of the army.  At Harley’s instigation Swift wrote an “advice” to these hot partisans, beseeching them to have patience and trust the Ministry, and everything that they wished would happen in due time.  Defoe sought to break their ranks by a direct onslaught in his most vigorous style, denouncing them in the Review as Jacobites in disguise and an illicit importation from France, and writing their “secret history,” “with some friendly characters of the illustrious members of that honourable society” in two separate tracts.  This skirmish served the double purpose of strengthening Harley against the reckless zealots of his party, and keeping up Defoe’s appearance of impartiality.  Throughout the fierce struggle of parties, never so intense in any period of our history as during those years when the Constitution itself hung in the balance, it was as a True-born Englishman first and a Whig and Dissenter afterwards, that Defoe gave his support to the Tory Ministry.  It may not have been his fault; he may have been most unjustly suspected; but nobody at the time would believe his protestations of independence.  When his former High-flying persecutor, the Earl of Nottingham, went over to the Whigs, and with their acquiescence, or at least without their active opposition, introduced another Bill to put down Occasional Conformity, Defoe wrote trenchantly against it.  But even then the Dissenters, as he loudly lamented, repudiated his alliance.  The Whigs were not so much pleased on this occasion with his denunciations of the persecuting spirit of the High-Churchmen, as they were enraged by his stinging taunts levelled at themselves for abandoning the Dissenters to their persecutors.  The Dissenters must now see, Defoe said, that they would not be any better off under a Low-Church ministry than under a High-Church ministry.  But the Dissenters, considering that the Whigs were too much in a minority to prevent the passing of the Bill, however willing to do so, would only see in their professed champion an artful supporter of the men in power.

A curious instance has been preserved of the estimate of Defoe’s character at this time.[2] M. Mesnager, an agent sent by the French King to sound the Ministry and the country as to terms of peace, wanted an able pamphleteer to promote the French interest.  The Swedish Resident recommended Defoe, who had just issued a tract, entitled Reasons why this Nation ought to put an end to this expensive War.  Mesnager was delighted with the tract, at once had it translated into French and circulated through the Netherlands, employed the Swede to treat with Defoe, and sent him a hundred pistoles by way of earnest.  Defoe kept the pistoles, but told the Queen, M. Mesnager recording that though “he missed his aim in this person, the money perhaps was not wholly lost; for I afterwards understood that the man was in the service of the state, and that he had let the Queen know of the hundred pistoles he had received; so I was obliged to sit