enters and
tradesmen whose prejudices the junto had to turn to account. He would
have stood by Chatham in the time of Wilkes and of the American War; he
would have demanded parliamentary reform in the time of Brougham and
Bentham, and he would have been a follower of the Manchester school in
the time of Bright and Cobden. We all know the type, and have made up
our minds as to its merits. When De Foe came to be a subject of
biography in this century, he was of course praised for his
enlightenment by men of congenial opinions. He was held up as a model
politician, not only for his creed but for his independence. The
revelations of his last biographer, Mr. Lee, showed unfortunately that
considerable deductions must be made from the independence. He was, as
we now know, in the pay of Government for many years, while boasting of
his perfect purity; he was transferred, like a mere dependent, from the
Whigs to the Tories and back again. In the reign of George I. he
consented to abandon his character in order to act as a spy upon unlucky
Jacobite colleagues. It is to the credit of Harley's acuteness that he
was the first English minister to make a systematic use of the press and
was the patron both of Swift and De Foe. But to use the press was then
to make a mere tool of the author. De Foe was a journalist, living, and
supporting a family, by his pen, in the days when a journalist had to
choose between the pillory and dependence. He soon had enough of the
pillory and preferred to do very dirty services for his employer. Other
journalists, I fear, since his day have consented to serve masters whom
in their hearts they disapproved. It may, I think, be fairly said on
behalf of De Foe that in the main he worked for causes of which he
really approved; that he never sacrificed the opinions to which he was
most deeply attached; that his morality was, at worst, above that of
many contemporary politicians; and that, in short, he had a conscience,
though he could not afford to obey it implicitly. He says himself, and I
think the statement has its pathetic side, that he made a kind of
compromise with that awkward instinct. He praised those acts only of the
Government which he really approved, though he could not afford to
denounce those from which he differed. Undoubtedly, as many respectable
moralists have told us, the man who endeavours to draw such lines will
get into difficulties and probably emerge with a character not a little
soiled