd ? And their 
 answer was all the same : ' O, sir, I had a mind to see the Queen, 
 as the rest did/ 
 
 ' ' Well, I had my answer here indeed : for, in short, the whole 
 business of the thanksgiving without doors, was to see the Queen, 
 that was plain; so I went away to my stand, which, for no less 
 than three guineas, I had secured in the church. When I came 
 there, it was my fate to be placed between the seats where the men 
 of God performed the service of his praise; and sung out the 
 anthems and the Te Deum, which celebrated the religious triumphs 
 of the day. As to the men themselves, I liked their office, their 
 vestments, and their appearance ; all looked awful and grave enough, 
 suitable in some respects to the solemnity of a religious triumph ; 
 and I expected they would be as solemn in their performances as 
 the Levites that blowed the trumphets at Solomon's feast, when all 
 the people shouted and praised God. 
 
 " But I observed these grave people, in the intervals of their 
 worshipping God, when it was not their turn to sing or read or 
 pray, bestowed some of the rest of their time in taking snuff, ad- 
 justing their perukes, looking about at the fair ladies, whispering, 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 451 
 
 and that not very softly neither, to one another, about this fine 
 lady, that pretty woman, this fine dutchess, and that great fortune ; 
 and not without some indecencies, as well of words as of gestures. 
 1 Well/ says I, ( you are none of the people I look for ; where are 
 they that give God thanks?' Immediately the organ struck up for 
 the Te Deum, up starts all my gentlemen as if inspired from above ; 
 and from their talking together, not over modestly, fall to praising 
 God with the utmost precipitation; singing the heavenly anthems 
 with all the grace and music imaginable. 
 
 " In the middle of all this music, and these exalted things, when 
 I thought my soul elevated with divine melody, and began to be 
 reconciled to all the rest, I saw a little rustling motion among the 
 people, as if they had been disturbed or frightened. Some said 
 it thundered, some said the church shook. The true business 
 was, the Te Deum within was answered without by the thunder of 
 one hundred pieces of cannon, and the noise of drums, with the 
 huzzas and shouts of great crowds of people in the streets. This I 
 did not understand, so it did neither disturb nor concern me; I 
 found, indeed, no great harmony in it ; it bore no consort in the 
 music ; at least as I understood it ; but it was over pretty soon, and 
 so we went on. 
 
 " When the anthem was sung, and the other services succeeded 
 them, I, that had been a little disturbed with the lucid intervals of 
 the choristers, and the gentlemen that sat crowded in with them, 
 turned my eyes to other places, in hopes I should find some saints 
 among the crowd, whose souls were taken up with the exalted rap- 
 tures of the day. 
 
 " But, alas ! it was all one ; the ladies were busy singling out the 
 men, and the men the ladies. The star and garter of a fine young 
 nobleman, beautiful in person, rich in habit, and sparkling in jewels 
 his blue ribbond intimating his character, drew the eyes of so 
 many women off their Prayer Books, that I think his grace ought 
 to have been spoken to by the vergers, to have withdrawn out of the 
 church; that he might not injure the service, and rob God Almighty 
 of the homage of the day. 
 
 " As for the Queen, her Majesty was the star of the day ; and 
 
 29* 
 
452 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 infinitely more eyes were directed to her than were lifted up to 
 heaven ; though the last was the business of the whole procession. 
 ' "Well !' said I, ' this is mighty fine ! that's true; but where is the 
 religion of all this ? Heavens bless me ! ' said I, 'out of this crowd ; 
 and I '11 never mock God any more here, when the Queen comes 
 again/ 
 
 " Cannot these people go and see the Queen, where the Queen is 
 to be seen, but must they come hither to prophane the church with 
 her, and to make the Queen an idol ? And in a great passion I was, 
 both at the people and at the manner of the day, as you may easily 
 see by what follows. 
 
 "I confess the close of the day was still more extravagant ; for 
 there the thanksgiving was adjourned from the church to the tavern, 
 and to the street ; and, instead of the decency of a religious triumph, 
 there was indeed a triumph of religious indecency ; and the anthems, 
 Te Deum, and thanksgiving of the day, ended in the drunkenness, 
 the bonfires, and the squibs and crackers of the street. 
 
 " How far religion is concerned in all this, or whether God 
 Almighty will accept of these noisy doings for thanksgivings, that I 
 have nothing to do with; let those people consider of it that are 
 concerned in it." 
 
