"Who left the name, at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral, or adorn a tale."
De Foe was so little disturbed by the appearance of The Moon Calf[41], or accurate Reflections on the Consolidator, that he plunged into a controversy with sir Humphrey Mackworth about his bill for employing the poor. This had been passed by the commons with great applause, but received by the peers with suitable caution. De Foe, considering this plausible project as an indigested chaos, represented it, through several reviews, as a plan which would ruin the industrious, and thereby augment the poor. Sir Humphrey endeavoured to support his workhouses, in every parish, with a parochial capital for carrying on parochial manufacture. This drew from De Foe his admirable treatise, which he entitled, Giving Alms no Charity. As an English freeholder he claimed it as a right to address his performance to the house of commons, having a particular interest in the common good; but considering the persons before whom he appeared, he laid down his archness, and assumed his dignity. He maintained, with wonderful knowledge of fact and power of argument, the following positions: 1st, That there is in England more labour than hands to perform it; and consequently a want of people, not of employment: 2ndly, No man in England, of sound limbs and senses, can be poor merely for want of work: 3rdly, All workhouses for employing the poor, as now they are employed, serve to the ruin of families and the increase of the poor: 4thly, It is a regulation of the poor that is wanted, not a setting them to work. Longer experience shows this to be a difficult subject, which increases in difficulty with the effluxion of time[42].
De Foe had scarcely dismissed sir Humphrey, when he introduced lord Haversham, a peer, who is famous in our story, as a maker and publisher of speeches. His lordship published his speech on the state of the nation, in 1705, which was cried about the town with unusual earnestness. Our author's prudence induced him to give no answer to the speech; but a pamphlet, which was hawked about the streets and sold for a penny, our author's shrewdness considered as a challenge to every reader. He laughed and talked so much, through several Reviews, about this factious effusion, as to provoke a defence of topics, which his lordship ought neither to have printed nor spoken. De Foe now published a Reply to Lord Haversham's Vindication of his Speech. During such battles the town never fails to cheer the smaller combatant. Our author, with an allusion to the biography of both, says sarcastically: "But fate, that makes footballs of men, kicks some up stairs, and some down; some are advanced without honour, others suppressed without infamy; some are raised without merit, some are crushed without a crime; and no man knows by the beginning of things, whether his course shall issue in a peerage or a pillory[43]."
In the midst of these disputes, either grave or ludicrous, De Foe published Advice to all Parties. He strenuously recommends that moderation and forbearance, which his opponents often remarked he was not so prone to practise as to preach. While he thus gave advice to all parties, he conveyed many salutary lessons to the dissenters, whom he was zealous to defend. In the Review, dated the 25th of December, 1705, he conjures them for God's sake, if not for their own sake, to be content. "Are there a few things more you could wish were done for you? resolve these wishes into two conclusions: 1st, Wait till Providence, if it shall be for your good, shall bring them to pass; 2ndly, Compare the present with the past circumstances, and you cannot repine without the highest ingratitude both to God and man."
De Foe found leisure, notwithstanding all those labours, perhaps a necessity, to publish in 1705, A Second Volume of the Writings of the Author of the True-born Englishman. The same reasons which formerly induced him to collect some loose pieces; held good, says he, for proceeding to a second volume, "that if I do not, somebody else will do it for me." He laments the scandalous liberty of the press; whereby piratic printers deprive an author of the native product of his own thought, and the purity of his own style. It is said, though perhaps without authority, that the vigorous remonstrances of De Foe procured the Act[44] for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the copies of printed books in the authors or their assigns. The vanity of an administration, which affected to patronise the learned, concurring, with the mutual interest of bookmakers and booksellers, produced this salutary law, that our author alone had called for without success. De Foe's writings, thus collected into volumes, were soon a third time printed, with the addition of a key. The satire being now pointed by the specification of characters, and obscurities being illuminated by the annexation of circumstances, a numerous class of readers were induced, by their zeal of party, or desire of scandal, to look for gratification from our author's treatises. He is studious to complain, "that his writings had been most neglected of them, who at the same time have owned them useful." The second volume of 1705, containing eighteen treatises in prose and rhyme, begins with A New Discovery of an old Intrigue, and ends with Royal Religion[45].
The year 1705 was a year of disquiet to De Foe, not so much from the oppressions of state as from the persecutions of party. When his business, of whatever nature, led him to Exeter, and other western towns, in August, September, and October, 1705, a project was formed to send him as a soldier to the army, at a time when footmen were taken from the coaches as recruits; but conscious of his being a freeholder of England, and a liveryman of London, he knew that such characters could not be violated, in this nation, with impunity. When some of the western justices, of more zeal of party than sense of duty, heard from his opponents of De Foe's journey, they determined to apprehend him as a vagabond: but our author, who, among other qualities, had personal courage in a high degree, reflected, that to face danger is most effectually to prevent it. In his absence, real suits were commenced against him for fictitious debts: but De Foe advertised, that genuine claims he would fairly satisfy. If all these uncommon circumstances had not been published in the Review, we should not have seen this striking picture of savage manners. So much more free are we at present, that the editor of a newspaper, however obnoxious to any party, may travel peaceably about his affairs over England, without fear of interruption. Were a justice of peace, from whatever motive, to offer him any obstruction, such a magistrate would be overwhelmed by the public indignation, and punished by the higher guardians of our quiet and our laws.[46]
De Foe began the year 1706 with A Hymn to Peace[47]; occasioned by the two houses of parliament joining in one address to the queen. On the 4th of May he published An Essay at removing National Prejudices against an Union with Scotland. A few weeks after, he gave the world a second essay, to soften rancour and defeat perversity. But the time was now come when he was to perform what he had often promised: and his fruitfulness produced, in July, 1736, Jure Divino, a satire against Tyranny and Passive Obedience, which had been delayed for fear, as he declares, of parliamentary censure. Of this poem, it cannot be said, as of Thomson's Liberty, that it was written to prove what no man ever denied. This satire, says the preface, had never been published, though some of it has been a long time in being, had not the world seemed to be going mad a second time with the error of passive obedience, and non-resistance. "And because some men require," says he, "more explicit answers, I declare my belief, that a monarchy, according to the present constitution, limited by parliament, and dependent upon law, is not only the best government in the world, but also the best for this nation in particular, most suitable to the genius of the people, and the circumstances of the whole body." Dryden had given an example, a few years before, of argumentative poetry, in his Hind and Panther; by which he endeavoured to defend the tenets of the church of Rome. Our author now reasoned in rhyme, through twelve books, in defence of every man's birthright by nature, when all sorts of liberty were run down and opposed. His purpose is doubtless honester than Dryden's; and his argument being in support of the better cause, is perhaps superior in strength: but in the Jure Divino we look in vain for
The varying verse, the full-resounding line,
The long majestic march, and energy divine.[48]