With these feelings, and, after the fears which he and all good men must have entertained for the safety of their religion, and the freedom of their country, it is not to be wondered at if Defoe hailed the arrival of the Prince of Orange with the greatest joy. He kept the anniversary of his landing, the 4th of November, all his life after. We find an account of him as one of those who went in procession with their Majesties to Guildhall, as a guard of honour, the year following. Oldmixon, who gives the account, has mixed up with it some of his unfounded prejudices against our author:
‘Their Majesties,’ he says, ‘attended (Oct. 29, 1689,) by their royal highnesses the Prince and Princesses of Denmark, and by 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 livery-men, the full appearance of the militia and artillery company, the rich adornments of the pageants, and the splendour and good order of the whole proceeding, out-did all that had been seen before upon that occasion; and what deserved to be particularly mentioned, 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 their Majesties from Whitehall. Among these troopers, who were, for the most part, Dissenters, was Daniel Defoe, at that time a hosier in Freeman’s-yard, Cornhill; the same who afterwards was pilloried for writing an ironical invective against the Church; and did after that list in the service of Mr. Robert Harley, and those brethren of his who broke the confederacy, and made a shameful and ruinous peace with France.’[[36]]
Oldmixon evidently singles out his brother author in this gallant procession with an eye of envy rather than friendship; and the invidious turn given to his politics only means, that all those were black sheep who did not go the absurd lengths of Oldmixon and his party in every thing.
The joy and exultation of Defoe on this great and glorious occasion was not of long duration, but was soon turned to gall and bitterness. ‘Though that his joy was joy,’ yet both friends and foes laboured hard to ‘throw such changes of vexation on it, that it might lose all colour.’ His admiration of King William was the ruling passion of his life. He was his hero, his deliverer, his friend: he was bound to him by the ties of patriotism, of religion, and of personal obligation. But this ruling passion was also the torment of his breast, because his well-grounded enthusiasm was not seconded by the unanimous public voice, and because the services of the great champion of liberty and of the Protestant cause did not meet with that glow of gratitude and affection in the minds of the people (when their immediate danger was blown over) that they richly merited. Defoe had not only ridden in procession with his Majesty, but he was afterwards closeted with him, and consulted by him on more than one question: so that his self-importance, as well as his sense of truth and justice, was implicated in the attacks which were made on the person and character of his royal patron and benefactor. Nothing can, in our opinion, exceed the good behaviour of William, nor the ill return he received from those he had been sent for, to deliver them from Popish bondage and darkness. Being no longer bowed to the earth by a yoke that they could not lift, and having got a king of their own choosing, they thought they could not exercise their new-acquired liberty and independence better than by using him as ill as possible, and reviling him for the very blessings which he had been the chief means of bestowing on them, and which his presence was absolutely necessary to continue to them. Having seen their hereditary, passive-obedience monarch, King James, quietly seated on the other side of the Channel, and being no longer in bodily fear of being executed as rebels, or burnt as heretics, the good people of England began to find a flaw in the title of the new-made monarch, because he was not, and did not pretend to be, absolute; and to sacrifice to the manes of divine right, by taking every opportunity, and resorting to every artifice to insult his person, to revile his reputation, to wound his feelings, and to cramp and thwart his measures for his own and their common safety. The Tories and high-fliers lamented that the crown was without its most precious jewel and ornament, hereditary right; and though they acknowledged the necessity of the case upon which they themselves had acted, yet they thought the time might come when this necessity might cease, and for their lawful King to be brought back again, ‘with conditions.’ Pulpits, long accustomed to unqualified submission, now echoed the double-tongued distinction of a king de jure and a king de facto. This party, whose old habits were inimical to the new order of things, but who made a virtue of necessity, tendered their allegiance to the Prince of Orange reluctantly and ungraciously; while the Non-jurors bearded him to his face. The Country Gentlemen, (at that time a formidable party, ‘not pierceable by power of any argument,’) only felt themselves at a loss from not having the Dissenters and Nonconformists to hunt down as usual. William they regarded as an interloper, who had no rights of his own, and who hindered other people from exercising theirs, in molesting and domineering over their neighbours. What made matters worse, was his being a foreigner; his Dutch origin was one of the things constantly thrown in his teeth, and that staggered the faith and loyalty of many of his well-meaning subjects, who could not comprehend the relation in which they stood to a sovereign of alien descent. The phrase, True-born Englishman, became a watchword in the mouths of the malecontent party; and at that name, (as often as it was repeated), the Whig and Protestant interest grew pale. It was to meet, and finally quell this charge, that Defoe penned his well-known poem of The True-born Englishman—a satire which, if written in doggerel verse, and without the wit or pleasantry of Butler’s Hudibras, is a masterpiece of good sense and just reflection, and shows a thorough knowledge both of English history and of the English character. It is indeed a complete and unanswerable exposure of the pretence set up to a purer and loftier origin than all the rest of the world, instead of our being a mixed race from all parts of Europe, settling down into one common name and people. Defoe’s satire was so just and true, that it drove the cant, to which it was meant to be an antidote, out of fashion; and it was this piece of service that procured the writer the good opinion and notice of King William. It did not, however, equally recommend him to the public. If it silenced the idle and ill-natured clamours of a party, by telling the plain truth,—that truth was not the more welcome for being plain or effectual. Though this handle was thus taken from malevolence and discontent, the tide of unpopularity had set in too strong from the first arrival of the king, not to continue and increase to the end of his reign; so that at last worn out with rendering the noblest services, and being repaid with the meanest ingratitude, he thought of retiring to Holland, and leaving his English crown of thorns to any one who chose to claim it.