 Before quitting the Robinson- Crusoe books altogether for other 
 subjects, I may offer a remark on the name Crusoe, which would be 
 very familiar to De Foe ; for Timothy Cruso, afterwards an eminent 
 divine, was a pupil with Mr. Morton, at Newington Green Academy ; 
 probably at the same time that De Foe was there. 
 
 In 1719 appeared "The Dumb Philosopher; a faithful Account 
 of Dickory Cronke, a man dumb for fifty-eight years, but able to 
 speak a few days before he died." Next came " The Life, Adven- 
 tures, and Pyracies of Captain Singleton ;" a second ship-wrecked 
 mariner story ; a work as voluminous and perhaps as interesting as 
 his Robinson Crusoe. Then came out the life of another dumb 
 gentleman, Duncan Campbell, " who could write down a stranger's 
 name at first sight." Then appeared another volume of "The 
 Dumb Projector; or, Duncan Campbell's Voyage to Holland." 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 453 
 
 Then came " The Mysteries of Magic ; a Work on Daemons, Genii, 
 or Familiar Spirits." Then appeared " The Secret Memoirs of the 
 late Mr. Duncan Campbell." Then a poem on " The Complete Art 
 of Painting." Then came " Christian Conversation ; in six Dia- 
 logues." Then came out, from his Newgate notes, " Fortunes and 
 Misfortunes of Moll Flanders." Then came "Colonel Jacque, 
 vulgarly called Colonel Jack." Then appeared his " Memoirs 
 of a Cavalier." Then appeared the History of the Plague, en- 
 titled " Journal of the Plague Year." Then appeared " Religious 
 Courtship." 
 
 The above works appeared in quick succession, with others not 
 named, and not known with certainty to be his, during a period of 
 six years; or from 1719 to 1724. 1 could not go into them for 
 extracts ; I have no room ; suffice it to say, that the late Sir Walter 
 Scott edited an edition of these novels, in 20 vols. 12mo ; and also 
 Mr. Hazlitt's large octavo work, in three closely printed volumes, 
 contains most of these volumes ; and Mr. Walter Wilson's valuable 
 work, in three volumes, has acquired the title of " dull and heavy," 
 from his very laudable desire of doing justice to his hero, by giving 
 extract or description of every work published may I not fall into 
 the same mistake ? 
 
 In 1724 appeared "Roxana;" and in the same year appeared his 
 " Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain," in 3 vols. 8vo. 
 Next appeared " The Great Law of Subordination considered ; or, 
 the Insolence and Unsufferable Behaviour of Servants in England 
 duly inquired into : in Ten Letters." After this came a pamphlet, 
 from the same pen, entitled " Every Body's Business is Nobody's 
 Business." Soon after appeared "A New Voyage round the World." 
 Then " The Voyage of Captain Roberts " appeared. Then " An 
 Essay upon Literature; or, an Enquiry into the Antiquity and 
 Original of Letters :" 1826, 8vo. Also, in 1726, appeared another 
 book, from the same pen, entitled ' ' Mere Nature Delineated ; or, a 
 Body without a Soul ; being Observations upon the Young Forester 
 lately brought to Town from Germany." Then appeared "The 
 Political History of the Devil, as well Ancient as Modern : in Two 
 Parts :" 1726, 8vo, pp. 408. Then succeeded "A System of Magic ; 
 
454 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 or, a History of the Black Art :" 1727, 8vo, pp. 403. Then " An 
 Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions:" 1727, 8vo, 
 pp.395. Then appeared two pamphlets, entitled "The Protestant 
 Monastery." Then a work on Select Vestries, entitled " Parochial 
 Tyranny." Then a third volume of his " Family Instructor :" 1727, 
 8vo, pp. 384. Then a work for married folks, entitled " Conjugal 
 Lewdness ; or, Matrimonial Whoredom:" 8vo, pp.406. Then 
 appeared, almost last, though not least for I consider it to be the 
 best book that De Foe ever wrote ; and perhaps it is the best book 
 that ever was written in the English language : this is the book 
 which tended greatly to form the character of the great Benjamin 
 Franklin; for it is Franklin all over. I know I have seen some 
 other book named ; but " The Complete English Tradesman " is the 
 book that Benjamin Franklin would read; and it is the book which 
 Benjamin Franklin might write. It is, I say again, what I consider 
 to be the best work ever written by Daniel De Foe. This book I 
 have been lying back for, intending to give some extracts ; which is 
 the reason why I have passed over twenty valuable works without a 
 comment. The following extracts from this truly valuable book 
 may not be uninteresting. 
 
