DR. SACHEVERELL, AND THE CHANGE OF GOVERNMENT.
Some of Defoe's biographers have claimed for him that he anticipated the
doctrines of Free Trade. This is an error. It is true that Defoe was
never tired of insisting, in pamphlets, books, and number after number
of the _Review_, on the all-importance of trade to the nation. Trade was
the foundation of England's greatness; success in trade was the most
honourable patent of nobility; next to the maintenance of the Protestant
religion, the encouragement of trade should be the chief care of English
statesmen. On these heads Defoe's enthusiasm was boundless, and his
eloquence inexhaustible. It is true also that he supported with all his
might the commercial clauses of the Treaty of Utrecht, which sought to
abolish the prohibitory duties on our trade with France. It is this last
circumstance which has earned for him the repute of being a pioneer of
Free Trade. But his title to that repute does not bear examination. He
was not so far in advance of his age as to detect the fallacy of the
mercantile system. On the contrary, he avowed his adherence to it
against those of his contemporaries who were inclined to call it in
question. How Defoe came to support the new commercial treaty with
France, and the grounds on which he supported it, can only be understood
by looking at his relations with the Government.
While Defoe was living in Scotland in 1707, and filling the _Review_ so
exclusively with Scotch affairs that his readers, according to his own
account, began to say that the fellow could talk of nothing but the
Union, and had grown mighty dull of late, Harley's position in the
Ministry was gradually becoming very insecure. He was suspected of
cooling in his zeal for the war, and of keeping up clandestine relations
with the Tories; and when Marlborough returned from his campaign at the
close of the year he insisted upon the Secretary's dismissal. The Queen,
who secretly resented the Marlborough yoke, at first refused her
consent. Presently an incident occurred which gave them an excuse for
more urgent pressure. One Gregg, a clerk in Harley's office, was
discovered to be in secret correspondence with the French Court,
furnishing Louis with the contents of important State papers. Harley was
charged with complicity. This charge was groundless, but he could not
acquit himself of gross negligence in the custody of his papers.
Godolphin and Marlborough threatened to resign unless he was dismissed.
Then the Queen yielded.
When Harley fell, Defoe, according to his own account, in the _Appeal to
Honour and Justice_, looked upon himself as lost, taking it for granted
that "when a great officer fell, all who came in by his interest fall
with him." But when his benefactor heard of this, and of Defoe's
"resolution never to abandon the fortunes of the man to whom he owed so
much," he kindly urged the devoted follower to think rather of his own
interest than of any romantic obligation. "My lord Treasurer," he said,
"will employ you in nothing but what is for the public service, and
agreeably to your own sentiments of things; and besides, it is the Queen
you are serving, who has been very good to you. Pray apply yourself as
you used to do; I shall not take it ill from you in the least." To
Godolphin accordingly Defoe applied himself, was by him introduced a
second time to Her Majesty and to the honour of kissing her hand, and
obtained "the continuance of an appointment which Her Majesty had been
pleased to make him in consideration of a former special service he had
done." This was the appointment which he held while he was challenging
his enemies to say whether his outward circumstances looked like the
figure the agents of Courts and Princes make.
The services on which Defoe was employed were, as before, of two kinds,
active and literary. Shortly after the change in the Ministry early in
1708, news came of the gathering of the French expedition at Dunkirk,
with a view, it was suspected, of trying to effect a landing in
Scotland. Defoe was at once despatched to Edinburgh on an errand which,
he says, was "far from being unfit for a sovereign to direct or an
honest man to perform." If his duties were to mix with the people and
ascertain the state of public feeling, and more specifically to sound
suspected characters, to act, in short, as a political detective or spy,
the service was one which it was essential that the Government should
get some trustworthy person to undertake, and which any man at such a
crisis might perform, if he could, without any discredit to his honesty
or his patriotism. The independence of the sea-girt realm was never in
greater peril. The French expedition was a well-conceived diversion, and
it was imperative that the Government should know on what amount of
support the invaders might rely in the bitterness prevailing in Scotland
after the Union. Fortunately the loyalty of the Scotch Jacobites was not
put to the test. As in the case of the Spanish Armada, accident fought
on our side. The French fleet succeeded in reaching the coast of
Scotland before the ships of the defenders; but it overshot its arranged
landing-point, and had no hope but to sail back ingloriously to Dunkirk.
Meantime, Defoe had satisfactorily discharged himself of his mission.
Godolphin showed his appreciation of his services by recalling him as
soon as Parliament was dissolved, to travel through the counties and
serve the cause of the Government in the general elections. He was
frequently sent to Scotland again on similarly secret errands, and seems
to have established a printing business there, made arrangements for the
simultaneous issue of the _Review_ in Edinburgh and London, besides
organizing Edinburgh newspapers, executing commissions for English
merchants, and setting on foot a linen manufactory.
But we are more concerned with the literary labors of this versatile and
indefatigable genius. These, in the midst of his multifarious commercial
and diplomatic concerns, he never intermitted. All the time the _Review_
continued to give a brilliant support to the Ministry. The French
expedition had lent a new interest to the affairs of Scotland, and Defoe
advertised, that though he never intended to make the _Review_ a
newspaper, circumstances enabled him to furnish exceptionally correct
intelligence from Scotland as well as sound impartial opinions. The
intelligence which he communicated was all with a purpose, and a good
purpose--the promotion of a better understanding between the united
nations. He never had a better opportunity for preaching from his
favourite text of Peace and Union, and he used it characteristically,
championing the cause of the Scotch Presbyterians, asserting the
firmness of their loyalty, smoothing over trading grievances by showing
elaborately how both sides benefited from the arrangements of the Union,
launching shafts in every direction at his favourite butts, and never
missing a chance of exulting in his own superior wisdom. In what a
posture would England have been now, he cried, if those wiseacres had
been listened to, who were for trusting the defence of England solely to
the militia and the fleet! Would our fleet have kept the French from
landing if Providence had not interposed; and if they had landed, would
a militia, undermined by disaffection, have been able to beat them back?
