[7] The title of De Foe's pamphlet, or pamphlets, on this subject, does not seem to be known, but he more than once in afterlife proudly refers to his efforts on that important matter. "The next time I differed with my friends, was when king James was wheedling the dissenters to take off the penal laws and test, which I could by no means come into. And as in the first I used to say, I had rather the popish house of Austria should ruin the protestants in Hungary, than that the infidel house of Ottoman should ruin both protestant and papist, by overrunning Germany, so in the other I told the dissenters I had rather the Church of England should pull our clothes off by fines and forfeitures, than that the papists should fall both upon the church and the dissenters, and pull our skins off by fire and fagot." [Appeal to Honour and Justice.] And again: "I never would have had the dissenters to join with king James, to take off the penal laws and test. No; no: I thank God I was of age then to bear my testimony against it, and to affront some who were of a different opinion." [Review, vol. viii. p. 694.]—Ed.
[8] History, vol. ii. p. 37. The following is the passage in Oldmixon: "Their majesties, attended by their royal highnesses and a numerous train of nobility and gentry, went first to a balcony prepared for them at the Angel in Cheapside, to see the show; which for the great number of liverymen, the full appearance of the militia, and the artillery company, the rich adornments of the pageants, and the splendour and good order of the whole proceedings, outdid all that had been seen before, on that occasion; and what deserved to be particularly remembered, says a reverend historian, was a royal regiment of volunteer horse, made up of the chief citizens, who being gallantly mounted and richly accoutred, were led by the earl of Monmouth, now earl of Peterborough, and attended there majesties from Whitehall. Among these troopers, who were for the most part dissenters, was Daniel De Foe, at that time a hosier in Freeman's Yard, Cornhill." [History of England, vol. iii. p. 36.]
[9] Being reproached by Tutchin, in his Observator, with having been bred an apprentice to a hosier, De Foe asserts, in May, 1705, that he never was a hosier, or an apprentice, but admits that he had been a trader. [Review, vol. ii. p. 149.] Oldmixon, who never speaks favourably of De Foe, allows that he had never been a merchant, otherwise than peddling a little to Portugal. [Hist. vol. ii. p. 519.] But, peddling to Portugal makes a trader.
[10] These views of Mr. Chalmers seem confirmed by De Foe's own severe comments on the distraction caused to tradesmen by an over-indulgence in literary pursuits. In his Complete Tradesman, one of the most valuable practical books that was ever published, and which should be the manual of every young man beginning business, he says, "a wit turned tradesman! no apron-strings will hold him; it is in vain to lock him behind the counter, he is gone in a moment. Instead of journal and ledger, he runs away to his Virgil and Horace; his journal entries are all Pindarics, and his ledger is all heroics. He is truly dramatic from one end to the other through the whole scene of his trade; and as the first part is all comedy, so the two last acts are always made up with tragedy; a statute of bankrupt is his exeunt omnes, and he generally repeats the epilogue in the Fleet prison or the Mint." [See ante, vol. xvii.] He is also very severe against tradesmen who are led away into expensive pleasures and idle company. But Mr. Wilson vindicates De Foe, in some degree, by showing from his own statements that he had been the victim of the fraud of others, as well as of his own imprudent habits. In one of the Reviews, [vol. iii. p. 70.] he says, that "nothing was more frequent than for a man in full credit to buy all the goods he could lay his hands on, and carry them directly from the house he bought them at into the Fryars, and then send for his creditors, and laugh at them, insult them, showing them their own goods untouched, offer them a trifle in satisfaction, and if they refuse it, bid them defiance. I cannot refrain vouching this of my own knowledge, since I have more than many times been served so myself." Certainly under such a monstrous system of abuse, an honest tradesman must have been at great disadvantage.—Ed.
[11] The Mercator, No. 101.
[12] Reply to Lord Haversham's Vindication.
[13] Mr. Wilson has some valuable observations on this subject, which justice to the memory of De Foe requires us to transcribe. "The failure of this speculation seems to have been owing rather to the want of encouragement upon the part of the public, than to any imprudence in the projector. Pantiles had been hitherto a Dutch manufacture, and were brought in large quantities to England. To supersede the necessity of their importation, and to provide a new channel for the employment of labour, the works at Tilbury were laudably erected; and De Foe tells us that he employed a hundred poor labourers in the undertaking. The capital embarked in the concern must also have been considerable; for he informs us that his own loss by its failure was no less a sum than three thousand pounds. But besides so serious a misfortune to himself, it was no less so to the public; not only by the failure of an ingenious manufacture, but for the sake of the numerous families supported by it, who were now turned adrift in the world, or thrown upon some other branch of trade. De Foe continued the pantile works it is believed until the year 1703, when he was prosecuted by the government for a libel, and being deprived of his liberty the undertaking soon came to an end." Mr. Wilson adds an extract from one of the Reviews, (March, 1705,) in which De Foe indignantly refers to this undertaking and its calamitous issue. "Nor should the author of this paper boast in vain, if he tells the world that he himself, before violence, injury, and barbarous treatment destroyed him and his undertaking, employed a hundred poor people in making pantiles in England, a manufacture always bought in Holland; and thus he pursued this principle with his utmost zeal for the good of England; and those gentlemen who so easily persecuted him for saying what all the world since owns to be true, and which he has since a hundred times offered to prove, were particularly serviceable to the nation, in turning that hundred of poor people and their families a begging for work, and forcing them to turn other poor families out of work to make room for them, besides three thousand pounds damage to the author of this, which he has paid for this little experience."—Ed.
[14] The sentence in italics is part of the passage in De Foe's Appeal to Honour and Justice, (in which he gives a summary of his life, and vindicates his conduct throughout it,) which particularly refers to this period. We give the whole. "Misfortunes in business having unhinged me from matters of trade; it was about the year 1694, when I was invited by some merchants with whom I had corresponded abroad, and some also at home, to settle at Cadiz, in Spain; and that with the offer of very good commissions. But Providence, which had other work for me to do, placed a secret aversion in my mind to quitting England upon any account, and made me refuse the best offers of that kind, to be concerned with some eminent persons at home, in proposing ways and means to the government for raising money to supply the occasions of the war, then newly begun." [Vide Appeal to Honour and Justice.]
[15] Besides the topics mentioned by Mr. Chalmers, De Foe suggests various improvements in road-making, and an asylum for idiots. He also warmly advocates a great improvement in the system of education, and especially of females. Before the publication of the next work mentioned by Mr. Chalmers, De Foe took part in a controversy then very warmly agitated, viz., of Occasional Conformity. The Dissenters differed on this subject; one party being willing to comply outwardly with the ceremonies of the church, when in certain offices, and the other party objecting to that compliance as a sinful and dastardly desertion from their principles of dissent. De Foe adopted the latter view, and, in 1697, maintained it with his accustomed warmth, in An Inquiry into the Occasional Conformity of Dissenters in Parliament. He also vigorously took the field against the vices and social abuses of the times; and, in 1698, published The Poor Man's Plea in relation to all the Proclamations, Declarations, Acts of Parliament, &c., which have been or shall be made or published, for a Reformation of Manners, and suppressing Immorality in the Nation.—Ed.
[16] 10 and 11 Wm. III. ch. 18.