genuine sense of what I write, against fair arguing, against all modesty and sense, condemned by common clamour as writing for money, for particular persons, by great men's directions, and the like; every tittle of which I have the testimony of my own conscience is abominably false, and the accusers must have the accusation of their own consciences that they do not know it to be true.

"I cannot say it has not given me a great deal of disturbance; for an ungrateful treatment by a people that I had run all manner of risk for, and thought I could have died for, cannot but touch a less sensible temper than I think mine to be; but I thank God that operation is over, and I endeavour to make other uses of it than perhaps the people themselves think I do. First, I look in, and upon the narrowest search I can make of my own thoughts, desires, and designs, I find a clear untainted principle, and consequently an entire calm of conscience, founded upon the satisfying sense, that I neither am touched with bribes, guided or influenced by fear, favour, hope, dependence, or reward from any person or party under heaven; and that I have written, and do write, nothing but what is my native, free, undirected opinion and judgment, and which was so many years ago, as I think I made unanswerably appear by the very last 'Review' of this volume.

"Next, I look up, and without examining into His ways, the sovereignty of whose providence I adore, I submit with an entire resignation to whatever happens to me, as being by the immediate direction of that goodness, and for such wise and glorious ends as, however I may not yet see through, will at last issue in good, even to me; fully depending that I shall yet be delivered from the power of slander and reproach, and the sincerity of my conduct be yet cleared up to the world; and if not, Te Deum laudamus.

"In the third place, I look back on the people who treat me thus, who, notwithstanding under the power of their prejudices they fly upon me with a fury that I think unchristian and unjust; yet as I doubt not the day will still come when they will be again undeceived in me, I am far from studying their injury, or doing myself justice at their expense, which I could do with great advantage. It is impossible for the Dissenters in this nation to provoke me to be an enemy to their interest; should they fire my house, sacrifice my family, and assassinate my life, I would ever requite them in defending their cause, and standing to the last against all those that should endeavour to weaken or reproach it. But this is, as I think it, a just and righteous cause, founded upon the great principle of truth and liberty, which I am well assured I shall never abandon. Not that I am insensible of being ill treated by them, or that I make any court to their persons. When any party of men have not a clear view of their own case, or a right knowledge of their own interest, he that will serve them, and knows the way to do it, must be certain not to please them, and must be able to see them revile and reproach him, and use him in the worst manner imaginable, without being moved either to return them ill, or refrain from doing them good; and this is the true meaning of that command which I thank God I cheerfully obey, viz. to pray for them that despitefully use me. I have not so ill an opinion of myself as not to think I merit better usage from the Dissenters, and I have not so ill an opinion of the Dissenters as not to think they will some time or other know their friends from their enemies better than they do now; nor have I so far forgot my friends as not to own a great many of them do already. I remember the time when the same people treated me in the same manner upon the book called The Shortest Way,' &c., and nothing but suffering for them would ever open their eyes. He that cleared up my integrity then can do it again by the same method, and I leave it to him. Ad te quacunque vocas is my rule; my study and practice is patience and resignation; and in this I triumph over all the indignity, reproach, slander, and raillery in the world; in this I enjoy, in the midst of a

million of enemies, a perfect peace and tranquillity; and when they misconstruct my words, pervert the best meaning, turn everything which I say their own way, it gives me no other contemplation than this: how vain is the opinion of men, either when they judge well or ill.

“I have made such protestations of my receiving no reward or directions whatever for this work, as none but those who are used to prevaricate themselves can, upon any foundation that is consistent with Christianity, suspect, and the circumstances I labour under are a corroborating evidence of the truth of it; yet, without grounds, without evidence, without any testimony but general notion, they will have it to be otherwise; two of their authors have the impudence to assert it, but not one step have they taken to prove it, nor can they do it, though both openly challenged to do it, and a hundred guineas offered upon the proof of it. Thus they give the lie and the rascal to themselves without my help, who quietly let them go on their own way. My measures are, to the best of my judgment, steady; what I approve I defend, what I dislike I censure, without any respect of persons; only endeavouring to give my reasons, and to make it appear that I approve and dislike upon good and sufficient grounds; which being first well assured of, the time is yet to come that I ever refrain to speak my mind for fear of the face of man. If what I have said were false, my enemies would certainly choose to answer rather than to rail; but as I have unanswerable truth, they choose to rail rather than to answer.

