Historical Characters in the Reign of Queen Anne

’T is vain to trifle in this matter. The light, foolish handling of them by mulcts, fines, etc., ’t is their glory and their advantage. If the gallows instead of the counter, and the galleys instead of the fines, were the reward of going to a conventicle to preach or to hear, there would not be so many sufferers. The spirit of martyrdom is over. They that will go to church to be chosen sheriffs and mayors would go to forty churches rather than be hanged. If one severe law were made and punctually executed, that whoever was found at a conventicle should be banished, the nation and the preacher be hanged, we should see an end of the tale. They would all come to church, and one age would make us all one again.

To talk of 5s. a month for not coming to this sacrament, and 1s. per week for not coming to church, this is such a way of converting people as never was known. This is selling them a liberty to transgress for so much money. If it be not a crime, why don’t we give them full license? And if it be, no price ought to compound for committing it, for that is selling a liberty to people to sin against God and the government.

If it be a crime of the highest consequence, both against the peace and welfare of the nation, the glory of God, the good of the church, and the happiness of the soul, let us rank it among capital offences, and let it receive a punishment in proportion to it.

We hang men for trifles and banish them for things not worth naming. But an offence against God and the church, against the welfare of the world, and the dignity of religion shall be bought off for 5s.—this is such a shame to a Christian Government that ’tis with regret I transmit it to posterity.

If men sin against God, affront his ordinances, rebel against his church, and disobey the precepts of their superiors, let them suffer as such capital crimes deserve: so will religion flourish, and this divided nation be once again united.... I am not supposing that all the dissenters in England should be hanged or banished, but as in cases of rebellions and insurrections, if a few of the ringleaders suffer, the multitude are dismissed; so a few obstinate people being bad examples, there’s no doubt but the severity of the law would find a stop in the compliance of the multitude.

The reader will perceive by what a serious argument the hot-headed fanatic was betrayed and the wiser public put upon their guard. The mirror thus held up to nature, with a grotesque twist in it which made the likeness bewildering, gave London such a sensation as she had not felt for many a day. The wildest excitement arose. At first all parties in the shock of surprise took it for genuine. “The wisest churchmen in the nation were deceived by it,” and while some were even so foolish as to receive it with unthinking applause, which was the case, according to Oldmixon, “in our two famous Universities,” the more sensible reader of the church party was first indignant with the high-flyers for expressing such opinions, and then furious with the satirist who had insulted the church by putting them into her mouth. Nobody indeed saw the joke. The fellow of Cambridge who thanked his bookseller for packing up “so excellent a treatise” along with the books he had ordered, and considered it “next to the Sacred Bible and Holy Comments the best book he ever saw”; the “soberer churchman” who “openly exclaimed against the proposal, condemned the