The French king deserved a vote of thanks for opening the eyes of the
nation against foolish advisers, and for helping it to heal internal
divisions. Louis, poor gentleman, was much to be pitied, for his
informers had evidently served him badly, and had led him to expect a
greater amount of support from disloyal factions than they had the will
or the courage to give him.
During the electoral canvass, Defoe surpassed himself in the lively
vigour of his advocacy of the Whig cause. "And now, gentlemen of
England," he began in the _Review_--as it went on he became more and
more direct and familiar in his manner of addressing his readers--"now
we are a-going to choose Parliament men, I will tell you a story." And
he proceeded to tell how in a certain borough a great patron procured
the election of a "shock dog" as its parliamentary representative. Money
and ale, Defoe says, could do anything. "God knows I speak it with
regret for you all and for your posterity, it is not an impossible thing
to debauch this nation into a choice of thieves, knaves, devils, shock
dogs, or anything comparatively speaking, by the power of various
intoxications." He spent several numbers of the _Review_ in an ironical
advice to the electors to choose Tories, showing with all his skill
"the mighty and prevailing reason why we should have a Tory
Parliament." "O gentlemen," he cried, "if we have any mind to buy some
more experience, be sure and choose Tories." "We want a little
instruction, we want to go to school to knaves and fools." Afterwards,
dropping this thin mask, he declared that among the electors only "the
drunken, the debauched, the swearing, the persecuting" would vote for
the High-fliers. "The grave, the sober, the thinking, the prudent,"
would vote for the Whigs. "A House of Tories is a House of Devils." "If
ever we have a Tory Parliament, the nation is undone." In his _Appeal to
Honour and Justice_ Defoe explained, that while he was serving
Godolphin, "being resolved to remove all possible ground of suspicion
that he kept any secret correspondence, he never visited, or wrote to,
or any way corresponded with his principal benefactor for above three
years." Seeing that Harley was at that time the leader of the party
which Defoe was denouncing with such spirit, it would have been strange
indeed if there had been much intercourse between them.
Though regarded after his fall from office as the natural leader of the
Tory party, Harley was a very reserved politician, who kept his own
counsel, used instruments of many shapes and sizes, steered clear of
entangling engagements, and left himself free to take advantage of
various opportunities. To wage war against the Ministry was the work of
more ardent partisans. He stood by and waited while Bolingbroke and
Rochester and their allies in the press cried out that the Government
was now in the hands of the enemies of the Church, accused the Whigs of
protracting the war to fill their own pockets with the plunder of the
Supplies, and called upon the nation to put an end to their jobbery and
mismanagement. The victory of Oudenarde in the summer of 1708 gave them
a new handle. "What is the good," they cried, "of these glorious
victories, if they do not bring peace? What do we gain by beating the
French in campaign after campaign, if we never bring them nearer to
submission? It is incredible that the French King is not willing to make
peace, if the Whigs did not profit too much by the war to give peace any
encouragement." To these arguments for peace, Defoe opposed himself
steadily in the _Review_. "Well, gentlemen." he began, when the news
came of the battle of Oudenarde, "have the French noosed themselves
again? Let us pray the Duke of Marlborough that a speedy peace may not
follow, for what would become of us?" He was as willing for a peace on
honourable terms as any man, but a peace till the Protestant Succession
was secured and the balance of power firmly settled, "would be fatal to
peace at home." "If that fatal thing called Peace abroad should happen,
we shall certainly be undone." Presently, however, the French King began
to make promising overtures for peace; the Ministry, in hopes of
satisfactory terms, encouraged them; the talk through the nation was all
of peace, and the Whigs contented themselves with passing an address to
the Crown through Parliament urging the Queen to make no peace till the
Pretender should be disowned by the French Court, and the Succession
guaranteed by a compact with the Allies. Throughout the winter the
_Review_ expounded with brilliant clearness the only conditions on which
an honourable peace could be founded, and prepared the nation to doubt
the sincerity with which Louis had entered into negotiations. Much
dissatisfaction was felt, and that dissatisfaction was eagerly fanned by
the Tories when the negotiations fell through, in consequence of the
distrust with which the allies regarded Louis, and their imposing upon
him too hard a test of his honesty. Defoe fought vigorously against the
popular discontent. The charges against Marlborough were idle
rhodomontade. We had no reason to be discouraged with the progress of
the war unless we had formed extravagant expectations. Though the French
King's resources had been enfeebled, and he might reasonably have been
expected to desire peace, he did not care for the welfare of France so
much as for his own glory; he would fight to gain his purpose while
there was a pistole in his treasury, and we must not expect Paris to be
taken in a week. Nothing could be more admirable than Godolphin's
management of our own Treasury; he deserved almost more credit than the
Duke himself. "Your Treasurer has been your general of generals; without
his exquisite management of the cash the Duke of Marlborough must have
been beaten."
The Sacheverell incident, which ultimately led to the overthrow of the
Ministry, gave Defoe a delightful opening for writing in their defence.