"I have lived too long, and seen too much, not to know that all those violent party feuds are of short duration; and we see the very men I now speak of, approve to-day what they were loudest against but yesterday. It is my disinterested study to serve them, but I confess 'tis not so to please them; I shall never leave off to wish well to their interest, and can I but serve it, they shall have leave to throw stones at me as long as I live. But this does by no means hinder but that I may, and ever shall, as the best mark of my zeal for their interest, tell them plainly their mistakes.

"This passion I have for their interest fills me with resentment at the barbarity of the treatment which the Dissenters have received in the affair of the Occasional Bill, and that from a people they had deserved other usage from; and in this, as I said before, I do them but justice. That they themselves are so easy under it as not only to make no complaint, but even to say it has done them no harm, is an evidence of their unconquerable passion to a particular view, which I believe they will always be disappointed in; since it is evident this has ruined the interest of the Whigs in almost all the corporations in England, and put them into such a posture as never but by miracle to recover it. I pity the delusion of those who entertain a notion, that if ever the Low Churchmen come to the administration, they will restore the Dissenters. I grant it would be both just and generous so to do, but if they will first show me one Low Churchman in the nation of any figure, that, however he may exclaim at the method, does not appear secretly satisfied that it is done, then I'll join in expecting it. But I shall farther show them the vanity of these hopes in my other discourses upon this head. We need not wonder at the other mistakes we see some people run into, when they are so intent upon the party interest they push at, that they are contented to be the sacrifice offered up for the purchase of human help to carry it on; in all which unchristian course we have seen them effectually disappointed, and I must own, till I see another spirit among them, I do not look for their deliverance.

"To return to my own case. I am a stoic in whatever may be the event of things. I'll do and say what I think is a debt to justice and truth, without the least regard to clamour and reproach; and as I am utterly unconcerned at human opinion, the people that throw away their breath so freely in censuring me, may consider of some better improvement to make of their passions than to waste them on a man that is both above

and below the reach of them. I know too much of the world to expect good in it, and have learnt to value it too little to be concerned at the evil. I have gone through a life of wonders, and am the subject of a vast variety of providences; I have been fed more by miracle than Elijah, when the ravens were his purveyors. I have some time ago summed up the scenes of my life in this distich:

"No man has tasted differing fortunes more,

And thirteen times I have been rich and poor."

"In the school of affliction I have learnt more philosophy than at the academy, and more divinity than from the pulpit; in prison I have learnt to know that liberty does not consist in open doors, and the free egress and regress of locomotion. I have seen the rough side of the world as well as the smooth; and have, in less than half a year, tasted the difference between the closet of a king and the dungeon of Newgate. I have suffered deeply for cleaving to principles, of which integrity I have lived to say, none but those I suffered for ever reproached me with it. The immediate causes of my suffering have been the being betrayed by those I have trusted, and scorning to betray those who trusted me. To the honour of English gratitude I have this remarkable truth to leave behind me that I was never so basely betrayed as by those whose families I had preserved from starving, nor so basely treated as by those I starved my own family to preserve. The same chequer work of fortune attends me still; the people I have served, and love to serve, cut my throat every day, because I will not cut the throats of those that have served and assisted me. Ingratitude has always been my aversion, and perhaps for that reason it is my exercise.

