Queen through Mrs. Masham, his relative; who was bedchamber woman to the Queen, and cousin to the Duchess of Marlborough, whom she supplanted in the Queen's affections. All this was a source of great consternation to De Foe; for Harley had been his especial patron since the overthrow of the Earl of Nottingham's secretary-of-stateship by De Foe's Shortest Way with the Dissenters; at whose instigation alone, I firmly believe, that muchmisrepresented though powerful tract was written. As for the leading Whigs, they were not much in the habit of employing writers; for some of them were political writers of a very high order, and did not require the assistance of such talents as De Foe's; of this class was Lord Somers, William's honest friend and minister. Harley was an ambitious and intriguing man; one who could use De Foe's talents to some purpose or other, as he could use the stomachs of half the members of the House of Commons, to procure his election to the Speakership in three Parliaments, which made him valuable as a cabinet minister; he having that stomach gauge of a very ordinary quality of House of Commons, which a better class of statesmen would not care to make himself master of. The thorough command of the bowels of the House of Commons elevated Harley to a seat in the cabinet.

After the first alarm had subsided, De Foe, through the recommendation of the late Secretary of State, Harley, under whose immediate patronage he considered himself to be placed, waited upon the Lord Treasurer Godolphin, and was graciously received; he observing, with a smile, that he had not seen him of a long while. De Foe explained his position with the late minister as well as he could, and evidently to the satisfaction of the Lord Treasurer, who introduced him a second time to her Majesty, whose gracious hand he was allowed to kiss, on the continuance of the place or appointment enjoyed by him under the late minister; who had always been considered as the head of that particular department. This continuation of an office or employment was granted in consideration of former services of a special nature; which De Foe had successfully carried out, though, as he says, running as much risk of his life as a grenadier upon the counterscarp. Where could he have been?

in Devonshire, at Exeter assizes?-Scotland?-Edinburgh ?—in the Highlands, or at St. Germains?-the court of the Pretender?-who knows? He had been somewhere, and-for Harley the late minister, and at the imminent risk of his life!

On this occasion her Majesty informed De Foe that she had received such satisfaction in his former services, that she had appointed him to another office-a better office, but of that the Lord Treasurer would give him the particulars; and on this he withdrew.

The next day his lordship ordered De Foe to attend upon him, when he stated that he must go to Scotland immediately, and leave London in three days on his journey. He went as ordered, and at the time too, for Scotland; but what the business was, has never transpired; and of course, now, after the lapse of a century and a quarter, never will.

"And yet my errand was such as was far from being unfit for a sovereign to direct, or an honest man to perform; and the service I did upon that occasion, as it is not unknown to the greatest man now in the nation, under the King and the Prince; so I dare say, his Grace was never displeased with the part I had in it, and I hope will not forget it.

"These things I mention, upon this account, and no other, viz., to state the obligation I have been in all along to her Majesty personally, and to my first benefactor principally; by which I say, I think I was at least obliged not to act against them, even in those things which I might not approve. Whether I have acted with them further than I ought, shall be spoken to by itself. Having said thus much of the obligations laid on me, and the persons by whom, I have this only to add, that I think no man will say, a subject could be under greater bonds to his prince, or a private person to a minister of state; and I shall even preserve this principle, that an honest man cannot be ungrateful to his benefactor."

On the prospect of a threatened invasion from France at this time, De Foe published a short tract, entitled the Union Proverb, viz. :

If Skiddaw has a cap,

Scruffell wots full well of that.

"Setting forth-1st, The necessity of uniting; 2ndly, the good consequences of uniting; 3rdly, The happy union of England and Scotland, in case of a foreign invasion. Felix quem faciunt aliena pericula cautum. London, 1708."

"To the true British reader, Skiddaw and Scruffell are two neighbouring hills, or high mountains: the one in Cumberland, in England; the other in Annandale, in Scotland; and, if the former happen at any time to be capped with clouds or foggy mists, it will not be long ere rain, or the like, fall on the latter. It is also spoken of such who must expect to sympathize in their sufferings by reason of the vicinity of their habitations.