A collection of his articles on this subject would show his
controversial style at its best and brightest. Sacheverell and he were
old antagonists. Sacheverell's "bloody flag and banner of defiance," and
other High-flying truculencies, had furnished him with the main basis of
his _Shortest Way with the Dissenters_. The laugh of the populace was
then on Defoe's side, partly, perhaps, because the Government had
prosecuted him. But in the changes of the troubled times, the Oxford
Doctor, nurtured in "the scolding of the ancients," had found a more
favourable opportunity. His literary skill was of the most mechanical
kind; but at the close of 1709, when hopes of peace had been raised only
to be disappointed, and the country was suffering from the distress of a
prolonged war, people were more in a mood to listen to a preacher who
disdained to check the sweep of his rhetoric by qualifications or
abatements, and luxuriated in denouncing the Queen's Ministers from the
pulpit under scriptural allegories. He delivered a tremendous philippic
about the Perils of False Brethren, as a sermon before the Lord Mayor in
November. It would have been a wise thing for the Ministry to have left
Sacheverell to be dealt with by their supporters in the press and in the
pulpit. But in an evil hour Godolphin, stung by a nickname thrown at him
by the rhetorical priest--a singularly comfortable-looking man to have
so virulent a tongue, one of those orators who thrive on ill-conditioned
language--resolved, contrary to the advice of more judicious colleagues,
to have him impeached by the House of Commons. The Commons readily voted
the sermon seditious, scandalous, and malicious, and agreed to a
resolution for his impeachment; the Lords ordered that the case should
be heard at their bar; and Westminster Hall was prepared to be the scene
of a great public trial. At first Defoe, in heaping contemptuous
ridicule upon the High-flying Doctor, had spoken as if he would consider
prosecution a blunder. The man ought rather to be encouraged to go on
exposing himself and his party. "Let him go on," he said, "to bully
Moderation, explode Toleration, and damn the Union; the gain will be
ours."
"You should use him as we do a hot horse. When he
first frets and pulls, keep a stiff rein and hold him in if you
can; but if he grows mad and furious, slack your hand, clap
your heels to him, and let him go. Give him his belly full
of it. Away goes the beast like a fury over hedge and ditch,
till he runs himself off his mettle; perhaps bogs himself, and
then he grows quiet of course.... Besides, good people, do
you not know the nature of the barking creatures? If you
pass but by, and take no notice, they will yelp and make a noise,
and perhaps run a little after you; but turn back, offer to strike them
or throw stones at them, and you'll never have done--nay, you'll raise
all the dogs of the parish upon you."
This last was precisely what the Government did, and they found reason
to regret that they did not take Defoe's advice and let Sacheverell
alone. When, however, they did resolve to prosecute him, Defoe
immediately turned round, and exulted in the prosecution, as the very
thing which he had foreseen. "Was not the _Review_ right when he said
you ought to let such people run on till they were out of breath? Did I
not note to you that precipitations have always ruined them and served
us?... Not a hound in the pack opened like him. He has done the work
effectually.... He has raised the house and waked the landlady.... Thank
him, good people, thank him and clap him on the back; let all his party
do but this, and the day is our own." Nor did Defoe omit to remind the
good people that he had been put in the pillory for satirically hinting
that the High-Church favored such doctrines as Sacheverell was now
prosecuted for. In his _Hymn to the Pillory_ he had declared that
Sacheverell ought to stand there in his place. His wish was now
gratified; "the bar of the House of Commons is the worst pillory in the
nation." In the two months which elapsed before the trial, during which
the excitement was steadily growing, Sacheverell and his doctrines were
the main topic of the _Review_. If a popular tempest could have been
allayed by brilliant argument, Defoe's papers ought to have done it. He
was a manly antagonist, and did not imitate coarser pamphleteers in
raking up scandals about the Doctor's private life--at least not under
his own name. There was, indeed, a pamphlet issued by "a Gentleman of
Oxford," which bears many marks of Defoe's authorship, and contains an
account of some passages in Sacheverell's life not at all to the
clergyman's credit. But the only pamphlet outside the _Review_ which the
biographers have ascribed to Defoe's activity, is a humorous Letter from
the Pope to Don Sacheverellio, giving him instructions how to advance
the interest of the Pretender. In the _Review_ Defoe, treating
Sacheverell with riotously mirthful contempt, calls for the punishment
of the doctrines rather than the man. During the trial, which lasted
more than a fortnight, a mob attended the Doctor's carriage every day
from his lodgings in the Temple to Westminster Hall, huzzaing, and
pressing to kiss his hand, and spent the evenings in rabbling the
Dissenters' meeting-houses, and hooting before the residences of
prominent Whigs. Defoe had always said that the High-fliers would use
violence to their opponents if they had the power, and here was a
confirmation of his opinion on which he did not fail to insist. The
sentence on Sacheverell, that his sermon and vindication should be burnt
by the common hangman and himself suspended from preaching for three
years, was hailed by the mob as an acquittal, and celebrated by
tumultuous gatherings and bonfires. Defoe reasoned hard and joyfully to
prove that the penalty was everything that could be wished, and exactly
what he had all along advised and contemplated, but he did not succeed
in persuading the masses that the Government had not suffered a defeat.