 The Preface contains the following, amongst other valuable 
 remarks : 
 
 " Tradesmen cannot live as tradesmen in the same class used to 
 live : customs, and the manner of all the tradesmen round them, 
 command a difference; and he that will not do as others do, is 
 esteemed as nobody among them, and the tradesman is doomed to 
 ruin by fear of the times. 
 
 " In short, there is a fate upon a tradesman : either he must yield 
 to the snare of the times, or be the jest of the times; the young 
 tradesman cannot resist it ; he must live as others do, or lose the 
 credit of living, and be run down as if he was broke. In a word, he 
 must spend more than he can afford to spend, and so be undone; or 
 not spend it, and so be undone. If he lives as others do, he breaks, 
 because he spends more than he gets ; if he does not, and that is to 
 lose his trade, what must he do? 
 
 " The following directions are calculated for this exigency, and to 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 455 
 
 prepare the young tradesman to stem the attacks of those fatal 
 customs, which otherwise, if he yields to them, will inevitably send 
 him the way of all the thoughtless tradesmen that have gone be- 
 fore him." 
 
 So much of the preface I quote ; I dare not give more, for fear of 
 spinning out this article too long, and so tire the reader; and spoil 
 by curtailing other notices needful to be mentioned hereafter. 
 
 " A projector is to a tradesman a kind of incendiary; he is in a 
 constant plot to blow him up, or set fire to him; for projects are 
 generally as fatal to a tradesman as fire in a magazine of gun- 
 powder. 
 
 " The honest tradesman is always in danger, and cannot be too 
 wary; and therefore, to fortify his judgment, that he may be able 
 to guard against such people as these, is one of the most necessary 
 things I can do for him. Trade must not be entered into as a thing 
 of light concern; it is called business very properly; for it is a 
 business for life, and ought to be followed as one of the great 
 businesses of life. I do not say the chief, but one of the great 
 businesses of life it certainly is ; trade must, I say, be worked at, 
 not played with; he that trades in jest, will certainly break in 
 earnest; and this is one reason, indeed, why so many tradesmen 
 come to so hasty a conclusion of their affairs. 
 
 " Never did you hear of so many commissions of bankrupt every 
 week in the Gazette as is now the case (1720) : in a word, whether 
 you take the lower sort of tradesmen, or the higher, where there 
 was twenty that failed in those days, 1 believe I speak within com- 
 pass, if I say that five hundred turn insolvent now. It is, as I said 
 above, an age of pleasure ; and as the wise man said long ago, ' he 
 that loves pleasure shall be a poor man/ So it is now : 'tis an age 
 of drunkenness and extravagance, and thousands ruin themselves 
 by that ; 'tis an age of luxurious and expensive living, and thousands 
 more undo themselves by that ; but, among all other vices, nothing 
 ruins a tradesman so effectually as the neglect of his business : it is 
 true, all those things prompt men to neglect their business, but the 
 more seasonable is the advice ; either enter upon no trade, under- 
 take no business, or, having undertaken it, pursue it diligently. 
 
456 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 DRIVE your trade, that the world may not drive you out of trade ; 
 and ruin and undo you. 
 
 " Over-trading is among tradesmen as over-lifting is among strong 
 men ; such people, vain of their strength, and their pride prompting 
 them to put it to the utmost trial, at last lift at something too heavy 
 for them, overstrain their sinews, break some of nature's bands, and 
 are cripples ever after. I take over-trading to be to a shopkeeper, 
 as ambition is to a prince. The late King of France, the great 
 King Lewis XIV., ambition led him to invade the dominions of his 
 neighbours ; and while upon the Empire here, or the States General 
 there, or the Spanish Netherlands on another quarter, he was an 
 overmatch for every one, and in their single capacity he gained 
 from them all; but at last pride made him think himself a match 
 for them altogether, and he entered into a declared war against the 
 Emperor and the Empire, the Kings of Spain and Great Britain, 
 and the States of Holland, all at once. And what was the conse- 
 quence ? They reduced him to the utmost distress ; he lost all his 
 conquests ; was obliged, by a dishonourable peace, to quit what he 
 had got by encroachment ; to demolish his invincible towns, such 
 as Pignerol, Dunkirk, &c., the two strongest fortresses in Europe ; 
 and, in a word, like a bankrupt monarch, he may in many cases be 
 said to have died a beggar." 
 
