Scotch Presbyterians, asserting the firmness of their loyalty, smoothing over trading grievances by showing elaborately how both sides benefited from the arrangements of the Union, launching shafts in every direction at his favourite butts, and never missing a chance of exulting in his own superior wisdom.  In what a posture would England have been now, he cried, if those wiseacres had been listened to, who were for trusting the defence of England solely to the militia and the fleet!  Would our fleet have kept the French from landing if Providence had not interposed; and if they had landed, would a militia, undermined by disaffection, have been able to beat them back?  The French king deserved a vote of thanks for opening the eyes of the nation against foolish advisers, and for helping it to heal internal divisions.  Louis, poor gentleman, was much to be pitied, for his informers had evidently served him badly, and had led him to expect a greater amount of support from disloyal factions than they had the will or the courage to give him.

During the electoral canvass, Defoe surpassed himself in the lively vigour of his advocacy of the Whig cause.  “And now, gentlemen of England,” he began in the Review—­as it went on he became more and more direct and familiar in his manner of addressing his readers—­“now we are a-going to choose Parliament men, I will tell you a story.”  And he proceeded to tell how in a certain borough a great patron procured the election of a “shock dog” as its parliamentary representative.  Money and ale, Defoe says, could do anything.  “God knows I speak it with regret for you all and for your posterity, it is not an impossible thing to debauch this nation into a choice of thieves, knaves, devils, shock dogs, or anything comparatively speaking, by the power of various intoxications.”  He spent several numbers of the Review in an ironical advice to the electors to choose Tories, showing with all his skill “the mighty and prevailing reason why we should have a Tory Parliament.”  “O gentlemen,” he cried, “if we have any mind to buy some more experience, be sure and choose Tories.”  “We want a little instruction, we want to go to school to knaves and fools.”  Afterwards, dropping this thin mask, he declared that among the electors only “the drunken, the debauched, the swearing, the persecuting” would vote for the High-fliers.  “The grave, the sober, the thinking, the prudent,” would vote for the Whigs.  “A House of Tories is a House of Devils.”  “If ever we have a Tory Parliament, the nation is undone.”  In his Appeal to Honour and Justice Defoe explained, that while he was serving Godolphin, “being resolved to remove all possible ground of suspicion that he kept any secret correspondence, he never visited, or wrote to, or any way corresponded with his principal benefactor for above three years.”  Seeing that Harley was at that time the leader of the party which Defoe was denouncing with such spirit, it would have been strange indeed if there had been much intercourse between them.