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.