The state of parties, at this period of our history, presents a riddle that has not been solved. It has been referred to the gloom and discontent of the English character; but other countries have of late exhibited the same problem, with the same result. It may be resolved into that propensity in human nature, through which, when it has got what it wants, it requires something else which it cannot have. The English people, at the period in question, wanted a contradiction,—that is, to have James and William on the throne together; but this they could not have, and so they were contented with neither. If they had recalled James, they would have sent him back again. They wanted him back again with conditions, and security for his future good behaviour. They wanted his title to the throne without his abuse of power; an absolute sovereign, with a reserve of the privileges of the people; a Popish prince, with a Protestant church; a deliverance from chains without a deliverer; and an escape from tyranny without the stain of resistance to it. They wanted not out of two things one which they could have, but a third, which was impossible; and as they could not have all, they were determined to be pleased with nothing. This greatly annoyed Defoe, who set his face against so absurd a manifestation of the spirit of the times. It embittered his satisfaction in the virtues of the sovereign, and the glories of his reign,—in his exploits abroad,—the moderation and justice of his administration at home; nor was he consoled for the malignity of his prince’s enemies or the indifference of his friends, either by writing Odes on his battles and victories, or Elegies and Epitaphs on his death.
He was still less fortunate in following up the dictates of what he thought right, or in what he called ‘speaking a word in season,’ in the subsequent reign. Queen Anne, who succeeded to the crown on the death of King William, was placed in no very graceful or dutiful position, as keeping her brother from the throne, which she occupied as the next Protestant heir, but to which, in the opinion of many, and perhaps in her own, he had a prior indefeasible right. She had been brought up with bigoted notions of religion; and in proportion as she felt the political ground infirm under her feet, she wished to stand well with the Church. There was, through her whole reign, therefore, a strong increasing bias to High-Church principles. The promise of toleration to the dissenters soon sunk into an indulgence, and ended in the threat and the intention of putting in force the severest laws against them, under pretence that the Church was in danger. The Clergy sung the same song as the Queen, adding a burden of their own to it;—breathing nothing in their sermons but suspicion and hatred of the dissenters, reviving and inflaming old animosities, and encouraging their parishioners to proceed even to open violence against the frequenters of conventicles. Their services in bringing about the Revolution were forgotten; and nothing was insisted on but their share in the great Rebellion, and the beheading of Charles I. A university preacher (Sacheverell) talked of ‘hoisting the bloody flag’ against the dissenters, and treated all those of the Moderate Party and Low Church as false brethren, who did not enlist under the banner. Another proposed shutting up not only the dissenters’ Meeting-Houses, but their Academies, and thus taking from them the education of their children. A third was for using gentle violence with the Queen to urge her to severe and salutary measures against Nonconformists; and considered her as under duresse in not being allowed to give full scope to the sentiments labouring in her bosom in favour of the Church of England. Defoe marked all this with quick and anxious eye; he saw the storm of persecution gathering, and ready to burst with tenfold vengeance, from its having been so long delayed; he thought it high time to warn his brethren of the impending mischief, and to point out to the government, in a terrible and palpable way, the dangerous and mad career to which the zealots of a party were urging them headlong. ‘So should his anticipation prevent their discovery.’ He collected all the poisoned missiles and combustible materials he could lay his hands on, and putting them together in one heap, brought out his Shortest Way with the Dissenters. If it startled his adversaries and threw a blaze of light upon the subject, the explosion chiefly hurt himself. What beyond contradiction proved the truth of the satire was, that it was, at first, taken seriously by many of the opposite side, who thought it a well-timed and spirited Manifesto from a true son of the Church; and several young divines in the country, on perusing it, sent for more copies of it, with high commendations, as the triumph of their views and party. Their rage, when they found out their mistake, was proportionable, and no treatment was bad enough for so vile an incendiary. The book was forthwith prosecuted by authority, as a malignant slander against the Church, and a seditious libel on the government. The author, as before noticed, was sentenced to the pillory, and to a heavy fine, with imprisonment during the queen’s pleasure; which, as already mentioned, was the immediate and ultimate ruin of his affairs and prospects in life. Defoe bore his disgrace and misfortunes with the spirit of a man, and with a sort of grumbling patience peculiar to himself. He wrote on the occasion a Hymn to the Pillory, which contains some bad poetry and manly feeling; and indeed his apparent indifference is easily accounted for from a consciousness of the flagrant rectitude of his case. Pope has made an ungenerous allusion to the circumstances in the Dunciad:—
‘See where on high stands unabash’d Defoe!’
Pope’s imagination had too much effeminacy to stomach, under any circumstances, this kind of petty, squalid martyrdom; nor had he strength of public principle enough to form to himself the practical antithesis of ‘dishonour honourable!’ The amiable in private life, the exalted in rank and station, alone fixed his sympathy, and engrossed his admiration. The exquisite compliments with which he has embalmed the memory of some of his illustrious friends, who stand ‘condemned to everlasting fame,’ are a discredit to his own. His apostrophe to Harley, beginning,
‘Oh soul supreme, in each hard instance tried,
Above all pain, all passion, and all pride,’