 " For a young tradesman to over- trade himself, is like a young 
 swimmer going out of his depth ; when, if help does not come imme- 
 diately, 'tis a thousand to one but he sinks, and is drowned. 
 
 " The tradesman that bays warily, always pays surely ; and every 
 young beginner ought to buy cautiously : if he has money to pay, 
 he need never fear goods to be had : the merchants' warehouses are 
 always open ; and they may supply themselves upon all occasions, 
 as they want and as their customers call. 
 
 " He, then, that keeps his credit unshaken, has a double stock ; 
 I mean, 'tis an addition to his real stock, and often superior to it ; 
 nay, I have known several considerable tradesmen in this City, who 
 have traded with great success, and to a very considerable degree, 
 and yet have not had at bottom one shilling real stock ; but by the 
 strength of their reputation, being sober and diligent, and having 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 457 
 
 with care preserved the character of honest men, and the credit of 
 their business by cautious dealing and punctual payments, they 
 have gone on till the gaiu of their trade has effectually established 
 them, and they have raised estates out of nothing." 
 
 Again: "A tradesman drest up fine, with his long wig and 
 sword, may go to the ball when he pleases, for he is already drest up 
 in the habit ; like a piece of counterfeit money, he is brass washed 
 over with silver, and no tradesman will take him current; he may 
 go to the merchant's warehouse, and buy anything with money, but 
 nobody will deal with him without it ; he may write upon his edged 
 hat, as a certain tradesman, after having been once broken and set 
 up again f I neither give nor take credit/ and, as others set up in 
 their shops, ' No trust by retail/ so he may say, ' No trust by 
 wholesale/ In short, thus equipped, he is truly a tradesman in 
 masquerade, and must pass for such wherever he is known. How 
 long it may be before his dress and he may suit, is not hard to 
 guess. Some will have it that this expensive way of living began 
 among the tradesmen first ; that is to say, among the citizens of 
 London ; and that their eager resolved pursuit of that empty and 
 meanest kind of pride, called imitation viz., to look like gentry, 
 and appear above themselves drew them into it. It has, indeed, 
 been a fatal custom, but it has been too long a City vanity. If 
 men of quality lived like themselves, men of no quality would strive 
 to live, not like themselves ; if those had plenty, these would have 
 profusion ; if those had enough, these would have excess ; if those 
 had what was good, these would have what was rare and exotic I 
 mean as to season, and, consequently, dear. And this is one of 
 the ways that has worn out so many tradesmen before their time. 
 
 " This extravagance, wherever it began, had its first rise among 
 those sorts of tradesmen, who, scorning the society of their shops 
 and customers, applied themselves to rambling to courts and plays ; 
 kept company above themselves, and spent their hours in such com- 
 pany as lives always above them. This could not but bring great 
 expense along with it ; and that expense would not be confined to the 
 bare keeping such company abroad; but soon showed itself in a living 
 like them at home, whether the tradesman could support it or no. 
 
458 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 " Keeping high company abroad certainly brings on visitings and 
 high treatings at home ; and these are attended with costly furni- 
 ture, rich clothes, and dainty tables. How these things agree with 
 a trademan's income, 'tis easy to suggest; and that, in short, these 
 measures have sent so many tradesmen to the Mint and to the Fleet, 
 where I am witness to it, that they have still carried on their expen- 
 sive living, till they have come at last to starving and misery ; but 
 have been so used to it, that they could not abate it, or, at least, 
 not quite leave it off, though they wanted the money to pay for it." 
 
 Again : " I cannot but mention one thing here (though I pur- 
 pose to give you one discourse on that subject by itself), namely, 
 the great and indispensable obligation there is upon a tradesman 
 always to acquaint his wife with the truth of his circumstances; and 
 not to let her run on in ignorance, till she falls with him down the 
 precipice of an unavoidable ruin ; a thing no prudent woman should 
 do, and therefore will never take amiss a husband's plainness in that 
 particular case. But I reserve this to another place, because I am 
 rather directing my discourse at this time to the tradesman at his 
 beginning, and, as it may be supposed, unmarried." 
 