warmth that appeared in the clergy, and openly professed that such a man as Sacheverell and his brethren would blow up the foundations of the church”; the dissenters who were at once insulted and alarmed by the extraordinary threats thus set forth against them—all alike turned upon the perpetrator of the hoax when he was discovered. Some “blushed when they reflected how far they had applauded,” some labored to prove that it was “a horrible slander against the church.” The government, sharing the general commotion, placed Defoe in the position of a revolutionary leader who, “by the villainous insinuations of that pamphlet, would have frightened the dissenters into another rebellion.” Defoe himself seems to have had a moment of panic, and fled. He was proclaimed in the “Gazette,” and a reward offered for his discovery. His biographers in general assert that he gave himself up with some generosity to save the printer and publisher, who had been arrested, but there are public documents which seem to prove a different procedure, showing how “My Lord Nottingham hunted him out,” and how “the person who discovered Daniel Foe” claimed and was paid the reward of fifty pounds offered for the offender, described as a “middle-aged, spare man, about forty years old, of a brown complexion and dark brown colored hair (but wears a wig), a hooked nose, a sharp chin, gray eyes, and a large mole near his mouth.” However that might be, he was arrested and committed to Newgate in the spring of 1703, and the obnoxious publication—“this little book, a contemptible pamphlet of but three sheets of paper,” as he describes it—was burned by the common hangman. It was not, however, till the summer, three or four months after his arrest, that he was tried, and that period he seems to have spent in Newgate in perfect freedom, at least for literary productions, since he filled the air with a mist of pamphlets explaining that he meant nothing but a harmless satire at one moment, at another exhorting the dissenters to be content with spiritual freedom, and again bursting into the rude but potent strains of the “Hymn to the Pillory.” He was sentenced to fine and imprisonment, as well as to that grotesque but sometimes terrible instrument of torture; but the pillory was no torture to Defoe. On the last three days of July—once before the Royal Exchange in Cornhill, where his shop had been, and where no doubt everybody knew him, once in Cheapside, and again at Temple Bar—he stood aloft with the crowd surging round and performed his penance. The crowd in those days was not a soft or civil one when it indorsed the sentence pronounced by law. Its howls and cries, its missiles and its curses, made the punishment horrible. But the crowd had by this time found time to take in the joke,—banter, when it is broad enough to be intelligible, always pleases the general,—and there must have been some bonhomie about the sufferer, some good repute as a merry fellow and one who loved a jest, which conciliated the populace. Instead of dead cats, they flung him nosegays; they gathered about his platform under the low deep arch which once made a mock gate to the city, and behind the bustling ’Change, and between the shops of Cheapside, holding a series of impromptu festivals, drinking his health, shouting out his new verses, which were sold by thousands in the streets:

Hail, hieroglyphic state machine,Contriv’d to punish fancy in;Men that are men, in thee can feel no pain,And all thy insignificants disdain;Exalted on thy stool of state,What prospect do I see of sovereign fate.

The bold satirist, looking through those “lofty loops,” recalls all the good men that have stood there, reminding himself that even the learned Selden had the pillory in prospect, and that, had he “triumphed on thy stage,” no man could have shunned it more. Contempt, “that false new word for shame,” has no power where there is no crime, he declares. The lines are rough, but the sentiments are manly and full of honest scorn, which here and there reaches a high tone. From his platform where he stood in all the emancipation of feeling that the worst had happened, he throws a bold glance upon the disorders of the time, political and social, and summons to this post of scorn the firebrands, the cowards, the failures of the age. One can imagine those keen gray eyes inspecting through the loops the hoarse and roaming groups, not sure perhaps what his reception was to be, gathering courage as the shouts became intelligible and turned into hurrahs for Defoe. No doubt he marked the fluctuating crowd as keenly as if he had been a careless spectator at a window, and saw Colonel Jack and his brother pickpockets threading devious ways among the multitude, with here and there a gallant from St. James in his long curled periwig fluttering on the edge, and the tradesmen, half curious, half unwilling to join in the riot, looking on from their doors. A pillory is a coign of vantage when the man upon it has eyes like Defoe’s. “Tell ’em,” he says, apostrophizing his platform contemptuously—

Tell ’em the men that placed him hereAre friends unto the times,But at a loss to find his guilt,They can’t commit his crimes.

Mr. Burton, in his “Reign of Queen Anne,” quotes from manuscript authority a statement that Penn had been commissioned by Defoe to offer “an account of all his accomplices in whatsoever he has been concerned,” on condition that he should be freed from the pillory, which is a very confusing statement, since it seems impossible to understand what accomplices he could have had. This, according to the same authority, was considered important enough to call for a special meeting of the cabinet council; but “the Queen seems to think that his confession amounts to nothing.” Another account is that Nottingham visited him in prison and offered him his liberty if he would say who set him on to do it. Thus this jeu d’esprit—the first exercise of Defoe’s special and most characteristic gift, that of endowing a fictitious production with every appearance of reality—set the world aflame. It is almost a more astonishing feat than the narratives which look so like literal transcripts of experience; for the subtle power which, by a cunning fitting together of actual utterances, could thus indicate the alarming tendency and danger of a great party, is more wonderful than to create an imaginary man and trace his every action as if he were a real one. The art may be less noble, but it is more difficult. Indeed, the “Shortest Way” is about the only example of such an extraordinary achievement. Swift’s tremendous satire was more bitter, more scathing, and treated not so much the exaggerated opinions of a class as the cruel and callous indifference of human nature to the sufferings of its slaves and victims.

