THE ADVOCATE OF PEACE AND UNION.
In putting forth the prospectus of the second volume of his _Review_,
Defoe intimated that its prevailing topic would be the Trade of
England--a vast subject, with many branches, all closely interwoven with
one another and with the general well-being of the kingdom. It grieved
him, he said, to see the nation involved in such evils while remedies
lay at hand which blind guides could not, and wicked guides would not,
see--trade decaying, yet within reach of the greatest improvements, the
navy flourishing, yet fearfully mismanaged, rival factions brawling and
fighting when they ought to combine for the common good. "Nothing could
have induced him to undertake the ungrateful office of exposing these
things, but the full persuasion that he was capable of convincing
anything of an Englishman that had the least angle of his soul untainted
with partiality, and that had the least concern left for the good of his
country, that even the worst of these evils were easy to be cured; that
if ever this nation were shipwrecked and undone, it must be at the very
entrance of her port of deliverance, in the sight of her safety that
Providence held out to her, in the sight of her safe establishment, a
prosperous trade, a regular, easily-supplied navy, and a general
reformation both in manners and methods in Church and State."
Defoe began as usual by laying down various clear heads, under which he
promised to deal with the whole field of trade. But as usual he did not
adhere to this systematic plan. He discussed some topics of the day with
brilliant force, and then he suddenly digressed to a subject only
collaterally connected with trade. The Queen, in opening the session of
1704-5, had exhorted her Parliament to peace and union; but the
High-Churchmen were too hot to listen to advice even from her. The
Occasional Conformity Bill was again introduced and carried in the
Commons. The Lords rejected it. The Commons persisted, and to secure the
passing of the measure, tacked it to a Bill of Supply. The Lords refused
to pass the Money Bill till the tack was withdrawn. Soon afterwards the
Parliament--Parliaments were then triennial--was dissolved, and the
canvass for a general election set in amidst unusual excitement. Defoe
abandoned the quiet topic of trade, and devoted the _Review_ to
electioneering articles.
But he did not take a side, at least not a party side. He took the side
of peace and his country. "I saw with concern," he said, in afterwards
explaining his position, "the weighty juncture of a new election for
members approach, the variety of wheels and engines set to work in the
nation, and the furious methods to form interests on either hand and put
the tempers of men on all sides into an unusual motion; and things
seemed acted with so much animosity and party fury that I confess it
gave me terrible apprehensions of the consequences." On both sides "the
methods seemed to him very scandalous." "In many places most horrid and
villainous practices were set on foot to supplant one another. The
parties stooped to vile and unbecoming meannesses; infinite briberies,
forgeries, perjuries, and all manner of debauchings of the principles
and manners of the electors were attempted. All sorts of violences,
tumults, riots, breaches of the peace, neighbourhood, and good manners
were made use of to support interests and carry elections." In short,
Defoe saw the nation "running directly on the steep precipice of
confusion." In these circumstances, he seriously reflected what he
should do. He came to the conclusion that he must "immediately set
himself in the _Review_ to exhort, persuade, entreat, and in the most
moving terms he was capable of, prevail on all people in general to
STUDY PEACE."
Under cover of this profession of impartiality, Defoe issued most
effective attacks upon the High-Church party. In order to promote peace,
he said, it was necessary to ascertain first of all who were the enemies
of peace. On the surface, the questions at stake in the elections were,
the privileges of the Dissenters and the respective rights of the Lords
and the Commons in the matter of Money Bills. But people must look
beneath the surface. "King James, French power, and a general turn of
affairs was at the bottom, and the quarrels between Church and
Dissenters only a politic noose they had hooked the parties on both
sides into." Defoe lashed the Tackers into fury by his exhortations to
the study of peace. He professed the utmost good-will to them
personally, though he had not words-strong enough to condemn their
conduct in tacking the Occasional Bill to a Money Bill when they knew
that the Lords would reject it, and so in a moment of grave national
peril leave the army without supplies. The Queen, in dissolving
Parliament, had described this tacking as a dangerous experiment, and
Defoe explained the experiment as being "whether losing the Money Bill,
breaking up the Houses, disbanding the Confederacy, and opening the
door to the French, might not have been for the interest of the
High-Church." Far be it from him to use Billingsgate language to the
Tackers, but "the effect of their action, which, and not their motive,
he had to consider, would undoubtedly be to let in the French, depose
the Queen, bring in the Prince of Wales, abdicate the Protestant
religion, restore Popery, repeal the Toleration, and persecute the
Dissenters." Still it was probable that the Tackers meant no harm.
_Humanum est errare_. He was certain that if he showed them their error,
they would repent and be converted. All the same, he could not recommend
them to the electors. "A Tacker is a man of passion, a man of heat, a
man that is for ruining the nation upon any hazards to obtain his ends.
Gentlemen freeholders, you must not choose a Tacker, unless you will
destroy our peace, divide our strength, pull down the Church, let in the
French, and depose the Queen."