-

"And now I live under universal contempt, which contempt I have learned to contemn, and have an uninterrupted joy in my soul; not at my contemnt, but that no crime can be laid to my charge to make that contempt my due. Fame, a lying jade, would talk me up for I know not what of courage, and they call me a fighting fellow. I despise the flattery; I profess to know nothing of it, farther than truth makes any man bold; and I acknowledge, that give me but a bad cause, and I am the greatest coward in the world. Truth inspires nature; and as in defence of truth no honest man can be a coward, so no man of sense can be bold when he is in the wrong. He that is honest must be brave, and it is my opinion that a coward cannot be an honest man. In defence of truth I think (pardon me that I dare go no further, for who knows himself?) I say, I think I could dare to die; but a child may beat me if I am in the wrong. Guilt gives trembling to the hands, blushing to the face, and fills the heart with amazement and terror. I question whether there is much, if any, difference between bravery and cowardice, but what is founded in the principle they are engaged for; and I no more believe any man is born a coward than that he is born a knave. Truth makes a man of courage, and guilt makes that man a coward.

"Early disasters, and frequent turns of my affairs, have left me incumbered with an insupportable weight of debt; and the remarkable compassion of some creditors, after continued offers of stripping myself naked by entire surrenders upon oath, have never given me more trouble than they were able, or less than they knew how; by which means most of the debts I have discharged have cost me forty shillings in the pound, and the creditor half as much to recover. I have a large family, a wife and six children, who never want what they should enjoy, or spend what they ought to save. Under all these circumstances, and many more, too long to write, my only happiness is this: I have always been kept cheerful, easy, and quiet, enjoying a perfect calm of mind, clearness of thought, and satisfaction not to be broken in upon by whatever may happen to me. If any man ask me how I arrived to it, I answer him, in short, by a constant serious application to the great, solemn, and weighty work of resignation to the will of heaven; by which let no man think I presume. I have endeavoured,

and am in a great measure able to say feelingly and effectually, the following lines, which I recommend to the world, not only as the fruit of my own experience, but for the practice of all such as know how to value it, and think they need it." De Foe here inserts a poem of a hundred and sixteen lines, expressive of his contempt of the world, and his acquiescence in the will of Providence, under whatever fate may be determined for him.

CHAPTER XV.

THE subject that now engrossed the principal share of public attention, was the negotiation for peace. The preliminaries, after much altercation with the allies, being at length adjusted, they were communicated to the British parliament upon the 6th of June, 1712. When the terms became known, they created loud murmurs in the nation; nor were they better received upon the continent. Much dexterity was used to procure them a favourable reception in parliament, where the Duke of Marlborough said, they were directly contrary to her majesty's engagements with her allies, sullied the triumphs and glories of her reign, and would render the English name odious to all other nations.' In spite of remonstrance, an address of concurrence was hastily voted; and to prevent any further discussion of so disagreeable a subject, the ministers adjourned the parliament upon the 21st of June, and thus relieved themselves from a storm of opposition with which they were threatened.

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The most difficult part they had now to encounter, was to reconcile the people to their measures; and in the course of the year the country was deluged with publications for and against the peace, which occasioned a great fluctuation in public opinion. The war of the pen was carried on with the most acrimonious feelings, and both sides descended to the grossest personalities. In order to fix an odium upon the late ministers, and to justify an unmanly persecution, charges of fraud and peculation were brought against them. Libels to this effect were circulated against Marlborough, Godolphin, and Walpole; whilst the purity and patriotism of their successors were lauded in the most extravagant strains. "In those times, nothing was more common than crimes without any accuser, judgment without consideration, and condemnation without either defence or punishment."+ Those who opposed the terms of the peace, were either treated with extreme insolence, or harassed with prosecutions at law,‡ whilst the hirelings of the ministry were allowed to riot in reproach and slander, and to attack the strong-holds of the constitution with impunity. The allies, who had contributed so essentially to the glory of the English arms, were now shamefully traduced; charges of treachery and misconduct in the war were heaped upon them; and they were accused of entertaining designs subversive of the trade and other interests of the British empire.

