Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/170

168 it was then a great crime to be against. Several ingenious merchants, of long experience and well skilled in trade, joined together to contradict the impositions of this Writer: they knew he had many heads, besides the advantages of public papers, to help him, and therefore thought this the most feasible way to confute him and set the state of our trade in a clear light." The paper they put out, they go on to state, was, in opposition to his title, called The British Merchant, or Commerce Preserved, and was published twice a-week. The discussion, it is admitted, was carried on in a somewhat loose and desultory way, and the facts bearing upon the question were stated without much method; but the reason of this was, "that Mercator whenever he was close set, always quitted the point he was upon, and trumped up something new." No doubt Defoe would give his opponents enough to do in attempting to cope with his activity and dexterity at fence and thrust. Their publication, however, they tell us, and the convincing arguments Sir Charles Cooke and others concerned in the work laid before both houses of parliament, in speeches pronounced at the bar, had the good effect of throwing out the pernicious bill of commerce; and that although ministers had attempted to gain their point by a sort of stratagem, and, knowing that "French wine was a relishing liquor to English palates," had moved, in the first instance, to take off the duties from the article only for a couple of months—a motion which "was very accidentally, though very wisely, opposed as it was ready to pass, and dropt." The bill for rendering effectual the treaty of commerce was, after it had passed through the committee, lost on the motion that it should be engrossed—only 185 members in an otherwise very subservient House of Commons voting for the motion, and 194 against it. Among those, it seems, by whom the opposition to the treaty had been most zealously promoted, both within doors and without, were Charles Montague (who soon after was made Lord Halifax), and General (afterwards Lord) Stanhope, who became secretary of state in the reign of George I. "My Lord Halifax," says the preface before us, "was the support and the very