The impeachment of Sacheverell turned popular feeling violently against
the Whigs. The break up of the Gertruydenberg Conference without peace
gave a strong push in the same direction. It was all due, the Tories
shouted, and the people were now willing to believe, to the folly of our
Government in insisting upon impossible conditions from the French
King, and their shameless want of patriotism in consulting the interests
of the Allies rather than of England. The Queen, who for some time had
been longing to get rid of her Whig Ministers, did not at once set sail
with this breeze. She dismissed the Earl of Sunderland in June, and sent
word to her allies that she meant to make no further changes. Their
ambassadors, with what was even then resented as an impertinence,
congratulated her on this resolution, and then in August she took the
momentous step of dismissing Godolphin, and putting the Treasury
nominally in commission, but really under the management of Harley. For
a few weeks it seems to have been Harley's wish to conduct the
administration in concert with the remaining Whig members, but the
extreme Tories, with whom he had been acting, overbore his moderate
intentions. They threatened to desert him unless he broke clearly and
definitely with the Whigs. In October accordingly the Whigs were all
turned out of the Administration, Tories put in their places, Parliament
dissolved, and writs issued for new elections. "So sudden and entire a
change of the Ministry," Bishop Burnet remarks, "is scarce to be found
in our history, especially where men of great abilities had served both
with zeal and success." That the Queen should dismiss one or all of her
Ministers in the face of a Parliamentary majority excited no surprise;
but that the whole Administration should be changed at a stroke from one
party to the other was a new and strange thing. The old Earl of
Sunderland's suggestion to William III. had not taken root in
constitutional practice; this was the fulfilment of it under the gradual
pressure of circumstances.
Defoe's conduct while the political balance was rocking, and after the
Whig side had decisively kicked the beam, is a curious study. One
hardly knows which to admire most, the loyalty with which he stuck to
the falling house till the moment of its collapse, or the adroitness
with which he escaped from the ruins. Censure of his shiftiness is
partly disarmed by the fact that there were so many in that troubled and
uncertain time who would have acted like him if they had had the skill.
Besides, he acted so steadily and with such sleepless vigilance and
energy on the principle that the appearance of honesty is the best
policy, that at this distance of time it is not easy to catch him
tripping, and if we refuse to be guided by the opinion of his
contemporaries, we almost inevitably fall victims to his incomparable
plausibility. Deviations in his political writings from the course of
the honest patriot are almost as difficult to detect as flaws in the
verisimilitude of _Robinson Crusoe_ or the _Journal of the Plague_.
During the two months' interval between the substitution of Dartmouth
for Sunderland and the fall of Godolphin, Defoe used all his powers of
eloquence and argument to avert the threatened changes in the Ministry,
and keep the Tories out. He had a personal motive for this, he
confessed. "My own share in the ravages they shall make upon our
liberties is like to be as severe as any man's, from the rage and fury
of a party who are in themselves implacable, and whom God has not been
pleased to bless me with a talent to flatter and submit to." Of the
dismissed minister Sunderland, with whom Defoe had been in personal
relations during the negotiations for the Union, he spoke in terms of
the warmest praise, always with a formal profession of not challenging
the Queen's judgment in discharging her servant. "My Lord Sunderland,"
he said, "leaves the Ministry with the most unblemished character that
ever I read of any statesman in the world." "I am making no court to my
Lord Sunderland. The unpolished author of this paper never had the
talent of making his court to the great men of the age." But where is
the objection against his conduct? Not a dog of the party can bark
against him. "They cannot show me a man of their party that ever did act
like him, or of whom they can say we should believe he would if he had
the opportunity." The Tories were clamouring for the dismissal of all
the other Whigs. High-Church addresses to the Queen were pouring in,
claiming to represent the sense of the nation, and hinting an absolute
want of confidence in the Administration. Defoe examined the conduct of
the ministers severally and collectively, and demanded where was the
charge against them, where the complaint, where the treasure misapplied?
As for the sense of the nation, there was one sure way of testing this
better than any got-up addresses, namely, the rise or fall of the public
credit. The public stocks fell immediately on the news of Sunderland's
dismissal, and were only partially revived upon Her Majesty's assurance
to the Directors of the Bank that she meant to keep the Ministry
otherwise unchanged. A rumour that Parliament was to be dissolved had
sent them down again. If the public credit is thus affected by the mere
apprehension of a turn of affairs in England, Defoe said, the thing
itself will be a fatal blow to it. The coy Lady Credit had been wavering
in her attachment to England; any sudden change would fright her away
altogether. As for the pooh-pooh cry of the Tories that the national
credit was of no consequence, that a nation could not be in debt to
itself, and that their moneyed men would come forward with nineteen
shillings in the pound for the support of the war, Defoe treated this
claptrap with proper ridicule.
But in spite of all Defoe's efforts, the crash came. On the 10th of
August the Queen sent to Godolphin for the Treasurer's staff, and Harley
became her Prime Minister. How did Defoe behave then? The first two
numbers of the _Review_ after the Lord Treasurer's fall are among the
most masterly of his writings. He was not a small, mean, timid
time-server and turncoat. He faced about with bold and steady caution,
on the alert to give the lie to anybody who dared to accuse him of
facing about at all. He frankly admitted that he was in a quandary what
to say about the change that had taken place. "If a man could be found
that could sail north and south, that could speak truth and falsehood,
that could turn to the right hand and the left, all at the same time, he
would be the man, he would be the only proper person that should now
speak." Of one thing only he was certain. "We are sure honest men go
out." As for their successors, "it is our business to hope, and time
must answer for those that come in. If Tories, if Jacobites, if
High-fliers, if madmen of any kind are to come in, I am against them; I
ask them no favour, I make no court to them, nor am I going about to
please them." But the question was, what was to be done in the
circumstances? Defoe stated plainly two courses, with their respective
dangers. To cry out about the new Ministry was to ruin public credit. To
profess cheerfulness was to encourage the change and strengthen the
hands of those that desired to push it farther. On the whole, for
himself he considered the first danger the most to be dreaded of the
two. Therefore he announced his intention of devoting his whole energy
to maintaining the public credit, and advised all true Whigs to do
likewise. "Though I don't like the crew, I won't sink the ship. I'll do
my best to save the ship. I'll pump and heave and haul, and do anything
I can, though he that pulls with me were my enemy. The reason is plain.
