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.