light that was in them; but this would not do for the ruling power; for if there were no religion to quarrel, spar, or fight about, there might be other causes of quarrel arise, which might be more inconvenient to the ruling powers. The court politicians of the Moon, like certain court politicians nearer home, always liked plenty of religious strife to work upon; for it kept the people fully and harmlessly employed, and prevented “their more narrow inspection into depredations and encroachments on their liberties, which was always making on them by the court." Whatever the court might do, there was naturally in the breed of these people a contentious spirit, produced by the very nature of their existence as a people; they were a breed sprung from the gloomy, foreboding, suspicious malignants of all the nations of the earth: a sort of what I might call blowers-through-the-nose breed of men-I'm-as-good-as-you class of mortal beings! What a strange thing that people should be so blind to their own interests as to allow the court to play at battledoor and shuttlecock with them as churchmen and dissenters! It is thoroughly deplorable; but so it was in the Moon, where the court could jolt the people's heads together over trifles; and so rule and overreach them when divided. All this proceeds from a constitutional pride, which despises the cogitator, but worships the elevator. "Pride cometh before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall," has been a maxim both of earth and moon for a hundred generations, and will continue, I fear, through all time, as the main instrument of courtly oppressors, for the destruction of liberty. I may be wrong, but I believe that no instrument is so powerful in the hands of the rulers of a people, for the destruction of civil and religious liberty, as pride. Oh! shade of Andrew Marvell!-the man who could live four days upon a shoulder of mutton, and fearlessly and publicly despise the offered patronage of Charles II.! This work was attacked by Dr. Browne, Tutchin, and others, in sundry tracts, as the Moon-Calf; or, accurate Reflections on the Consolidator; and A Journey to the World in the Moon; and also in A Second and more strange Journey to the World in the Moon: containing a comical Description of that remarkable Country, with the Character and Humours of the Inhabitants;" with the promise in an advertisement of "A Letter from the Man in the Moon to the Author of the True-Born Englishman, containing a variety of diverting news and comical intrigues relating to the present posture of affairs in Europe." All the above were pamphlets pirated from De Foe's Consolidator, wretchedly got up, curtailed, mutilated, and sold in the streets as the last work of Daniel De Foe, by the common street-hawkers, criers, or ballad-sellers. Such was De Foe's reputation as a writer; and such was the compliment-a rough one no doubt, but yet a compliment-to the man, and his talent for writing. De Foe next wrote "The Experiment; or, the Shorter Way with the Dissenters exemplified: being the Case of Mr. Abraham Gill, a Dissenting Minister in the Isle of Ely; and a full Account of his being sent for a Soldier by Mr. Fern (an Ecclesiastical Justice of the Peace) and other Conspirators. To the Eternal Honour of the Temper and Moderation of High-Church Principles. Humbly dedicated to the Queen." 1705: London. The subject of this pamphlet, Abraham Gill, was born at Rivington, in Lancashire, in 1665; and was partly educated by the dissenters, but afterwards went to Brazennose College, Oxford, where he graduated B.A.; from which place he went to Parham, the family residence of Lord Willoughby, as a tutor, where he remained two years; and after that he took orders in the Church of England in 1692. He was ordained to the curacy of Maney, near Wisbeach, where he remained two years, preaching twice each Sunday, contrary to the practice of the neighbourhood. In 1695 he went to Wilney, in the same county, a chapelry in the gift of the inhabitants, where he remained seven years, to the satisfaction of his flock. He soon became dissatisfied with the Liturgy, in certain of its parts, and presently in the whole of them. On this the rector of Upwell, the mother church, Dr. Gregg, remonstrated, and threatened to place another curate at Wilney, to supersede Mr. Gill; but, he showing the rector that this chapel was extra-parochial, so far as discipline went, the rector was satisfied, and, as a gentlemen, very properly desisted from giving any further trouble on the occasion. Some time after this, Dr. Gregg was succeeded in the rectory by Mr. Hugh James, a man fond of making something important of himself as an official in the parish; and he attempted to remove Mr. Gill from his chapelry. By a series of persecutions he succeeded, whereupon Mr. Gill retired into Lincolnshire, where persecuting malice followed him, and brought charges-fictitious ones though--which caused this poor man to be thrown into prison; but released on the failure of the appearance of the prosecutors at the trial. This treatment excited such an interest among the people of his former chapelry in Upwell parish, where we have shown he resided seven years to the satisfaction of his flock, that many of them invited him to settle there again, but-as a