We are all in the ship, and must sink or swim together."
What could be more plausible? What conduct more truly patriotic? Indeed,
it would be difficult to find fault with Defoe's behaviour, were it not
for the rogue's protestations of inability to court the favour of great
men, and his own subsequent confessions in his _Appeal to Honour and
Justice_, as to what took place behind the scenes. Immediately on the
turn of affairs he took steps to secure that connexion with the
Government, the existence of which he was always denying. The day after
Godolphin's displacement, he tells us, he waited on him, and "humbly
asked his lordship's direction what course he should take." Godolphin at
once assured him, in very much the same words that Harley had used
before, that the change need make no difference to him; he was the
Queen's servant, and all that had been done for him was by Her Majesty's
special and particular direction; his business was to wait till he saw
things settled, and then apply himself to the Ministers of State to
receive Her Majesty's commands from them. Thereupon Defoe resolved to
guide himself by the following principle:--
"It occurred to me immediately, as a principle for my conduct,
that it was not material to me what ministers Her Majesty
was pleased to employ; my duty was to go along with
every Ministry, so far as they did not break in upon the Constitution,
and the laws and liberties of my country; my part
being only the duty of a subject, viz., to submit to all lawful
commands, and to enter into no service which was not justifiable
by the laws; to all which I have exactly obliged myself."
Defoe was thus, as he says, providentially cast back upon his original
benefactor. That he received any consideration, pension, gratification,
or reward for his services to Harley, "except that old appointment which
Her Majesty was pleased to make him," he strenuously denied. The denial
is possibly true, and it is extremely probable that he was within the
truth when he protested in the most solemn manner that he had never
"received any instructions, directions, orders, or let them call it what
they will, of that kind, for the writing of any part of what he had
written, or any materials for the putting together, for the forming any
book or pamphlet whatsoever, from the said Earl of Oxford, late Lord
Treasurer, or from any person by his order or direction, since the time
that the late Earl of Godolphin was Lord Treasurer." Defoe declared that
"in all his writing, he ever capitulated for his liberty to speak
according to his own judgment of things," and we may easily believe him.
He was much too clever a servant to need instructions.
His secret services to Harley in the new elections are probably buried
in oblivion. In the _Review_ he pursued a strain which to the reader who
does not take his articles in connexion with the politics of the time,
might appear to be thoroughly consistent with his advice to the electors
on previous occasions. He meant to confine himself, he said at starting,
rather to the manner of choosing than to the persons to be chosen, and
he never denounced bribery, intimidation, rioting, rabbling, and every
form of interference with the electors' freedom of choice, in more
energetic language. As regarded the persons to be chosen, his advice was
as before, to choose moderate men--men of sense and temper, not men of
fire and fury. But he no longer asserted, as he had done before, the
exclusive possession of good qualities by the Whigs. He now recognised
that there were hot Whigs as well as moderate Whigs, moderate Tories as
well as hot Tories. It was for the nation to avoid both extremes and
rally round the men of moderation, whether Whig or Tory. "If we have a
Tory High-flying Parliament, we Tories are undone. If we have a hot Whig
Parliament, we Whigs are undone."
The terms of Defoe's advice were unexceptionable, but the Whigs
perceived a change from the time when he declared that if ever we have a
Tory Parliament the nation is undone. It was as if a Republican writer,
after the _coup d'état_ of the 16th May, 1877, had warned the French
against electing extreme Republicans, and had echoed the
Marshal-President's advice to give their votes to moderate men of all
parties. Defoe did not increase the conviction of his party loyalty when
a Tory Parliament was returned, by trying to prove that whatever the new
members might call themselves, they must inevitably be Whigs. He
admitted in the most unqualified way that the elections had been
disgracefully riotous and disorderly, and lectured the constituencies
freely on their conduct. "It is not," he said, "a Free Parliament that
you have chosen. You have met, mobbed, rabbled, and thrown dirt at one
another, but election by mob is no more free election than Oliver's
election by a standing army. Parliaments and rabbles are contrary
things." Yet he had hopes of the gentlemen who had been thus chosen.
"I have it upon many good grounds, as I think I told you,
that there are some people who are shortly to come together,
of whose character, let the people that send them up think
what they will, when they come thither they will not run the
mad length that is expected of them; they will act upon the
Revolution principle, keep within the circle of the law, proceed
with temper, moderation, and justice, to support the
same interest we have all carried on--and this I call being
Whiggish, or acting as Whigs."
"I shall not trouble you with further examining why they will be so, or
why they will act thus; I think it is so plain from the necessity of the
Constitution and the circumstances of things before them, that it needs
no further demonstration--they will be Whigs, they must be Whigs; there
is no remedy, for the Constitution is a Whig."