Amongst the productions of the period, was 'A Letter from a Tory Freeholder to his Representative in Parliament, upon her Majesty's most gracious speech to both Houses on the subject of Peace, June 6, 1712.' London, 1712. 8vo. The writer, who was a Whig in disguise, lavishes much of his abuse upon De Foe, whom he accuses of changing sides, and brings forward other charges, made before by Oldmixon, who was probably the author of this pamphlet. He says, "that the Whigs now universally disowned him ;" and amongst other calumnies, he accuses De Foe of advocating a war with the Dutch, who, in consequence of the policy pursued in England, showed a disposition to continue the war in conjunction with the Emperor. But for such a charge there was not the least foundation, and it could only have arisen from a desire in the Whigs to identify Boyer, p. 577. † Cunningham, ii, 401.

Ibid. 413.

De Foe with the ministers, who during the negociation displayed anything but friendly feelings towards the Dutch. In reply to the charge, he says, "If it be, as some pretend, in the last foreign news, that we are now running headlong into a war with the Dutch, which I look upon as the worst circumstance that can befal this nation, I shall convince those who would maliciously suggest me to be writing for it, that they are in the wrong. It has been all along my argument, and I have seen no answer to it, that Britain and Holland are the essential strength of the Protestant interest in Europe; and in that respect their interests are inseparable. It is for uniting these that I have always pleaded against the union of Spain with any Popish power in Europe. I appeal to all who read what I write, that the dividing this great prize has been my aim all along, though reproached and misunderstood. The safety and prosperity of the Protestant interest depend upon the joint power of the confederated Protestants, and this must be built upon the union of the British and Dutch. . . . . I profess to be as entirely against a war with the Dutch as it is possible for any man that has the good of his country at heart. But if men were to read other people as they read me, truth may be turned into falsehood, and the Scripture into blasphemy."

The treaty of peace, after a protracted negociation, was at length signed at Utrecht, upon the 11th of April, 1713. The English ministers had grown weary of its delay, which was occasioned by the address of the French negociators, who, taking advantage of the discord that reigned amongst the allies, added to their demands, and extorted concessions which they could not have meditated but for the misplaced confidence of the English court. Intimidated by hostile threats, which in all probability were never meant to be executed, the Dutch became a party to the peace; but the emperor continued the war a year longer, when, finding himself unequal to maintain it single-handed, he sought refuge in a treaty. Thus, a war which had been conducted for so many years with unexampled success, was concluded with satisfaction only to the enemy. The objects for which the nation had embarked in it was entirely abandoned; the fruits of many splendid victories, obtained at an immense cost of blood and treasure, were wantonly thrown away; and the repose which the ministers expected to derive from it was disturbed by factions in the cabinet, which in a short time accomplished its overthrow.

In the odium shared by those writers who supported the peace De Foe largely participated. From the commencement of the treaty he had declared himself a friend to peace, provided it could be obtained upon honourable terms. These, it is true, he never defined very explicitly; but he always contended for a partition of the Spanish dominions, according to the spirit of the Partition Treaty, and from this point he never severed. In expounding his opinions he showed no slight degree of tact, and argued in terms much too general to entitle him to the character of a partizan. It is evident from his writings that he never appeared as the ostensible advocate of the ministers, nor committed himself to an approval of their policy, except upon some commercial matters that accorded with his judgment. His attachment to Harley was indeed so far a snare to him as to impose silence upon those points of his policy which he could not approve, and to prevent that bold avowal of his opinions to which he gave free scope under the former ministry. This forbearance of hostility was construed by his opponents into an approbation of the ministers, and gave rise to the calumny of his being one of their retainers. For this, however, there was not the smallest foundation; and if, in the early part of their career, he gave them credit for principles which but ill accorded with their subsequent conduct, it must be set down to his confidence in the chief minister, and his desire to make the best of a ministry which he could not avoid. After the peace was concluded, he thought it his duty to acquiesce in it, although he did not approve of its stipulations; but this acquiescence being construed by the Whigs into a tacit approval, he became obnoxious