 I must stop somewhere with my quotations ; and I might as well 
 stop here, without I am prepared to transcribe the whole of two 
 volumes of the best work I ever read, for sound principle and good 
 advice given to young men in the middle ranks of life, starting in 
 the world. It has been said that the study of this work laid the 
 foundation of the character of the great Benjamin Franklin ; it is 
 Franklin all over, and one particular passage Franklin has adopted 
 as his own, changing the circumstances, trades, professions, or 
 callings of the actors in the scene ; it is this : 
 
 " I have heard of a young apothecary, who, setting up in a part 
 of the town where he had not much acquaintance, and fearing much 
 whether he should get into business, hired a man acquainted with 
 such business, and made him be every morning between five and 
 six, and often late in the evenings, working at the great mortar, 
 pounding and beating, though he had nothing to do with it but 
 beating some very needless thing, that all his neighbours might hear 
 it, and find that he was in full employ, being at work early and late, 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 459 
 
 and that, consequently, he must be a man of vast business, and have 
 a great practice ; and the thing was well laid, and took accordingly ; 
 for the neighbours, believing he had business, brought business to 
 him; and the reputation of having a trade, made a trade for him." 
 
 Next appeared a pamphlet, entitled " Augusta Triuwphans ; or, 
 the Way to make London the most flourishing City in the Universe 
 1. By establishing an University where Gentlemen may have 
 Academical Education under the eye of their Friends," &c. &c. 
 
 Poor fellow ! the candle of life is now beginning to flicker in 
 the socket the appointed time of his departure (1731) was fast 
 approaching ; yet, for the prospects of mental cultivation for some 
 far distant generation of his race, he, with his declining strength, 
 could exert himself for a University at home the London Univer- 
 sity; on which he says : 
 
 " We have been a brave and learned people ; but are insensibly 
 dwindling into an effeminate, superficial race. Our young gentle- 
 men are sent to the universities, but not under restraint and cor- 
 rection as formerly ; not to study, but to drink ; not for furniture 
 for the head, but a feather for the cap ; merely to say they have 
 been at Oxford or Cambridge, as if the air of those places inspired 
 knowledge without application." 
 
 With the literary labours of one of England's greatest sons, for 
 honesty and talent and consistency, we have done ; the darkness of 
 age was fast beclouding his energetic mind ; and poor Daniel De Foe 
 had ceased to be a writer. For the following account of the latter 
 years of De Foe useful as showing his position in life at the time 
 we are indebted to Mr. Henry Baker, the celebrated natural 
 philosopher, who married one of De Foe's daughters : 
 
 " In the year 1724, Mr. Henry Baker engaged in an undertaking 
 which required his spending some days every week at Newingtoii. 
 Amongst the first who desired his acquaintance there was Mr. De 
 Foe, a gentleman well known by his writings, who had newly built 
 there a very handsome house, as a retirement from London, and 
 amused his time either in the cultivation of a large and pleasant 
 garden, or in the pursuit of his studies, which he found means of 
 making very profitable. He was now at least sixty years of age, 
 
460 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 afflicted with the gout and stone, but retained all his mental facul- 
 ties entire. Mr. Baker readily accepted his invitation, and was so 
 pleased with his conversation, that he seldom came to Newington 
 without paying a visit to Mr. De Foe. He met usually at the tea- 
 table his three lovely daughters, who were admired for their beauty, 
 their education, and their prudent conduct; and if sometimes 
 Mr. De Foe's disorders made company inconvenient, Mr. Baker was 
 entertained by them, either singly or together, and that commonly 
 in the garden, when the weather was favourable. Mr. Baker very 
 soon discovered the superior excellencies of Miss Sophia, the youngest 
 daughter, of whose person and manners he speaks in strains of the 
 highest eulogium. He knew nothing of Mr. De Foe's circumstances; 
 only imagined, from his very genteel way of living, that he must be 
 able to give his daughter a decent portion ; he did not suppose a 
 large one. On speaking to Mr. De Foe, he sactioned his proposals, 
 and said, he hoped he should be able to give her a certain sum 
 specified; but when urged to the point some time afterwards, his 
 answer was, that formal articles he thought unnecessary ; that he 
 could confide in the honour of Mr. Baker ; that, when they talked 
 before, he did not know the true state of his affairs ; that he found 
 he could not part with any money at present, but at his death his 
 daughter's portion would be more than he had promised ; and he 
 offered his own bond as a guarantee for the payment." 
 