"It is an excellent lecture of mutual friendship on either side of the Tweed. It ingenuously tells us, what we are to trust to in troublesome times, either of oppression at home, or of miscarriage, affliction, and misfortune, from abroad. It is, likewise, a most politic and prudent caution against foreign invasions. It does not only, and that pathetically too, set forth the necessity of the two kingdoms uniting heartily in all cases of disastrous disturbance, but also manifestly shows the happy consequences of such an entire union, both in point of government and traffic, as will be able to defeat the turbulent designs of our greatest enemies, either in time of peace or of war. This is the main stock on which our common hopes ought to be grafted, of making Great Britain flourish and fructify in spite of French blasts or caterpillars."

CHAPTER VII.

On the 31st of March, 1709, De Foe closed his fifth volume of the Review, after it had attained to 158 numbers; which appeared three times in each week. Now, it may be expected that I should go into the merits of the several articles, with all the answers from Tories of all grades, both in England, Scotland, and IrelandCharles Leslie, the nonjuror divine, taking the lead in prose; and Ned Ward or Tom Browne bringing up the rear in poetic effusions; and among the crowd of mean worshippers of power stands Dean Swift, witty and unprincipled: a man to be execrated as its representative for servile meanness, so long as the English language shall be a means of communication between one individual of our species and another. Swift-Swift the contemptible, must join in the crowd of detractors, and speak of De Foe. Swift, the Dean of St. Patrick's, to speak contemptuously of Daniel De Foe!

Well, suffice to say, that the fifth volume of De Foe's Review was, for the most part, taken up in allaying the storm ecclesiastic raised by the Presbyterians with their fears of subjection, and by the Episcopalians with their hopes of ruling over God's heritage in Scotland. The Act of Union stirred up the old religious party feelings of Scotland from the very dregs; and De Foe undertook the task, to allay the storm; and this chiefly in his Review, and more especially in the fifth volume.

At this time, many thousands of poor persecuted Germans sought refuge in England from the exactions of the French, and were, for convenience or necessity, encamped about Blackheath, to the num ber of ten thousand, and supplied with tents and subsistence from the government, and the collections made in all the churches, in aid of these poor outcasts, by means of a brief. This kind treatment of the unfortunate added to the supply, till government were compelled

to stop its benevolence. Of course, such an importation of watercress hawkers in our streets would cause great alarm among the unskilled labourers of the metropolis; and there would be a great cry of ruin to our land, from the staid, quiet, safe politicians of the day, who work upon scripture principles, of the evil of the day being sufficient to it; so make no hoarding of fusty trash in the mind; but buy their politics, as they buy their bread, smoking hot, from the leading article of their daily newspaper. Against this inoffensive class De Foe had to work in his Review; and bring up his supplies of political-economic information from the stores of Sir Josiah Child, Thomas Main, and others, the great precursors of Adam Smith, the organizer of the dismembered limbs of the great, the glorious system of vitality-Political Economy. De Foe had to write free trade in the summer of 1709; and such free trade as Richard Cobden, John Bright, George Wilson, and others, enunciated from the platform of the Free-trade Hall, in Manchester, one hundred and thirty years afterwards.

"Were the nation so full of people, as that the corn and cattle could not feed them, it would be still better. The Dutch plough no land, and sow no seed, comparatively speaking; yet they have no want. Sowing corn is far from being the best improvement of land, as is apparent in England, where ploughed lands, even in the most fruitful parts, are the least valuable."

In the month of October of this year, the grand jury presented his Review, for his independence in writing freely upon the Episcopalian usurpations upon the Established Presbyterian Church of Scotland.

In reading the secret history of Arlus and Adolphus, chief ministers of state to the Empress of Grand Insula, I find that Harley and Sacheverell share the sympathy of the writer; and that to Marlborough, Godolphin, and their party, the Quinquinvirate, the term of reproach, Leveller, is very freely applied. The spirit of this pamphlet and its associations have caused me to ask myself, whether Dr. Sacheverell, in 1709 and 1710, might not be instrumental in playing the same game, for the same purpose, for Harley, that De Foe played for the same man in 1703-the breaking-up the admi