From the dissolution of Parliament in April till the end of the year
Defoe preached from this text with infinite variety and vigour. It is
the chief subject of the second volume of the _Review_. The elections,
powerfully influenced by Marlborough's successes as well as by the
eloquent championship of Defoe, resulted in the entire defeat of the
High Tories, and a further weeding of them out of high places in the
Administration. Defoe was able to close this volume of the _Review_ with
expressions of delight at the attainment of the peace for which he had
laboured, and, the victory, being gained and the battle over, to promise
a return to the intermitted subject of Trade. He returned to this
subject in the beginning of his third volume. But he had not pursued it
long when he was again called away. The second diversion, as he pointed
out, was strictly analogous to the first. It was a summons to him to do
his utmost to promote the union of the two kingdoms of England and
Scotland. "From the same zeal," Defoe said, "with which I first pursued
this blessed subject of peace, I found myself embarked in the further
extent of it, I mean the Union. If I thought myself obliged in duty to
the public interest to use my utmost endeavour to quiet the minds of
enraged parties, I found myself under a stronger necessity to embark in
the same design between two most enraged nations."
The union of the two kingdoms had become an object of pressing and
paramount importance towards the close of William's reign. He had found
little difficulty in getting the English Parliament to agree to settle
the succession of the House of Hanover, but the proposal that the
succession to the throne of Scotland should be settled on the same head
was coldly received by the Scottish Parliament. It was not so much that
the politicians of Edinburgh were averse to a common settlement, or
positively eager for a King and Court of their own, but they were
resolved to hold back till they were assured of commercial privileges
which would go to compensate them for the drain of wealth that was
supposed to have followed the King southwards. This was the policy of
the wiser heads, not to accept the Union without as advantageous terms
as they could secure. They had lost an opportunity at the Revolution,
and were determined not to lose another. But among the mass of the
population the feeling was all in favour of a separate kingdom. National
animosity had been inflamed to a passionate pitch by the Darien disaster
and the Massacre of Glencoe. The people listened readily to the
insinuations of hot-headed men that the English wished to have
everything their own way. The counter-charge about the Scotch found
equally willing hearers among the mass in England. Never had cool-headed
statesmen a harder task in preventing two nations from coming to blows.
All the time that the Treaty of Union was being negotiated which King
William had earnestly urged from his deathbed, throughout the first half
of Queen Anne's reign they worked under a continual apprehension lest
the negotiations should end in a violent and irreconcilable rupture.
Defoe might well say that he was pursuing the same blessed subject of
Peace in trying to reconcile these two most enraged nations, and writing
with all his might for the Union. An Act enabling the Queen to appoint
Commissioners on the English side to arrange the terms of the Treaty had
been passed in the first year of her reign, but difficulties had arisen
about the appointment of the Scottish Commissioners, and it was not till
the Spring of 1706 that the two Commissions came together. When they did
at last meet, they found each other much more reasonable and practical
in spirit than had appeared possible during the battle over the
preliminaries. But while the statesmen sat concocting the terms of the
Treaty almost amicably, from April to July, the excitement raged
fiercely out of doors. Amidst the blaze of recriminations and
counter-recriminations, Defoe moved energetically as the Apostle of
Peace, making his _Review_ play like a fireman's hose upon the flames.
He did not try to persuade the Scotch to peace by the same methods which
he had used in the case of the High-fliers and Tackers. His Reviews on
this subject, full of spirit as ever, are models of the art of
conciliation. He wrestled ardently with national prejudices on both
sides, vindicating the Scotch Presbyterians from the charge of religious
intolerance, labouring to prove that the English were not all to blame
for the collapse of the Darien expedition and the Glencoe tragedy,
expounding what was fair to both nations in matters concerning trade.
Abuse was heaped upon him plentifully by hot partisans; he was charged
with want of patriotism from the one side, and with too much of it from
the other; but he held on his way manfully, allowing no blow from his
aspersers to pass unreturned. Seldom has so bold and skilful a soldier
been enlisted in the cause of peace.
Defoe was not content with the _Review_ as a literary instrument of
pacification. He carried on the war in both capitals, answering the
pamphlets of the Scotch patriots with counter-pamphlets from the
Edinburgh press. He published also a poem, "in honour of Scotland,"
entitled _Caledonia_, with an artfully flattering preface, in which he
declared the poem to be a simple tribute to the greatness of the people
and the country without any reference whatever to the Union. Presently
he found it expedient to make Edinburgh his head-quarters, though he
continued sending the _Review_ three times a week to his London printer.
When the Treaty of Union had been elaborated by the Commissioners and
had passed the English Parliament, its difficulties were not at an end.
It had still to pass the Scotch Parliament, and a strong faction there,
riding on the storm of popular excitement, insisted on discussing it
clause by clause. Moved partly by curiosity, partly by earnest desire
for the public good, according to his own account in the _Review_ and in
his _History of the Union,_ Defoe resolved to undertake the "long,
tedious, and hazardous journey" to Edinburgh, and use all his influence
to push the Treaty through. It was a task of no small danger, for the
prejudice against the Union went so high in the Scottish capital that he
ran the risk of being torn to pieces by the populace. In one riot of
which he gives an account, his lodging was beset, and for a time he was
in as much peril "as a grenadier on a counter-scarp." Still he went on
writing pamphlets, and lobbying members of Parliament. Owing to his
intimate knowledge of all matters relating to trade, he also "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, prohibitions, &c." Even when the Union was agreed
to by the Parliaments of both kingdoms, and took effect formally in May,
1707, difficulties arose in putting the details in operation, and Defoe
prolonged his stay in Scotland through the whole of that year.