This curious episode once more ruined Defoe. It is to be supposed that when he went into hiding his business had to be abandoned, and all his affairs got into confusion. The official document already quoted describes him as “living at Newington Green with his father-in-law, who is a lay elder of a conventicle there.” This description, however, is evidently drawn up by an enemy, since his previous bankruptcy is spoken of as fraudulent, an assertion made nowhere else. His biographer, Wilson, informs us that though he had “kept his coach” before this period, the pantile works had now to be broken up, and his business was ruined. He had, though there is no information about her, a wife and six children—perhaps supported by the elder at Newington, who very likely thought, like his brethren, but badly of Defoe.

He lay in Newgate for nearly a year, without, however, to all appearance, losing any opportunity for a pamphlet during the whole time, and laying in grist for his mill amid the strange and terrible surroundings of an eighteenth-century prison. Mr. Minto, in the admirable sketch of Defoe which he has contributed to the “English Men of Letters” series, seems to think that his hero must have enjoyed himself in this teeming world of new experiences, and that “he spent many pleasant hours” listening to the tales of his fellow-prisoners. No doubt there must have been some compensation to such a man in making acquaintance with a new aspect of life, but it is, perhaps, going too far to attribute a possibility of enjoyment to any undegraded man in the pandemonium described in so many contemporary narratives. Defoe did, however, what, so far as we are aware, no other man before or after him has ever done (except, perhaps, Leigh Hunt, in whose case we have a vague recollection of similar activity): he originated, wrote, and published a newspaper in his prison. “The Review,” so called, “of the Affairs of France”—that is, of the affairs of Europe and the world—that is, of any political subject that might be uppermost—was published twice a week, and appeared during the whole time of his imprisonment. A brilliant, familiar, graphic commentary upon all that was happening, a dialogue between the imprisoned spectator of life and the busy world outside, in which he was both questioner and answerer, pouring out upon the country with the keenest understanding of other people’s views, and the most complete mastery of his own, his remarks and criticisms, his judgment and advice. A newspaper in those days was not, of course, the huge broadsheet which it has now become. The “Review” was a sheet of eight, but afterward of only four small quarto pages. It was no assemblage of paragraphs, trivial or important, the work of many anonymous persons whose profession it is to manufacture a newspaper, but one man’s eager and lively conversation with his countrymen, full of the vigor of personal opinion and the unity of an individual view. A keener intelligence was never brought to the treatment of public affairs, nor a mind more thoughtful, reasonable, and practical. His prejudices were few—too few, perhaps. Granted that the aim was good, Defoe was disdainful of punctilio in the way of carrying it out. He was not above doing evil that good might come, but he had a far higher refinement of meaning than could be embraced by any such vulgar statement in his subtle faculty of discovering, and all but proving, that what might have seemed evil to a common intelligence was in reality a good, if not the best, way of carrying his excellent purpose out. Up to the moment of his leaving Newgate, however, there was nothing equivocal in the use he made of his extraordinary faculties. He was a free man discussing boldly on his own responsibility, and without any arrière pensée, the affairs of England. If he had first keenly assailed the dissenters, who were his own people, in respect of the compliances by which they made themselves capable of bearing office, and then exposed to grimmest ridicule the adversaries who aimed at rendering them altogether incapable, there was in this no real inconsistency. His championship of King William had been honest and thorough. If he loved to have a finger in every pie, and let loose his opinion at every crisis, there was no contemporary opinion which was better worth having. But now this unwearying critic, this keen observer, this restless, brilliant casuist, this practical man of business, had come to the turning-point of his life.