 These money matters with daughters produced a breach and 
 coolness; but eventually, in two or more years, the young couple 
 were married, Mr. De Foe giving a bond on his house at Newington 
 for 500, to be paid to Mr. Baker after his death. The bond is 
 dated April 5, 1729; and the young couple were married at the 
 latter end of the same month. 
 
 At the time that he was living in his large new-built house at 
 Stoke Newington, De Foe was in embarrassed circumstances, as he 
 had been through the whole course of his life ; and was undergoing 
 a constant process of threats, writs, and confinements ; and he could 
 say with the prophet : " I have nourished and brought up children, 
 and they have rebelled against me ;" for his eldest son deceived him 
 by keeping property entrusted to him for the benefit of the whole 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 461 
 
 family ; probably this would be the Daniel De Foe I have met with 
 in the books of Doctors' Commons, as a sailor in the royal navy. 
 On this subject De Foe wrote to Mr. Baker, his son-in-law, the 
 following letter : 
 
 " Dear Mr. Baker, I have your very kind and affec'onate letter 
 of the 1st ; but not come to my hand 'till y e 10th ; where it had 
 been delayed I kno' not. As your kind manner, and kinder thought, 
 from w ch it flows (for I take all you say to be, as I always believed 
 you to be, sincere and Nathaniel-like, without guile), was a par- 
 ticular satisfacc'on to me ; so the stop of a letter, however it hap- 
 pened, deprived me of that cordial too many days, considering how 
 much I stood in need of it, to support a mind sinking under the 
 weight of an afflicc'on too heavy for my strength ; and looking on 
 myself as abandoned of every comfort, every friend, and every rela- 
 tive, except such only as are able to give me no assistance. 
 
 " I was sorry you should say at y e beginning of your letter, you 
 were debarred seeing me. Depend upon my sincerity for this : I 
 am far from debarring you. On y e contrary, it would be a greater 
 comfort to me than any I now enjoy, that I could have yo r agree- 
 able visits w th safety, and could see both you and my dearest Sophia, 
 could it be without giving her y e grief of seeing her father in tenebris 
 [in prison] , and under y e load of insupportable sorrow. I am sorry 
 I must open my griefs so far as to tell her, it is not y e blow I rec d 
 from a wicked, perjur'd, and contemptible enemy, that has broken 
 in upon my spirit ; w ch , as she well knows, has carryed me on thro' 
 greater disasters than these. But it has been the injustice, unkind- 
 ness, and I must say, inhuman dealing of my own son w cb has both 
 ruined my family, and, in a word, has broken my heart ; and as I 
 am at this time under a weight of very heavy illness, w ch I think 
 will be a fever, I take this occasion to vent my grief in y e breasts 
 who I know will make a prudent use of it, and tell you, that nothing 
 but this has conquered or could conquer me. Et tu ! Brute. I 
 depended upon him, 1 trusted him, I gave up my two dear unpro- 
 vided children into his hands ; but he has no compassion, and suffers 
 them and their poor dying mother to beg their bread at his door, 
 
462 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 and to crave, as if it were an alms, what he is bound under hand 
 and seal, besides the most sacred promises, to supply them with : 
 himself, at y e same time, living in a profusion of plenty. It is too 
 much for me. Excuse my infirmity. I can say no more : my heart 
 is too full. I only ask one thing of you as a dying request. Stand 
 by them when I am gone, and let them not be wronged, while he is 
 able to do them right. Stand by them as a brother ; and if you have 
 anything within you owing to my memory, who have bestowed on 
 you the best gift I had to give, let y m not be injured and trampled 
 on by false pretences and unnatural reflections. I hope they will 
 want no help but that of comfort and council ; but that they will 
 indeed want, being too easie to be manag'd by words and promises. 
 
 " It adds to my grief that it is so difficult to me to see you. I 
 am at a distance from Lond 11 in Kent : nor have I a lodging in 
 London, nor have I been at that place in the Old Bailey ; since I 
 wrote you I was removed from it. At present I am weak, having 
 had more fits of fever that have left me low. But those things 
 much more. 
 