In this visit to Scotland Defoe protested to the world at the time that
he had gone as a diplomatist on his own account, purely in the interests
of peace. But a suspicion arose and was very free expressed, that both
in this journey and in previous journeys to the West and the North of
England during the elections, he was serving as the agent, if not as the
spy, of the Government. These reproaches he denied with indignation,
declaring it particularly hard that he should be subjected to such
despiteful and injurious treatment even by writers "embarked in the same
cause, and pretending to write for the same public good." "I contemn,"
he said in his _History_, "as not worth mentioning, the suggestions 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." He took up the same charges more
passionately in the Preface to the third volume of the _Review_, and
dealt with them in some brilliant passages of apologetic eloquence.
"I must confess," he said, "I have sometimes thought it very hard, that
having voluntarily, without the least direction, assistance, or
encouragement, in spite of all that has been suggested, taken upon me
the most necessary work of removing national prejudices against the two
most capital blessings of the world, Peace and Union, I should have the
disaster to have the nations receive the doctrine and damn the teacher."
"Should I descend to particulars, it would hardly appear credible that
in a Christian, a Protestant, and a Reformed nation, any man should
receive such treatment as I have done, even from those very people whose
consciences and judgments have stooped to the venerable truth, owned it
has been useful, serviceable, and seasonable...."
"I am charged with partiality, bribery, pensions, and payments--a thing
the circumstances, family, and fortunes of a man devoted to his
country's peace clears me of. If paid, gentlemen, for writing, if hired,
if employed, why still harassed with merciless and malicious men, why
pursued to all extremities by law for old accounts, which you clear
other men of every day? Why oppressed, distressed, and driven from his
family and from all his prospects of delivering them or himself? Is this
the fate of men employed and hired? Is this the figure the agents of
Courts and Princes make? Certainly had I been hired or employed, those
people who own the service would by this time have set their servant
free from the little and implacable malice of litigious persecutions,
murthering warrants, and men whose mouths are to be stopt by trifles.
Let this suffice to clear me of all the little and scandalous charges of
being hired and employed."
But then, people ask, if he was not officially employed, what had he to
do with these affairs? Why should he meddle with them? To this he
answers:--
"Truly, gentlemen, this is just the case. I saw a parcel of people
caballing together to ruin property, corrupt the laws, invade the
Government, debauch the people, and in short, enslave and embroil the
nation, and I cried 'Fire!' or rather I cried 'Water!' for the fire was
begun already. I see all the nation running into confusions and directly
flying in the face of one another, and cried out 'Peace!' I called upon
all sorts of people that had any senses to collect them together and
judge for themselves what they were going to do, and excited them to lay
hold of the madmen and take from them the wicked weapon, the knife with
which they were going to destroy their mother, rip up the bowels of
their country, and at last effectually ruin themselves.
"And what had I to do with this? Why, yes, gentlemen, I had the same
right as every man that has a footing in his country, or that has a
posterity to possess liberty and claim right, must have, to preserve the
laws, liberty, and government of that country to which he belongs, and
he that charges me with meddling in what does not concern me, meddles
himself with what 'tis plain he does not understand."
* * * * *
"I am not the first," Defoe said in another place, "that has been stoned
for saying the truth. I cannot but think that as time and the conviction
of their senses will restore men to love the peace now established in
this nation, so they will gradually see I have acted no part but that of
a lover of my country, and an honest man."
Time has undeniably shown that in these efforts to promote party peace
and national union Defoe acted like a lover of his country, and that his
aims were the aims of a statesmanlike as well as an honest man. And yet
his protestations of independence and spontaneity of action, with all
their ring of truth and all their solemnity of asseveration, were merely
diplomatic blinds. He was all the time, as he afterwards admitted, when
the admission could do no harm except to his own passing veracity,
acting as the agent of Harley, and in enjoyment of an "appointment" from
the Queen. What exactly the nature of his secret services in Scotland
and elsewhere were, he very properly refused to reveal. His business
probably was to ascertain and report the opinions of influential
persons, and keep the Government informed as far as he could of the
general state of feeling. At any rate it was not as he alleged, mere
curiosity, or the fear of his creditors, or private enterprise, or pure
and simple patriotic zeal that took Defoe to Scotland. The use he made
of his debts as diplomatic instruments is curious. He not merely
practised his faculties in the management of his creditors, which one of
Lord Beaconsfield's characters commends as an incomparable means to a
sound knowledge of human nature; but he made his debts actual pieces in
his political game. His poverty, apparent, if not real, served as a
screen for his employment under Government. When he was despatched on
secret missions, he could depart wiping his eyes at the hardship of
having to flee from his creditors.