In the same volume is a tract entitled The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, which contained reflexions against some ecclesiastics in power, for breathing too much a spirit of perfection.  He became obnoxious to the ministry on this account, and was obliged to justify himself by writing an explanation of it.  Mr. De Foe in his preface to the second volume of his works, collected by himself, takes occasion to mention the severe hardships he laboured under, occasioned by those Printers, more industrious than himself, who make a practice of pirating every work attended with success.  As an instance of this kind of oppression, he mentions the True Born Englishman, by which, had he enjoyed the full profit of his own labours, he must have gained near a thousand pounds; for besides nine editions which passed under his own inspection, this poem was twelve times pirated:  but the insolence of those fraudulent dealers did not stop here.  A Printer of a bad reputation collected a spurious and erroneous copy of several pieces of De Foe, and entitled them The Works of the Author of the True Born Englishman; and though he was then embroiled with the government for one of the pamphlets which this collection contained, yet had this man the impudence to print amongst them the same pamphlets, presuming so far upon the partiality of the public resentment, that he should pass with impunity for publishing that very thing for which the author was to be prosecuted with the utmost severity.  This, however, was an irresistible testimony, that the resentment shewn to the author was on some other, and less justifiable account, than the publication of that book; so was it a severe satire on the unwariness of the ministry, who had not eyes to discern their justice plainly exposed, and their general proceedings bantered by a Printer, for publishing in defiance of them that same book for which another man stood arraigned.

Mr. De Foe, who possessed a resolute temper, and a most confirmed fortitude of mind, was never awed by the threats of power, nor deterred from speaking truth by the insolence of the great.  Wherever he found vice he lashed it, and frequently, as Pope says, he

  Dash’d the proud gam’ster from his gilded car,
  Bar’d the mean breast that lurk’d beneath a star.

For some vigorous attacks against the measures of a prevailing party, which Mr. De Foe reckoned unconstitutional and unjust, he was prosecuted, and received sentence to stand on the pillory; which punishment he underwent.

At the very time he was in the hands of the ministry, to shew the invincible force of his mind, he wrote a Hymn to the Pillory, as a kind of defiance of their power.  ’The reader (says he)[C] is desired to observe this poem was the author’s declaration, even when in the cruel hands of a merciless, as well as unjust ministry; that the treatment he had from them was unjust, exorbitant, and consequently illegal.’  As the ministry did not think proper to prosecute him for this fresh insult against them, that forbearance was construed a confession of guilt in their former proceedings.