II.—'THE SHORTEST WAY WITH THE DISSENTERS'
BY DANIEL DEFOE
(Defoe wrote an enormous number of pamphlets; for great part of his life he might almost have been described as a pamphleteer pure and simple. In the vast lists of publications which his biographers and bibliographers have compiled, partly by industry and partly by imagination, by far the larger number of entries is of the pamphlet kind. Indeed, as most people know, Defoe did not take to the composition of the fiction which has made his name famous till very late in life. Born in the year 1661, he began pamphleteering when he was scarcely of age, and continued in that way (with occasional excursions into work larger in scale, but not very different in style or matter) for nearly forty years before the publication of Robinson Crusoe. His two most famous and most effective pamphlets were the so-called Legion Letter and The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (given here), to which may perhaps be added the Reasons against War with France. All these, with many others, appeared within the compass of the years 1700-1702. The three together touched upon the three most burning questions of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries—parliamentary factiousness, an aggressive policy abroad, and toleration at home. Little or no annotation is required for their comprehension, but the reader may amuse himself if he likes by meditating whether the Shortest Way is irony or not. My own opinion is that it is not; being a simple statement of the actual views of the other side. The anecdotic history of the piece—how it was taken for serious by both sides, was prosecuted by Government, the author proclaimed, and a reward offered for his detection; how, the printer and publisher being arrested, Defoe surrendered, was tried, pleaded guilty, was fined, pilloried, and imprisoned—may be read in the biographies. His imprisonment lasted till August 1704, when Harley let him out, and he entered upon a course of rather mysterious service as a Government free-lance, which was continued under various ministries, and has not on the whole brought him credit with posterity. For many years, his remarkable Review, a political journal which he conducted single-handed, served as his chief organ; but he never gave up writing pamphlets till his death in 1731, though he never approached either the merit or the effect of that here given.)
Sir Roger L'Estrange tells us a story in his collection of fables, of the cock and the horses. The cock was gotten to roost in the stable among the horses, and there being no racks or other conveniences for him, it seems he was forced to roost upon the ground. The horses jostling about for room, and putting the cock in danger of his life, he gives them this grave advice, 'Pray, gentlefolks, let us stand still, for fear we should tread upon one another.'
There are some people in the world, who now they are unperched, and reduced to an equality with other people, and under strong and very just apprehensions of being further treated as they deserve, begin, with Æsop's cock, to preach up peace and union, and the Christian duties of moderation, forgetting that, when they had the power in their hands, these graces were strangers in their gates.
It is now near fourteen years that the glory and peace of the purest and most flourishing Church in the world has been eclipsed, buffeted, and disturbed by a sort of men whom God in His providence has suffered to insult over her and bring her down. These have been the days of her humiliation and tribulation. She has borne with invincible patience the reproach of the wicked, and God has at last heard her prayers, and delivered her from the oppression of the stranger.
And now they find their day is over, their power gone, and the throne of this nation possessed by a royal, English, true, and ever-constant member of, and friend to, the Church of England. Now they find that they are in danger of the Church of England's just resentments; now they cry out peace, union, forbearance, and charity, as if the Church had not too long harboured her enemies under her wing, and nourished the viperous brood till they hiss and fly in the face of the mother that cherished them.
No, gentlemen, the time of mercy is past, your day of grace is over; you should have practised peace, and moderation, and charity, if you expected any yourselves.
We have heard none of this lesson for fourteen years past. We have been huffed and bullied with your Act of Toleration; you have told us that you are the Church established by law, as well as others; have set up your canting synagogues at our church doors, and the Church and members have been loaded with reproaches, with oaths, associations, abjurations, and what not. Where has been the mercy, the forbearance, the charity, you have shown to tender consciences of the Church of England, that could not take oaths as fast as you made them; that having sworn allegiance to their lawful and rightful King, could not dispense with that oath, their King being still alive, and swear to your new hodge-podge of a Dutch Government? These have been turned out of their livings, and they and their families left to starve; their estates double taxed to carry on a war they had no hand in, and you got nothing by. What account can you give of the multitudes you have forced to comply, against their consciences, with your new sophistical politics, who, like new converts in France, sin because they cannot starve? And now the tables are turned upon you; you must not be persecuted; it is not a Christian spirit.
You have butchered one king, deposed another king, and made a mock king of a third, and yet you could have the face to expect to be employed and trusted by the fourth. Anybody that did not know the temper of your party would stand amazed at the impudence, as well as folly, to think of it.