126

HIS OPINION OF THE TORIES.

being the general state of the nation, you must no more wonder that our wiser statesmen, and able ministry, totter in their high posts, and you are every day alarmed with changes at court. This new invasion of the politician's province, is an eminent demonstration of the sympathetic influence of the clergy upon the sex, and the near affinity between the gown and the petticoat; since all the errors of our present or past administrators, and all breaches made upon our politics, could never en bark the ladies till you fell upon the clergy. But, as soon as you pinch the parson, he holds out his hand to the ladies for assist

ance, and they appear as one woman in his defence."

Some political changes in favour of the Tories having been talked of, our author observes, "Nobody but old women would propose such a set of state-cripples to rectify the mistakes, as they call them, of the present government. If ever earth produced such a wretched society of statesmen, then I have lost my eye-sight. Some people," says he, "have thought I have been too plain for my own safety, but they are mistaken: I can yet be plainer, and shall be so, for who shall truth be afraid of? This nation is come to a time when the actions of the greatest men are accountable to law; and no man can run the length, that former ministers have ventured upon, with impunity." Our author proceeds to inquire into the character of the persons who supported the high-flyers, and describes them as, generally speaking, the worst-principled, and most immoral part of the people. "A wretched contemptible party assault the constitution, address the sovereign in terms they ought to be indicted for, caress the queen by invading her title, and trump up the shadow of a title which would cause her overthrow. I would fain ask how they can have the impudence to speak in the same addresses, of the Protestant succession? And I wonder, when these people come to truckle under the Hanover succession,

ADDRESSES TO THE QUEEN.

127

what they will say of hereditary right, when they come forward with their addresses."

(T)

The manifestoes of loyalty here alluded to, now flowed in upon the queen in great abundance. As the sentiments conveyed in such documents vary with time and circumstances, the absence of consistency in the framers precludes any suspicion of their value; nor did the parties concerned, attach any greater meaning to them at this time, than they had been accustomed to do upon former occasions. In such matters, however, there is always a wheel within a wheel, and the crafty politicians of the period knew well how to turn them to account. Although the language they were made to speak was too absurd to be believed, yet, being contrived for party-purposes, they were adapted accordingly; and their anticipated effect was in proportion to their number. Besides incorporating the exploded doctrines of the Tories, they recommended the queen to change her councils, and dissolve the parliament.

The addresses began in Gloucestershire, which also set the pattern of servility. The city of London, "over-ruled by 114 against 95, chimed in with the times, and voted an address after the mode of their Gloucestershire masters, entreating her majesty to accept their assistance in turning tyrant, and setting up the prerogative above the law." Upon which De Foe remarks, that it was but twenty-six years before, that the same wise body surrendered their

Review, vii. 69-76.

(T) "I well remember I was once questioned before the privy-council of England, in the beginning of the queen's reign, for a Paper of some Questions, which they that brought me there never thought fit to let the world know what they found fault with; and one of the Questions was this: Whether her majesty was not as much an usurper as King William? A great many objections were made to the rest of that Paper; but when their lordships came to this, and it was read, not a word was said to it; and I would be glad to hear what any body could say to it now."-Review, vii. 90, 91.

128

DE FOE'S REMARKS UPON THEM.

charter to a former sovereign, and petitioned him to accept of their liberties, which they placed at his absolute disposal. The Oxfordshire address makes a curious association of blasphemy and revolution-principles. "It is easy to observe," say the addressers, "that the most open patrons of resistance are equally encouragers of blasphemy and profaneness; as if their poisonous arrows, which have been shot as well against God as his vicegerent, have come out of the same quiver." De Foe advises these loyal persons to present another address, beseeching her majesty to appoint a solemn day of fasting and humiliation to deprecate the anger of heaven, for resisting and deposing her royal father; and to appoint suitable prayers to be offered for his male-heirs, that they may be prospered in all their righteous endeavours for the recovery of the throne of their ancestors, from which they are illegally excluded by an ungodly resistance. In exhorting the public to repent of this national sin, and reform it accordingly, he proceeds in a strain of irony, "I might dilate a little here upon the terrible judgments this land groans under at this time, occasioned by the long continuance of this great sin of rebellion and resistance; such as, the curse of liberty, the plague of parliaments, and the like; which, if it please God but to deliver us from, we might in time come to enjoy the invaluable blessings of Popish devotion, arbitrary domination, golden chains, most beautiful woodenshoes, Jure Divino princes, passively-obedient slaves, and universal bondage; with all the wealth, plenty, commerce and peace, that constantly attends slavery."+