 " I have not seen son or daughter, wife or child, many weeks, 
 and kno' not which way to see them. They dare not come by 
 water, and by land here is no coach, and I kno' not what to do. 
 
 " It is not possible for me to come to Enfield, unless you would 
 find a retired lodging for me, where I might not be known, and 
 might have the comfort of seeing you both now and then; upon 
 such a circumstance, I could gladly give the days to solitude, to 
 have the comfort of half an hour now and then with you both, for 
 two or three weeks. But just to come and look at you, and retire 
 immediately, 'tis a burthen too heavy. The parting will be a price 
 beyond the enjoyment. 
 
 " I would say (I hope) with comfort, that His yet well, I am so 
 near my journey's end, and am hastening to the place where y e 
 weary are at rest, and where the wicked cease to trouble ; be it 
 that the passage is rough, and the day stormy, by what way soever 
 He pleases to bring me to the end of it, I desire to finish life with 
 this temper of soul in all cases : Te Deum laudamus. 
 
 " I congratulate you on y e occasion of yo r happy advance in y r 
 
LIFE OF DE FOE. 463 
 
 employment. May all you do be prosperous, and all you meet 
 with, pleasant ; and may you both escape the tortures aud troubles 
 of uneasie life. May you sail y r dangerous voyage of life with a 
 forcing wind, and make the port of heaven without a storm. 
 
 " It adds to my grief that I must never see the pledge of your 
 mutual love my little grandson. Give him my blessing, and may 
 he be to you both your joy in youth, and your comfort in age, and 
 never add a sigh to your sorrow. But, alas ! that is not to be 
 expected. Kiss my dear Sophy 1 once more for me; and if I must 
 see her no more, tell her this from a father that loved her above all 
 his comforts to his last breath. 
 
 "Yo r unhappy, "D. F. 
 
 "About two miles from Greenwich, Kent. 
 
 "P.S. I wrote you a letter some months ago, in answer to one 
 from you about selling y e house; but you never signified to me 
 whether you received it or not. I have not the policy of assurance; 
 I suppose my wife or Hannah may have it. 
 
 "Idem, "D. F." 
 
 On the 24th of April, 1731, this poor neglected genius this 
 champion of free trade and civil and religious liberty, and consistent 
 champion too was called to his rest, at his lodgings in Cripplegate 
 St. Giles, and was buried two or three days afterwards in Bunhill 
 Fields Cemetery; where he lies in humble state, among the illus- 
 trious dead of Nonconformity. 
 
 On my visiting that sacred spot of departed patriotism the last 
 solemn resting-place of the mortal remains of Daniel De Foe, 
 Bunhill Fields Cemetery I was struck with the condition of the 
 tombstone, which was broken, and the inscriptions, two or three, 
 obliterated by neglect and the corrosive influence of time and at- 
 mosphere. I pointed this gravestone to the sexton : "That tomb- 
 stone is broken, and the inscriptions are worn off through the 
 corrosive influence of the atmosphere." "Yes sir, the lightning 
 
 1 Was this the individual alluded to as being a consolation to a poor troubled father, 
 who read a great deal and wrote down many excellent things during a period of afflic- 
 tion of twenty-eight years ? I believe it was. 
 
464 LIFE OF DE FOE. 
 
 did it," was the reply. Lightning did it impossible ! The tomb 
 of De Foe requiring lightning from heaven to destroy it ! This 
 truly is one way of obliterating the memorial of departed greatness; 
 for De Foe was both great and good yes, he was a good man. 
 What ! the white reeky haze of the sulphurous exhalations of the 
 vale of Sodom and Gomorrah here ? Forbid it, Heaven ! Daniel 
 De Foe's last resting-place to be torn up by fire from heaven ! 
 he; one of the first writers on free trade and political economy, 
 and every branch of civil and religious liberty, in all seasons of 
 prosperity or national danger he ; not only statesman but philan- 
 thropist be torn up or disturbed, in his last resting-place, by fire 
 from heaven ! Impossible ! The tomb is broken of that man, who 
 dared to show to arbitrary powers in church and in state ; how to 
 pull their house about their ears THE SHORTEST WAY. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 F. PICKTON, Printer, Perry's Place, 29, Oxford Street, London. 
 
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