clash with the Protestant religion in all the rest of Europe, we must prefer the major interest to the minor.”  Defoe treats every foreign question from the cool high-political point of view, generally taking up a position from which he can expose the unreasonableness of both sides.  In the case of the Cevennois insurgents, one party had used the argument that it was unlawful to encourage rebellion even among the subjects of a prince with whom we were at war.  With this Defoe dealt in one article, proving with quite a superfluity of illustration that we were justified by all the precedents of recent history in sending support to the rebellious subjects of Louis XIV.  It was the general custom of Europe to “assist the malcontents of our neighbours.”  Then in another article he considered whether, being lawful, it was also expedient, and he answered this in the negative, treating with scorn a passionate appeal for the Cevennois entitled “Europe enslaved if the Camisars are not relieved.”  “What nonsense is this,” he cried, “about a poor despicable handful of men who have only made a little diversion in the great war!” “The haste these men are in to have that done which they cannot show us the way to do!” he cried; and proceeded to prove in a minute discussion of conceivable strategic movements that it was impossible for us in the circumstances to send the Camisards the least relief.

There is no reference in the Review to Defoe’s release from prison.  Two numbers a week were issued with the same punctuality before and after, and there is no perceptible difference either in tone or in plan.  Before he left prison, and before the fall of the high Tory Ministers, he had thrown in his lot boldly with the moderate men, and he did not identify himself more closely with any political section after Harley and Godolphin recognized the value of his support and gave him liberty and pecuniary help.  In the first number of the Review he had declared his freedom from party ties, and his unreserved adherence to truth and the public interest, and he made frequent protestation of this independence.  “I am not a party man,” he kept saying; “at least, I resolve this shall not be a party paper.”  In discussing the affairs of France, he took more than one side-glance homewards, but always with the protest that he had no interest to serve but that of his country.  The absolute power of Louis, for example, furnished him with an occasion for lamenting the disunited counsels of Her Majesty’s Cabinet.  Without imitating the despotic form of the French Government, he said, there are ways by which we might secure under our own forms greater decision and promptitude on the part of the Executive.  When Nottingham was dismissed, he rejoiced openly, not because the ex-Secretary had been his persecutor, but because at last there was unity of views among the Queen’s Ministers.  He joined naturally in the exultation over Marlborough’s successes, but in the Review, and in his Hymn to Victory,