The new members of Parliament must either be Whigs or traitors, for
everybody who favours the Protestant succession is a Whig, and everybody
who does not is a traitor. Defoe used the same ingenuity in playing upon
words in his arguments in support of the public credit. Every true Whig,
he argued, in the _Review_ and in separate essays, was bound to uphold
the public credit, for to permit it to be impaired was the surest way to
let in the Pretender. The Whigs were accused of withdrawing their money
from the public stocks, to mark their distrust of the Government.
"Nonsense!" Defoe said, "in that case they would not be Whigs."
Naturally enough, as the _Review_ now practically supported a Ministry
in which extreme Tories had the predominance, he was upbraided for
having gone over to that party. "Why, gentlemen," he retorted, "it
would be more natural for you to think I am turned Turk than High-flier;
and to make me a Mahometan would not be half so ridiculous as to make me
say the Whigs are running down credit, when, on the contrary, I am still
satisfied if there were no Whigs at this time, there would hardly be any
such thing as credit left among us." "If the credit of the nation is to
be maintained, we must all act as Whigs, because credit can be
maintained upon no other foot. Had the doctrine of non-resistance of
tyranny been voted, had the Prerogative been exalted above the Law, and
property subjected to absolute will, would Parliament have voted the
funds? Credit supposes Whigs lending and a Whig Government borrowing. It
is nonsense to talk of credit and passive submission."
Had Defoe confined himself to lecturing those hot Whigs who were so
afraid of the secret Jacobitism of Harley's colleagues that they were
tempted to withdraw their money from the public stocks, posterity,
unable to judge how far these fears were justified, and how far it was
due to a happy accident that they were not realized, might have given
him credit for sacrificing partisanship to patriotism. This plea could
hardly be used for another matter in which, with every show of
reasonable fairness, he gave a virtual support to the Ministry. We have
seen how he spoke of Marlborough, and Godolphin's management of the army
and the finances when the Whigs were in office. When the Tories came in,
they at once set about redeeming their pledges to inquire into the
malversation of their predecessors. Concerning this proceeding, Defoe
spoke with an approval which, though necessarily guarded in view of his
former professions of extreme satisfaction, was none the less calculated
to recommend.
"Inquiry into miscarriages in things so famous and so
fatal as war and battle is a thing so popular that no man
can argue against it; and had we paid well, and hanged
well, much sooner, as some men had not been less in a condition
to mistake, so some others might not have been here
to find fault. But it is better late than never; when the inquiry
is set about heartily, it may be useful on several accounts,
both to unravel past errors and to prevent new. For
my part, as we have for many years past groaned for want
of justice upon wilful mistakes, yet, in hopes some of the careful
and mischievous designing gentlemen may come in for a
share, I am glad the work is begun."
With equal good humour and skill in leaving open a double
interpretation, he commented on the fact that the new Parliament did
not, as had been customary, give a formal vote of thanks to Marlborough
for his conduct of his last campaign.
"We have had a mighty pother here in print about rewarding
of generals. Some think great men too much rewarded,
and some think them too little rewarded. The case
is so nice, neither side will bear me to speak my mind; but
I am persuaded of this, that there is no general has or ever
will merit great things of us, but he has received and will
receive all the grateful acknowledgments he OUGHT to expect."
But his readers would complain that he had not defined the word "ought."
That, he said, with audacious pleasantry, he left to them. And while
they were on the subject of mismanagement, he would give them a word of
advice which he had often given them before. "While you bite and devour
one another, you are all mismanagers. Put an end to your factions, your
tumults, your rabbles, or you will not be able to make war upon
anybody." Previously, however, his way of making peace at home was to
denounce the High-fliers. He was still pursuing the same object, though
by a different course, now that the leaders of the High-fliers were in
office, when he declared that "those Whigs who say that the new Ministry
is entirely composed of Tories and High-fliers are fool-Whigs." The
remark was no doubt perfectly true, but yet if Defoe had been thoroughly
consistent he ought at least, instead of supporting the Ministry on
account of the small moderate element it contained, to have urged its
purification from dangerous ingredients.
This, however, it must be admitted, he also did, though indirectly and
at a somewhat later stage, when Harley's tenure of the Premiership was
menaced by High-fliers who thought him much too lukewarm a leader. A
"cave," the famous October Club, was formed in the autumn of 1711, to
urge more extreme measures upon the ministry against Whig officials, and
to organize a High-Church agitation throughout the country. It consisted
chiefly of country squires, who wished to see members of the late
Ministry impeached, and the Duke of Marlborough dismissed from the
command of the army. At Harley's instigation Swift wrote an "advice" to
these hot partisans, beseeching them to have patience and trust the
Ministry, and everything that they wished would happen in due time.
Defoe sought to break their ranks by a direct onslaught in his most
vigorous style, denouncing them in the _Review_ as Jacobites in disguise
and an illicit importation from France, and writing their "secret
history," "with some friendly characters of the illustrious members of
that honourable society" in two separate tracts. This skirmish served
the double purpose of strengthening Harley against the reckless zealots
of his party, and keeping up Defoe's appearance of impartiality.