His liberation from Newgate followed closely upon the advent of Harley to power. When this event happened, it is said that one of the first things the new minister did was to send a message to Defoe in prison: “Pray ask that gentleman what I can do for him.” Whether it was in direct sequence to this question, or whether the Queen had formed an independent intention of freeing the prisoner, we need not inquire; but he was set free, Queen Anne furnishing the means of paying his fine. She is said also to have taken an interest in his family, and contributed to their support during his confinement. He declared himself to be liberated on the condition of writing nothing (further modified as nothing “which some people might not like”) for some years; a condition which he immediately fulfilled by publishing an “Elegy on the Author of the True-born Englishman,” to tell the world so, and took no further notice of the prohibition, so far as appears. The real meaning of this curious statement would seem by all evidence to have been that Defoe there and then accepted the position of a secret servant of the government, a writer pledged to support their measures and carry out their views. At the moment, and perhaps in reality during the greater part of his career, their measures were those which he approved; and certainly at this period of his history he has never been accused of writing against his conscience. Even when, after eager championship of peace, he was obliged by political changes to veer into what looked like support of war, he was never without the strong defense to fall back upon, that he demanded peace only after securing certain indispensable conditions, and that war might be, and was, the only means of gaining them—an argument most simple and evident to his mind.

Harley has never appeared in history as a great man, but when we consider that he was able thus to subjugate and secure to his own service two of the greatest intelligences of his time, it is impossible not to respect his influence and judgment. The great and somber genius of Swift, the daring, brilliant, and ever-ready intellect of Defoe, became instruments in the hands of this ordinary and scheming statesman. Once more, with a curious parallelism, these two men stand before us—no friends to each other. “An illiterate fellow, whose name I forget,” says Swift, with the almost brutal scorn which was part of his character; while Defoe replies to the taunt with angry virulence, setting forth his own acquirements, “though he wrote no bill at his door, nor set Latin on the front of his productions,” a piece of pretension, habitual to the time, of which the other was guilty. But Harley, who was not worthy, so far as intellect went, to clean the shoes of either, had them both at his command, serving his purposes, doing his bidding. Which of them suffered most by the connection it is not easy to say. It turned Swift’s head, and brought into humiliating demonstration the braggart and the bully in his nature. Defoe had not the demoralizing chance of being the lord treasurer’s boon companion; but Harley made a dishonest partizan, a paid and slippery special pleader and secret agent, out of the free-lance of politics. From this moment the defenders and champions of Defoe have to turn into casuists, as he himself did. They have to give specious explanations to suppress and account for his shifts and changes, though at first they were sufficiently innocent. The evil grew, however, so that toward the end of his career even the apologist must keep silence; but this is the nature of all evil.

If excuses are to be sought for Defoe’s conduct in this first beginning of his slavery, it will not be difficult to find them. The age, for one thing, was corrupt through and through. There was not a statesman but had two strings to his bow, nor a politician of any description who did not attempt to serve two masters. To hold the balance between Hanover and St.-Germain, ready to perform a demi-volt in the air at any moment as the scale should turn, was the science of the day. On the other hand, Defoe was now a ruined man, with a family to support, and nothing but his busy and inexhaustible pen to do it with. The material inducement of a certain income to fall back upon, whatever

might be the chances of journalism, must have been very strong. And what was stronger still was the delight of his own vivacious, restless, ready mind, with its sense of boundless power and infinite resource, to which difficulty was a delight and the exercise of walking over hot coals or dancing on a sword-point the most exhilarating possibility, in making its triumphant way over obstacles which would have baffled almost all his contemporaries. “The danger’s self was lure alone” to this skilled and cunning fencer, this master of all the arts. In a very different sense from that of Tennyson’s noble hero, “Faith Unfaithful” was inspiration and strength to him, and to be falsely true the most delightful situation. He loved to support his principles by a hundred dodges, and plead them from the other side, and make of himself the devil’s advocate in the interest of heaven. All this was life to his mind. He must have had a positive pleasure in proving to himself first, and then to all England, that the happiest thing a Whig could do was to find the Tory measures exactly those which he would have recommended, and that his allegiance to the queen required a change of policy on his part whenever circumstances compelled her to change her ministry. It was all devotion—not time-serving, as the vulgar thought. Defoe took infinite pleasure in proving that it was so, in making everything clear. The commonplace and humdrum expedient of following your party would have been dull to him—a proceeding without interest as without danger. He wanted excitement, obstacles to get over; a position which would make sudden claims upon his ingenuity to account for and fortify it. Such a mind is rare, and still more rarely is it accompanied by genius. But when such a combination does occur it is a very curious spectacle.

