lausible? What conduct more truly patriotic? Indeed,
it would be difficult to find fault with Defoe's behaviour, were it not
for the rogue's protestations of inability to court the favour of great
men, and his own subsequent confessions in his _Appeal to Honour and
Justice_, as to what took place behind the scenes. Immediately on the
turn of affairs he took steps to secure that connexion with the
Government, the existence of which he was always denying. The day after
Godolphin's displacement, he tells us, he waited on him, and "humbly
asked his lordship's direction what course he should take." Godolphin at
once assured him, in very much the same words that Harley had used
before, that the change need make no difference to him; he was the
Queen's servant, and all that had been done for him was by Her Majesty's
special and particular direction; his business was to wait till he saw
things settled, and then apply himself to the Ministers of State to
receive Her Majesty's commands from them. Thereupon Defoe resolved to
guide himself by the following principle:--

"It occurred to me immediately, as a principle for my conduct,
that it was not material to me what ministers Her Majesty
was pleased to employ; my duty was to go along with
every Ministry, so far as they did not break in upon the Constitution,
and the laws and liberties of my country; my part
being only the duty of a subject, viz., to submit to all lawful
commands, and to enter into no service which was not justifiable
by the laws; to all which I have exactly obliged myself."

Defoe was thus, as he says, providentially cast back upon his original
benefactor. That he received any consideration, pension, gratification,
or reward for his services to Harley, "except that old appointment which
Her Majesty was pleased to make him," he strenuously denied. The denial
is possibly true, and it is extremely probable that he was within the
truth when he protested in the most solemn manner that he had never
"received any instructions, directions, orders, or let them call it what
they will, of that kind, for the writing of any part of what he had
written, or any materials for the putting together, for the forming any
book or pamphlet whatsoever, from the said Earl of Oxford, late Lord
Treasurer, or from any person by his order or direction, since the time
that the late Earl of Godolphin was Lord Treasurer." Defoe declared that
"in all his writing, he ever