Throughout the fierce struggle of parties, never so intense in any
period of our history as during those years when the Constitution itself
hung in the balance, it was as a True-born Englishman first and a Whig
and Dissenter afterwards, that Defoe gave his support to the Tory
Ministry. It may not have been his fault; he may have been most unjustly
suspected; but nobody at the time would believe his protestations of
independence. When his former High-flying persecutor, the Earl of
Nottingham, went over to the Whigs, and with their acquiescence, or at
least without their active opposition, introduced another Bill to put
down Occasional Conformity, Defoe wrote trenchantly against it. But even
then the Dissenters, as he loudly lamented, repudiated his alliance. The
Whigs were not so much pleased on this occasion with his denunciations
of the persecuting spirit of the High-Churchmen, as they were enraged by
his stinging taunts levelled at themselves for abandoning the Dissenters
to their persecutors. The Dissenters must now see, Defoe said, that they
would not be any better off under a Low-Church ministry than under a
High-Church ministry. But the Dissenters, considering that the Whigs
were too much in a minority to prevent the passing of the Bill, however
willing to do so, would only see in their professed champion an artful
supporter of the men in power.
A curious instance has been preserved of the estimate of Defoe's
character at this time.[2] M. Mesnager, an agent sent by the French King
to sound the Ministry and the country as to terms of peace, wanted an
able pamphleteer to promote the French interest. The Swedish Resident
recommended Defoe, who had just issued a tract, entitled _Reasons why
this Nation ought to put an end to this expensive War_. Mesnager was
delighted with the tract, at once had it translated into French and
circulated through the Netherlands, employed the Swede to treat with
Defoe, and sent him a hundred pistoles by way of earnest. Defoe kept the
pistoles, but told the Queen, M. Mesnager recording that though "he
missed his aim in this person, the money perhaps was not wholly lost;
for I afterwards understood that the man was in the service of the
state, and that he had let the Queen know of the hundred pistoles he had
received; so I was obliged to sit still, and be very well satisfied that
I had not discovered myself to him, for it was not our season yet." The
anecdote at once shows the general opinion entertained of Defoe, and the
fact that he was less corruptible than was supposed. There can be little
doubt that our astute intriguer would have outwitted the French emissary
if he had not been warned in time, pocketed his bribes, and wormed his
secrets out of him for the information of the Government.
[Footnote 2: I doubt whether it adds to the credibility of the story in
all points that the minutes of M. Mesnager's Negotiations were
"translated," and probably composed by Defoe himself. See p. 136.]
During Godolphin's Ministry, Defoe's cue had been to reason with the
nation against too impatient a longing for peace. Let us have peace by
all means, had been his text, but not till honourable terms have been
secured, and mean-time the war is going on as prosperously as any but
madmen can desire. He repeatedly challenged adversaries who compared
what he wrote then with what he wrote under the new Ministry, to prove
him guilty of inconsistency. He stood on safe ground when he made this
challenge, for circumstances had changed sufficiently to justify any
change of opinion. The plans of the Confederates were disarranged by the
death of the Emperor, and the accession of his brother, the Archduke
Charles, to the vacant crown. To give the crown of Spain in these new
circumstances to the Archduke, as had been the object of the Allies when
they began the war, would have been as dangerous to the balance of power
as to let Spain pass to Louis's grandson, Philip of Anjou. It would be
more dangerous, Defoe argued; and by far the safest course would be to
give Spain to Philip and his posterity, who "would be as much Spaniards
in a very short time, as ever Philip II. was or any of his other
predecessors." This was the main argument which had been used in the
latter days of King William against going to war at all, and Defoe had
then refuted it scornfully; but circumstances had changed, and he not
only adopted it, but also issued an essay "proving that it was always
the sense both of King William and of all the Confederates, and even of
the Grand Alliance itself, that the Spanish monarchy should never be
united in the person of the Emperor." Partition the Spanish dominions in
Europe between France and Germany, and the West Indies between England
and Holland--such was Defoe's idea of a proper basis of peace.
But while Defoe expounded in various forms the conditions of a good
peace, he devoted his main energy to proving that peace under some
conditions was a necessity. He dilated on the enormous expense of the
war, and showed by convincing examples that it was ruining the trade of
the country. Much that he said was perfectly true, but if he had taken
M. Mesnager's bribes and loyally carried out his instructions, he could
not more effectually have served the French King's interests than by
writing as he did at that juncture. The proclaimed necessity under which
England lay to make peace, offered Louis an advantage which he was not
slow to take. The proposals which he made at the Congress of Utrecht,
and which he had ascertained would be accepted by the English Ministry
and the Queen, were not unjustly characterised by the indignant Whigs as
being such as he might have made at the close of a successful war. The
territorial concessions to England and Holland were insignificant; the
States were to have the right of garrisoning certain barrier towns in
Flanders, and England was to have some portions of Canada. But there was
no mention of dividing the West Indies between them--the West Indies
were to remain attached to Spain. It was the restoration of their trade
that was their main desire in these great commercial countries, and even
that object Louis agreed to promote in a manner that seemed, according
to the ideas of the time, to be more to his own advantage than to
theirs. In the case of England, he was to remove prohibitions against
our imports, and in return we engaged to give the French imports the
privileges of the most favoured nations. In short, we were to have free
trade with France, which the commercial classes of the time looked upon
as a very doubtful blessing.
It is because Defoe wrote in favour of this free trade that he is
supposed to have been superior to the commercial fallacies of the time.
But a glance at his arguments shows that this is a very hasty inference.
It was no part of Defoe's art as a controversialist to seek to correct
popular prejudices; on the contrary, it was his habit to take them for
granted as the bases of his arguments, to work from them as premisses
towards his conclusion. He expressly avowed himself a prohibitionist in
principle.--
"I am far from being of their mind who say that all prohibitions
are destructive to trade, and that wise nations, the
Dutch, make no prohibitions at all."
"Where any nation has, by the singular blessing of God,
a produce given to their country from which such a manufacture
can be made as other nations cannot be without, and
none can make that produce but themselves, it would be distraction
in that nation not to prohibit the exportation of
that original produce till it is manufactured."
