DIFFICULTIES IN RE-CHANGING SIDES.

Defoe’s unwearied zeal in the service of Harley had excited the bitterest resentment among his old allies, the Whigs.  He often complained of it, more in sorrow than in anger.  He had no right to look for any other treatment; it was a just punishment upon him for seeking the good of his country without respect of parties.  An author that wrote from principle had a very hard task in those dangerous times.  If he ventured on the dangerous precipice of telling unbiassed truth, he must expect martyrdom from both sides.  This resignation of the simple single-minded patriot to the pains and penalties of honesty, naturally added to the rage of the party with whose factious proceedings he would have nothing to do; and yet it has always been thought an extraordinary instance of party spite that the Whigs should have instituted a prosecution against him, on the alleged ground that a certain remarkable series of Tracts were written in favour of the Pretender.  Towards the end of 1712 Defoe had issued A Seasonable Warning and Caution against the Insinuations of Papists and Jacobites in favour of the Pretender.  No charge of Jacobitism could be made against a pamphlet containing such a sentence as this:—­

“Think, then, dear Britons! what a King this Pretender must be! a papist by inclination; a tyrant by education; a Frenchman by honour and obligation;—­and how long will your liberties last you in this condition?  And when your liberties are gone, how long will your religion remain?  When your hands are tied; when armies bind you; when power oppresses you; when a tyrant disarms you; when a Popish French tyrant reigns over you; by what means or methods can you pretend to maintain your Protestant religion?”

A second pamphlet, Hannibal at the Gates, strongly urging party union and the banishment of factious spirit, was equally unmistakable in tone.  The titles of the following three of the series were more startling:—­Reasons against the Succession of the House of Hanover—­And what if the Pretender should come? or Some considerations of the advantages and real consequences of the Pretender’s possessing the Crown of Great Britain—­An Answer to a Question that nobody thinks of, viz.  But what if the Queen should die? The contents, however, were plainly ironical.  The main reason against the Succession of the Prince of Hanover was that it might be wise for the nation to take a short turn of a French, Popish, hereditary-right regime in the first place as an emetic.  Emetics were good for the health of individuals, and there could be no better preparative for a healthy constitutional government than another experience of arbitrary power.  Defoe had used the same ironical argument for putting Tories in office in 1708.  The advantages of the Pretender’s possessing the Crown were that we should be saved from all further danger of a war with France, and should no longer hold the exposed position