In the mean time, however, all that Defoe had to do was simple enough. He had to support peace and the union—two things which in his free estate he had already advocated with all his powers. He did it with the utmost skill, fervor, and success, and to all appearance contributed much to the great public act which was the subject of so many struggles and resistances on the part of the smaller nation—the union. This great expedient, of which from the first he had seen the advantage, Defoe worked for with unwearying zeal. He praised and caressed Caledonia—upon which subject he wrote one of those vigorous essays in verse which he called poetry—and the tolerance of the Presbyterian Church, and the good sense of the nation generally, which was not always perceptible to English politicians; and even risked a visit to Edinburgh in performance of the orders of the government, though at the risk of rude handling to himself. In all this there cannot be the slightest doubt that he was entirely honest and patriotic, and acted from an enlightened personal view of the necessities of the case. When the curious incident of the Sacheverell prosecution occurred, he had once more a subject entirely to his own mind, and expressed his own feelings in supporting with all his might the measures of the government against that High Church firebrand, one of the chief of those whom he had held up to public ridicule in the “Shortest Way.” So far he was fortunate, being employed upon subjects entirely congenial to his mind, and on which he had already strong convictions. The equivocal part of the matter is that he never ceased to assert and insist upon his independence. “Contemn,” he says, “as not worth mentioning, the suggestions of some people of my being employed to carry on the interests of a party. I have never loved any party, 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”—which was the truth, yet not all the truth. Again, with still more violent protestations, he refers to his private circumstances, of which nothing is known, to prove how little he was protected by power. It would seem from this statement that he was still being pursued for the remnant of old debts, or those new ones with which the failure of his tile factory and his long imprisonment had saddled him.

If paid, gentlemen, for writing [he cries], if hired, if employed, why still harassed with merciless and malicious men; why pursued to all extremities of law for old accounts which you clear other men of every day? Why oppressed, distressed, and driven from his family, and from all his prospects of delivering them and himself? Is this the fate of men employed and hired? Is this the figure the agents of courts and princes make?

The argument is a feeble one for such a practised reasoner as Defoe, without considering the trifling detail that it was untrue, for debts are by no means unknown to favorites of the crown. Nor could he have been saved by Harley’s pay, which probably was never very great, from the consequences of previous misfortunes. The reader will think that a judicious silence would have been more appropriate, but that was not Defoe’s way. The only wonder is that he did not adduce such detailed evidence of his own freedom as would have deceived any man, and shown to demonstration that it was he who subsidized the ministry, and not they him. The wonderful thing is that he was free through all, maintaining his own favorite opinions, working as an independent power. Servile journalists have existed in plenty, but seldom one who took the pay of his masters and served their interests, yet fought under his own flag with honesty and a good conscience all the while.

This happy state, however, did not last. Harley fell, but with his last breath (as a minister) adjured his champion not to sacrifice himself, but to come to an understanding with his successor, Godolphin. This necessitated a certain revolution in respect to peace, which Defoe managed cleverly with the excellent device above mentioned. And there was still higher ground which he felt himself entitled to take. The public safety was involved in the stability of the new ministry such as it was. And he faces the dilemma with boundless pluck and assurance. “Though I don’t like the crew, I won’t sink the ship; I’ll pump and heave and haul and do everything I can, though he that pulls with me were my enemy. The reason is plain. We are all in the ship and must sink or swim together.” These admirable reasonings brought him at last to the calm rectitude of the following conclusion: