Your method of sending to the black box, is just what I designed to propose, and Mr. Shaw will doubtless take it of you: if you think it needful for me to speak to him it shall be done—what I want to know is only the charge, and that you will order it constantly to be sent, upon hinting whereof I shall send you the names. Wishing you success in all things (your opinions of government excepted.)
I am,
Your humble servant,
De Foe.
Newington, June 17th,
1710.
[62] Arnott's Edinburgh. The second newspaper ever published in Scotland. During this period he published the seventh volume of the Review, which is chiefly occupied by home affairs.
[63] De Foe had, many years before Harley proposed it in parliament, suggested an establishment of a South-sea trade, not only for commercial advantage, but as an effectual mode of crippling Spain and France. "I had the honour to lay a proposal before his late majesty king William, in the beginning of this war, for carrying the war, not into Old Spain, but into America: which proposal his majesty approved of, and fully proposed to put it in execution, had not death, to our unspeakable grief, prevented him. And yet I would have my readers distinguish with me, that there is always a manifest difference between carrying on a war with America and settling a trade there; and I shall not fail to speak distinctly to this difference in its turn." He then points out the circumstances of the trade, and distinctly warns his countrymen against those rash and extravagant speculations which they unfortunately persisted to indulge in, and which caused the ruin of so many persons. "I am far from designing to discourage this new undertaking, which I profess to believe a very happy one; but to correct these wild notions, it seems needful to ascertain what we are to understand by a trade to the South Seas, and what not; that in the first place our enemies may not make a wrong improvement of it, our friends in Spain may not take umbrage at it, and our people at home may not grow big with wild expectations, which might end in chagrin and disappointment. There is room enough on the western coast of America for us to establish a flourishing trade without encroaching upon the Spaniards. The industry and enterprise of the English in such a situation would open a wide door for the consumption of our manufactures, and bring a vast revenue of wealth to our own country." [Review, vol. viii. p. 165. 274.] They are the same views substantially as those he afterwards maintained in the pamphlet mentioned by Mr. Chalmers in the text.—Ed.
[64] He also vindicated the memory of William III., who had been fiercely attacked for the Partition Treaty, by a pamphlet rather long and quaint—The Felonious Treaty: or, an Inquiry into the Reasons which moved his late Majesty King William, of Glorious Memory, to enter into a Treaty at ten several times, with the King of France, for the Partition of the Spanish Monarchy. With an Essay, proving that it was always the sense both of King William and of all the Confederates, and even of the Grand Alliance itself, that the Spanish Monarchy should never be united in the Person of the Emperor. 1711. In the year 1712, he vigorously attacked the persecuting bill introduced by lord Nottingham, by which dissenters were to be excluded from civil employments, and persons in office were forbidden to attend dissenting places of worship, under severe penalties. De Foe not only kept up a galling fire in his Reviews, but published a pamphlet on the subject, entituled, An Essay on the History of Parties and Persecution in Britain: beginning with a brief Account of the Test Act, and an Historical Inquiry into the Reasons, the Original, and the Consequences of the Occasional Conformity of the Dissenters: with some Remarks on the recent attempts already made and now making for an Occasional Bill: inquiring how far the same may be esteemed a Preservative of the Church, or an Injury to the Dissenters. He seems to have renewed the attack not only against that measure, but also against a similar bill introduced to authorise the use of the liturgy in Scotland, in a pamphlet which Mr. Wilson says bears undoubted evidence of being De Foe's, although never inserted in any list of his writings, entituled, The Present State of Parties in Great Britain: particularly an Inquiry into the State of the Dissenters in England, and the Presbyterians in Scotland: their religious and politic Interest considered, as it respects their Circumstances before and since the late Acts against Occasional Conformity in England, and for Toleration of Common Prayer in Scotland. In this work he goes into a lengthened history of the dissenters, and strongly recommends union amongst all bodies of them. He also in this year vigorously opposed the tax upon newspapers, which was enforced in 1712. The eighth volume of the Review closed in July, 1712. Trade and war are the main subjects discussed in it.—Ed.
[65] The first Mercator was published on the 26th of May, 1713; the last on the 20th of July, 1714: and they were written by William Brown and his assistants, with great knowledge, great strength, and great sweetness, considering how much party then embittered every composition. The British Merchant, which opposed the Mercator, and which was compiled by Henry Martyn and his associates, has fewer facts, less argument, and more factiousness. It began on the 1st of August, 1713, and ended the 27th of July, 1714. I have spoken of both from my own convictions, without regarding the declamations which have continued to pervert the public opinion from that epoch to the present times. De Foe was struck at in the third number of the British Merchant, and plainly mentioned in the fourth. Mr. Daniel Foe may change his name from Review to Mercator, from Mercator to any other title, yet still his singular genius shall be distinguished by his inimitable way of writing. Thus personal sarcasm was introduced to supply deficience of facts, or weakness of reasoning. When Charles King republished The British Merchant in volumes, among various changes, he expunged, with other personalities, the name of De Foe.
[66] It is now sufficiently known, that Lord Oxford had relinquished the Treaty of Commerce to its fate, before it was finally debated in parliament. See much curious matter on this subject in Macpherson's State Papers, vol. ii. p. 421-23. It is there said, that he gave up the commercial treaty, in compliment to sir Thomas Hanmer, as he would by no means be an occasion of a breach among friends. The treasurer had other reasons: the treaty had been made by Bolingbroke, whom he did not love; the lords Anglesea and Abingdon had made extravagant demands for their support; and, like a wise man, he thought it idle to drive a nail that would not go. Yet lord Halifax boasted to the Hanoverian minister, that he alone had been the occasion of the treaty being rejected. [Same papers, p. 509-47.]
[67] He attacked it first in 1713, in An Essay on the Treaty of Commerce with France, with necessary Expositions.