He had been taunted with flying in the face of what he had himself said
in King William's time in favour of prohibition. But he boldly
undertakes to prove that prohibition was absolutely necessary in King
William's time, and not only so, but that "the advantages we may make of
taking off a prohibition now are all founded upon the advantages we did
make of laying on a prohibition then: that the same reason which made a
prohibition then the best thing, makes it now the maddest thing a nation
could do or ever did in the matter of trade." In King William's time,
the balance of trade was against us to the extent of 850,000 l., in
consequence of the French King's laying extravagant duties upon the
import of all our woollen manufactures.
"Whoever thinks that by opening the French trade I
should mean ... that we should come to trade with them
850,000 _l. per annum_ to our loss, must think me as mad as I
think him for suggesting it; but if, on the contrary, I prove
that as we traded then 850,000 l. a year to our loss, we can
trade now with them 600,000 l. to our gain, then I will venture
to draw this consequence, that we are distracted, speaking
of our trading wits, if we do not trade with them."
In a preface to the Eighth Volume of the _Review_ (July 29, 1712), Defoe
announced his intention of discontinuing the publication, in consequence
of the tax then imposed on newspapers. We can hardly suppose that this
was his real motive, and as a matter of fact the _Review_, whose death
had been announced, reappeared in due course in the form of a single
leaf, and was published in that form till the 11th of June, 1713. By
that time a new project was on foot which Defoe had frequently declared
his intention of starting, a paper devoted exclusively to the discussion
of the affairs of trade. The _Review_ at one time had declared its main
subject to be trade, but had claimed a liberty of digression under which
the main subject had all but disappeared. At last, however, in May,
1713, when popular excitement and hot Parliamentary debates were
expected on the Commercial Treaty with France, an exclusively trading
paper was established, entitled _Mercator_. Defoe denied being the
author--that is, conductor or editor of this paper--and said that he had
not power to put what he would into it; which may have been literally
true. Every number, however, bears traces of his hand or guidance;
_Mercator_ is identical in opinions, style, and spirit with the
_Review_, differing only in the greater openness of its attacks upon the
opposition of the Whigs to the Treaty of Commerce. Party spirit was so
violent that summer, after the publication of the terms of the Treaty of
Utrecht, that Defoe was probably glad to shelter himself under the
responsibility of another name, he had flaunted the cloak of impartial
advice till it had become a thing of shreds and patches.
To prove that the balance of trade, in spite of a prevailing impression
to the contrary, not only might be, but had been, on the side of
England, was the chief purpose of _Mercator_. The Whig _Flying Post_
chaffed _Mercator_ for trying to reconcile impossibilities, but
_Mercator_ held stoutly on with an elaborate apparatus of comparative
tables of exports and imports, and ingenious schemes for the development
of various branches of the trade with France. Defoe was too fond of
carrying the war into the enemy's country, to attack prohibitions or the
received doctrine as to the balance of trade in principle; he fought the
enemy spiritedly on their own ground. "Take a medium of three years for
above forty years past, and calculate the exports and imports to and
from France, and it shall appear the balance of trade was always on the
English side, to the loss and disadvantage of the French." It followed,
upon the received commercial doctrines, that the French King was making
a great concession in consenting to take off high duties upon English
goods. This was precisely what Defoe was labouring to prove. "The French
King in taking off the said high duties ruins all his own manufactures."
The common belief was that the terms of peace would ruin English
manufacturing industry; full in the teeth of this, Defoe, as was his
daring custom, flung the paradox of the extreme opposite. On this
occasion he acted purely as a party writer. That he was never a
free-trader, at least in principle, will appear from the following
extract from his _Plan of the English Commerce_, published in 1728:--
"Seeing trade then is the fund of wealth and power, we
cannot wonder that we see the wisest Princes and States
anxious and concerned for the increase of the commerce and
trade of their subjects, and of the growth of the country;
anxious to propagate the sale of such goods as are the manufacture
of their own subjects, and that employs their own
people; especially of such as keep the money of their dominions
at home; and on the contrary, for prohibiting the importation
from abroad of such things as are the product of
other countries, and of the labour of other people, or which
carry money back in return, and not merchandise in exchange."
"Nor can we wonder that we see such Princes and States
endeavouring to set up such manufactures in their own countries,
which they see successfully and profitably carried on
by their neighbours, and to endeavour to procure the materials
proper for setting up those manufactures by all just and
possible methods from other countries."
"Hence we cannot blame the French or Germans for endeavouring
to get over the British wool into their hands, by
the help of which they may bring their people to imitate our
manufactures, which are so esteemed in the world, as well
as so gainful at home."
"Nor can we blame any foreign nation for prohibiting the
use and wearing of our manufactures, if they can either make
them at home, or make any which they can shift with in their
stead."
"The reason is plain. 'Tis the interest of every nation to
encourage their own trade, to encourage those manufactures
that will employ their own subjects, consume their own
growth of provisions, as well as materials of commerce, and
such as will keep their money or species at home."
"'Tis from this just principle that the French prohibit the
English woollen manufacture, and the English again prohibit,
or impose a tax equal to a prohibition, on the French silks,
paper, linen, and several other of their manufactures. 'Tis
from the same just reason in trade that we prohibit the wearing
of East India wrought silks, printed calicoes, &c.; that
we prohibit the importation of French brandy, Brazil sugars,
and Spanish tobacco; and so of several other things."