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.