DEFOE’S “Essay on Projects” was the first volume he published, and no
great writer ever published a first book more characteristic in
expression of his tone of thought. It is practical in the highest
degree, while running over with fresh speculation that seeks everywhere
the well-being of society by growth of material and moral power. There
is a wonderful fertility of mind, and almost whimsical precision of
detail, with good sense and good humour to form the groundwork of a happy
English style. Defoe in this book ran again and again into sound
suggestions that first came to be realised long after he was dead. Upon
one subject, indeed, the education of women, we have only just now caught
him up. Defoe wrote the book in 1692 or 1693, when his age was a year or
two over thirty, and he published it in 1697.
Defoe was the son of James Foe, of St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, whose family
had owned grazing land in the country, and who himself throve as a meat
salesman in London. James Foe went to Cripplegate Church, where the
minister was Dr. Annesley. But in 1662, a year after the birth of Daniel
Foe, Dr. Annesley was one of the three thousand clergymen who were driven
out of their benefices by the Act of Uniformity. James Foe was then one
of the congregation that followed him into exile, and looked up to him as
spiritual guide when he was able to open a meeting-house in Little St.
Helen’s. Thus Daniel Foe, not yet De Foe, was trained under the
influence of Dr. Annesley, and by his advice sent to the Academy at
Newington Green, where Charles Morton, a good Oxford scholar, trained
young men for the pulpits of the Nonconformists. In later days, when
driven to America by the persecution of opinion, Morton became
Vice-President of Harvard College. Charles Morton sought to include in
his teaching at Newington Green a training in such knowledge of current
history as would show his boys the origin and meaning of the
controversies of the day in which, as men, they might hereafter take
their part. He took pains, also, to train them in the use of English.
“We were not,” Defoe said afterwards, “destitute of language, but we were
made masters of English; and more of us excelled in that particular than
of any school at that time.”
Daniel Foe did not pass on into the ministry for which he had been
trained. He said afterwards, in his “Review,” “It was my disaster first
to be set apart for, and then to be set apart from, the honour of that
sacred employ.” At the age of about nineteen he went into business as a
hose factor in Freeman’s Court, Cornhill. He may have bought succession
to a business, or sought to make one in a way of life that required no
capital. He acted simply as broker between the manufacturer and the
retailer. He remained at the business in Freeman’s Court for seven
years, subject to political distractions. In 1683, still in the reign of
Charles the Second, Daniel Foe, aged twenty-two, published a pamphlet
called “Presbytery Roughdrawn.” Charles died on the 6th of February,
1685. On the 14th of the next June the Duke of Monmouth landed at Lyme
with eighty-three followers, hoping that Englishmen enough would flock
about his standard to overthrow the Government of James the Second, for
whose exclusion, as a Roman Catholic, from the succession to the throne
there had been so long a struggle in his brother’s reign. Daniel Foe
took leave of absence from his business in Freeman’s Court, joined
Monmouth, and shared the defeat at Sedgmoor on the 6th of July. Judge
Jeffreys then made progress through the West, and Daniel Foe escaped from
his clutches. On the 15th of July Monmouth was executed. Daniel Foe
found it convenient at that time to pay personal attention to some
business affairs in Spain. His name suggests an English reading of a
Spanish name, Foà, and more than once in his life there are indications
of friends in Spain about whom we know nothing. Daniel Foe went to Spain
in the time of danger to his life, for taking part in the rebellion of
the Duke of Monmouth, and when he came back he wrote himself De Foe. He
may have heard pedigree discussed among his Spanish friends; he may have
wished to avoid drawing attention to a name entered under the letter F in
a list of rebels. He may have played on the distinction between himself
and his father, still living, that one was Mr. Foe, the other Mr. D. Foe.
He may have meant to write much, and wishing to be a friend to his
country, meant also to deprive punsters of the opportunity of calling him
a Foe. Whatever his chief reason for the change, we may be sure that it
was practical.
In April, 1687, James the Second issued a Declaration for Liberty of
Conscience in England, by which he suspended penal laws against all Roman
Catholics and Nonconformists, and dispensed with oaths and tests
established by the law. This was a stretch of the king’s prerogative
that produced results immediately welcome to the Nonconformists, who sent
up addresses of thanks. Defoe saw clearly that a king who is thanked for
overruling an unwelcome law has the whole point conceded to him of right
to overrule the law. In that sense he wrote, “A Letter containing some
Reflections on His Majesty’s Declaration for Liberty of Conscience,” to
warn the Nonconformists of the great mistake into which some were
falling. “Was ever anything,” he asked afterwards, “more absurd than
this conduct of King James and his party, in wheedling the Dissenters;
giving them liberty of conscience by his own arbitrary dispensing
authority, and his expecting they should be content with their religious
liberty at the price of the Constitution?” In the letter itself he
pointed out that “the king’s suspending of laws strikes at the root of
this whole Government, and subverts it quite. The Lords and Commons have
such a share in it, that no law can be either made, repealed, or, which
is all one, suspended, but by their consent.”
In January, 1688, Defoe having inherited the freedom of the City of
London, took it up, and signed his name in the Chamberlain’s book, on the
26th of that month, without the “de,” “Daniel Foe.” On the 5th of
November, 1688, there was another landing, that of William of Orange, in
Torbay, which threatened the government of James the Second. Defoe again
rode out, met the army of William at Henley-on-Thames, and joined its
second line as a volunteer. He was present when it was resolved, on the
13th of February, 1689, that the flight of James had been an abdication;
and he was one of the mounted citizens who formed a guard of honour when
William and Mary paid their first visit to Guildhall.
Defoe was at this time twenty-eight years old, married, and living in a
house at Tooting, where he had also been active in foundation of a
chapel. From hose factor he had become merchant adventurer in trade with
Spain, and is said by one writer of his time to have been a “civet-cat
merchant.” Failing then in some venture in 1692, he became bankrupt, and
had one vindictive creditor who, according to the law of those days, had
power to shut him in prison, and destroy all power of recovering his loss
and putting himself straight with the world. Until his other creditors
had conquered that one enemy, and could give him freedom to earn money
again and pay his debts—when that time came he proved his sense of
honesty to much larger than the letter of the law—Defoe left London for
Bristol, and there kept out of the way of arrest. He was visible only on
Sunday, and known, therefore, as “the Sunday Gentleman.” His lodging was
at the Red Lion Inn, in Castle Street. The house, no longer an inn,
still stands, as numbers 80 and 81 in that street. There Defoe wrote
this “Essay on Projects.” He was there until 1694, when he received
offers that would have settled him prosperously in business at Cadiz, but
he held by his country. The cheek on free action was removed, and the
Government received with favour a project of his, which is not included
in the Essay, “for raising money to supply the occasions of the war then
newly begun.” He had also a project for the raising of money to supply
his own occasions by the establishment of pantile works, which proved
successful. Defoe could not be idle. In a desert island he would, like
his Robinson Crusoe, have spent time, not in lamentation, but in steady
work to get away.