The address from Minehead asserted the doctrine of nonresistance, in the most unqualified terms, even in cases of tyranny and oppression. This gave rise to a very popular pamphlet, which passed through at least twelve editions

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within a few months, and is intitled, "A Letter to Sir Jacob Banks, by birth a Swede, but naturalized, and a Member of the Present Parliament: concerning the late Minehead Doctrine, which was established by a certain Free-Parliament of Sweden, to the utter enslaving of that kingdom. Lond. 1711." 8vo. The author was William Benson, then high-sheriff of Wilts; and in the next reign surveyor-general, and auditor of the Imprests. Having travelled in Sweden, and noticed the effects of arbitrary power there, he wished, by a review of the revolution that produced them, to run a parallel with the existing state of affairs in his own country, which he considered as tending to the same fatal consequences." It was in reality holding up a glass to the ministers, the parliament, and the queen herself, in which each of them could not but see their own resemblance."* More than sixty thousand copies were sold in London, besides two editions at Dublin, and one at Edinburgh. There was also a French translation published at the Hague, and at Amsterdam; and one in High Dutch, at Hamburgh. Being written after the change in the ministry, strong attempts were made to prosecute the author, who was cited before the privy-council, and freely owned the publication. The law-officers being consulted, gave their opinion against the probability of a conviction; but to shew the resentment of the goverment, Mr. Benson was ordered to give bail for his appearance in the court of Queen's Bench, in the sum of four thousand pounds, and was put to much trouble and expence, without being brought to trial. This work gave rise to other publications on the subject; and Mr. Benson, undeterred by the threats of the government, appeared again in the controversy.

In reference to the foregoing addresses, De Foe says, "I must own they are very particular, and singular above all

130 DE FOE'S REMARKS UPON THE ADDRESSES.

the addresses I remember in the last thirty years." Some of them, he tells us, "were procured in a dark and clandestine manner, the ignorant people being drawn in to set their hands to them by their mad priests, and others had their names inserted without their consent; in short, every art was resorted to, and all the influence and authority of station employed in this mad work. The language, also, in which they were couched, was seditious in the extreme." By an act passed in the early part of the reign, it was made death to declare, that her majesty has no right to the crown, yet, the addresses virtually set her aside by proclaiming a political dogma, that transferred her title to the Pretender. De Foe had always rested her title upon the act of settlement, which gave her a claim to the prejudice of her brother; he therefore boldly asserts that she has no hereditary right to the crown, and that either the addressors or himself ought to be hanged. "I am sure," says he, "one of us is guilty of treason; and I challenge them fairly to come to trial, and let the law decide it." In satirizing the politics of the high-flyers, he reminds them of the invitation to the Prince of Orange, the expulsion of King James, and the battle of the Boyne, "the more effectually to put in practice the most heavenly Church-of-England doctrine of non-resistance; no question, all agreeable to, and squared by the constant practice of her best members." Coupling these transactions with the course then pursuing by the same men, he asks, "Would any man that had seen the temper of this people, in the time of the late King James, believe it possible, without a judicial infatuation, that the same people should re-assume their blindness, and rise up again for bondage? Never, since the children of Israel demanded to go back and make bricks without straw, and to feed on onions and garlick, was any nation in the world so sordid, and so unaccountably bewitched."*

* Review, vii. 105-107.