dissenting minister. With this request he complied, and a chapel was legally licensed. Here his enemies closed upon him, and, by legal process of writs and legal fictions, committed him by writ of habeas corpus to Norwich gaol, on the serious charges of felony, trespass, contempt, and other crimes, which not being proved on the trial, he was of course discharged. Mr. Gill, returning to his people in Upwell parish, was threatened by James the rector, and his curate, Lateward, with a committal to prison again, if he preached in their parish. He did preach, and was arrested shortly afterwards for holding a conventicle, and was committed to Wisbeach gaol for the offence. The quarter sessions passed over, and the assizes coming on, and he still in prison and untried, these two clergymen conspired with other justices to impress him as a soldier, before the assizes should come on. This was done, notwithstanding Gill's standing on his rights as a freeholder of Lancashire, and a freeman of Wigan. After enlistment, Gill was marched forty miles to Cambridge; where he was arrested for debt and locked up in the gaol; and, being locked up, he could not attend the muster roll among the soldiers; when Fern the justice-the clerical justice-issued a warrant for his apprehension as a deserter. By these several persecutions he was driven to seek the shelter of the law, when he moved for a writ of habeas corpus to discharge him from the enlistment; and, a rule of court against the conspirators being granted, things were made up with his creditors; and after seven weeks' imprisonment, he returned to Wilney, where he found his poor wife and children in the greatest distress from destitution. Early in the summer of 1705, a pamphlet, entitled Advice to the Ladies, by the author of the True-Born Englishman, was cried about the streets by the news-hawkers, and, as usual, brought a ready sale; for anything would sell if sold as the latest production of Daniel De Foe, whose name was constantly stolen in this way, for the sale of worthless, nameless trash, which never could have obtained a sale but by this artificial forcing. De Foe had to advertise in his Review, that all this hawked trash was stolen, even if the work cried was his; for he never employed street-hawkers to cry his own books; and that in future he should publish no book without his name being properly affixed to it. The next production from the fertile pen of De Foe was the Diet of Poland, 1705; in which William III. is named Sobieski; and most of the political characters of his reign, and that of his successor, are drawn to the life-the Earl of Halifax, Russell, and Somers, being especially and favourably portrayed; and Nottingham, Rochester, Seymour, Rooke, and others, are drawn by way of contrast, to show off his better portraits, his heroes of the national legacy left by William the Patrotic of glorious memory, to this country, to keep it from anarchy; and preserve his poor weak sisterin-law in her inheritance, in spite of herself. In this poem he reviews the opposition of the High-ChurchPretender-serving clergy, to the Occasional Bill, and their general bigotry and intolerance, where French interests could be served; for they were French and Pretender all over; in short, they were anything but Dutch-Presbyterian, or Dan-Burgess-psalm-singing Muggletonian. When once the pulpit plague infects the land, CHAPTER V. Ar this time, De Foe was appointed by Harley, the secretary of state, to some important and secret mission on the continent of Europe; but whether in France or Spain, is uncertain; but certainly in one of these countries; for the service was a dangerous one, requiring some considerable Downing-Street modesty of face in passport, and credential papers; as bulwarks against prying country justices, and jack-in-office officials of the landing-stage. On this business there is a letter extant in Birch's Manuscripts (No. 4291) in the British Museum; and this letter is addressed by De Foe to Harley, the minister; though De Foe's name is not appended to it, (F.) being the only signature. Harley, in this letter, is requested to address his answer to Mr. Christopher Hurt. The papers enclosed in the letter sent to Harley were expressly written for him, being observations on public opinion, on the affair of the Fleet (1705),— an unhappy subject; and the intelligence sent to the minister on public opinion is much below the excitement on the subject. What was it? He assures the minister that he has "no personal design" as to Sir George Rooke, the admiral: "I neither know him, nor am concerned with him, or with any that does know him, directly or indirectly; I have not the least disrespect for him, or any personal prejudice, on any account whatever. I hope you will please to give full credit to me in this, otherwise it would be very rude and presuming to offer you the paper." He is preparing with joy to execute the minister's commands on Thursday next, and furnishing "myself with horses, &c." Furnishing himself with horses, &c.: what does this mean? Scotland? A secret trip to Scotland, for Harley the tricky minister, and friend of the Queen? Horses would not be required to ride to France. No! nor yet to Spain. But for Scotland, if De Foe had to visit the Scottish lairds or chieftains |