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