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 he had always held that the true interest of England lay chiefly in the American trade; and after the death of the emperor, enforced the common argument that the issue was now changed, and that it would be as foolish to give the Spanish Indies to the emperor as it would have been to leave them to the French. Though apparently not quite satisfied with the peace actually made, he urged acquiescence instead of joining in the whig denunciations; and his arguments for the necessity of a peace were so vigorous that Mesnager, the French agent, had one of his pamphlets translated into French, and sent the author one hundred pistoles. Defoe informed the government of the present. Mesnager, finding that he was in government employment, refrained from further intercourse (Minutes of Negotiations of M. Mesnager, &c., possibly translated by Defoe; see, i. 269).

Defoe, however, continued, if with diminished vigour, to be an opponent of high-flyers and Jacobites. He attacked the ‘October Club,’ which was trying to force ministers into extreme measures, in a vigorous pamphlet (1711), while Swift remonstrated with them as a friend. At the end of the same year his old adversary, Nottingham, made a compact with the whigs, who agreed to carry the Occasional Conformity Bill on condition of Nottingham's voting against the peace. Defoe wrote passionately but vainly against the measure, both in his ‘Review’ and in separate pamphlets. He had gone too far with the tories to be accepted as a genuine supporter even of his old cause.

The imposition of the new tax in July 1712 injured Defoe's ‘Review.’ In the preface to the eighth volume then issued he eloquently asserts his independence and his suffering in the cause of truth. He continued the ‘Review,’ however, through another volume; and after its final suppression he took the chief part in the ‘Mercator,’ started in Harley's (now Lord Oxford's) interest, although he was not the proprietor or editor. It was devoted to arguing the questions aroused by the treaty of commerce which was to follow the peace of Utrecht. Defoe has been credited, upon the strength of this work, with anticipating modern theories of free trade. In fact, however, he accepted the ordinary theory of the time, and only endeavoured to prove that the balance of trade would be in favour of England under the proposed arrangement.

Defoe had retired on being again sent to Scotland during the later months of 1712. There he wrote some anti-Jacobite pamphlets. In the beginning of 1713 he continued this controversy in some pamphlets to which, following his old plan, he gave titles ostensibly Jacobite: ‘Reasons against the Succession of the House of Hanover;’ ‘What if the Pretender should come?’ and ‘An Answer to a Question which Nobody thinks of, viz. But what if the Queen should die?’ These writings, although clearly anti-Jacobite, gave offence to the whigs. They were, no doubt, a sincere defence of Defoe's permanent principles, though, as Professor Minto has pointed out, they were, in some respects, calculated to serve Oxford. They explicitly denied that Oxford was in the Pretender's interest. Oxford, in fact, was being thrown over by the Jacobite wing of his party, though upon joining the ministry he had made overtures to the exiled court. The existence of such overtures was, of course, a secret to be carefully concealed from Defoe, and even from Oxford's far more confidential friend, Swift; and both Defoe and Swift were probably quite sincere in denying their existence. The whigs, however, who suspected Oxford, and regarded Defoe as a hireling renegade, would not forgive Oxford's supporter, though he might be a sincere defender of the Hanoverian succession. Defoe was prosecuted for a libel. The judges declared that the pamphlets were treasonable, and Defoe was committed to prison (22 April 1713), but obtained a pardon under the great seal. During the following year, besides writing the ‘Mercator,’ he published various pamphlets, which were chiefly in Oxford's interest. In a ‘Letter to the Dissenters’ (December 1713) he exhorted them to neutrality, and intimated that they were in danger of severe measures. He had probably received some hint of the Schism Act, passed in the next session, in spite of Oxford's opposition, by the extremer tories. In April he replied warmly to Swift's attack upon the Scots in his ‘Public Spirit of the Whigs,’ though Swift was supported by Oxford; but in the same month he published a defence of Oxford in a tract called ‘Reasons for im[peaching] the L[or]d H[igh] T[reasurer].’ The ‘Mercator’ dropped with the fall of Oxford and the consequent want of official information. A bookseller named Hurt had long published the ‘Flying Post,’ written by Ridpath, a bitter enemy of Defoe's. Hurt was suspected by Ridpath's patrons of some communication with Defoe, and the ‘Flying Post’ was instantly taken out of his hands. Hurt hereupon engaged Defoe to issue a rival ‘Flying Post,’ which took the whig side. Defoe warmly eulogised the new king upon the death of Anne (1 Aug. 1714), and soon afterwards declared that Lord Annesley, who had been sent to Ireland by Boling-