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’etat 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