good grounds, as I think I told you,
that there are some people who are shortly to come together,
of whose character, let the people that send them up think
what they will, when they come thither they will not run the
mad length that is expected of them; they will act upon the
Revolution principle, keep within the circle of the law, proceed
with temper, moderation, and justice, to support the
same interest we have all carried on--and this I call being
Whiggish, or acting as Whigs."

"I shall not trouble you with further examining why they will be so, or
why they will act thus; I think it is so plain from the necessity of the
Constitution and the circumstances of things before them, that it needs
no further demonstration--they will be Whigs, they must be Whigs; there
is no remedy, for the Constitution is a Whig."

The new members of Parliament must either be Whigs or traitors, for
everybody who favours the Protestant succession is a Whig, and everybody
who does not is a traitor. Defoe used the same ingenuity in playing upon
words in his arguments in support of the public credit. Every true Whig,
he argued, in the _Review_ and in separate essays, was bound to uphold
the public credit, for to permit it to be impaired was the surest way to
let in the Pretender. The Whigs were accused of withdrawing their money
from the public stocks, to mark their distrust of the Government.
"Nonsense!" Defoe said, "in that case they would not be Whigs."
Naturally enough, as the _Review_ now practically supported a Ministry
in which extreme Tories had the predominance, he was upbraided for
having gone over to that party. "Why, gentlemen," he retorted, "it
would be more natural for you to think I am turned Turk than High-flier;
and to make me a Mahometan would not be half so ridiculous as to make me
say the Whigs are running down credit, when, on the contrary, I am still
satisfied if there were no Whigs at this time, there would hardly be any
such thing as credit left among us." "If the credit of the nation is to
be maintained, we must all act as Whigs, because credit can be
maintained upon no other foot. Had the doctrine of non-resistance of
tyranny been voted, had the Prerogative been exalted above the Law, and
property subjected to absolute will, would Parliament have voted the
funds? Credit supposes Whigs lending and a Whig Government borrowing. It
is nonsense to talk of credit and passive submission."