e great Catholic Powers
of Europe. The point of the last pamphlet of the series was less
distinct; it suggested the possibility of the English people losing
their properties, their estates, inheritance, lands, goods, lives, and
liberties, unless they were clear in their own minds what course to take
in the event of the Queen's death. But none of the three Tracts contain
anything that could possibly be interpreted as a serious argument in
favour of the Pretender. They were all calculated to support the
Succession of the Elector of Hanover. Why, then, should the Whigs have
prosecuted the author? It was a strange thing, as Defoe did not fail to
complain, that they should try to punish a man for writing in their own
interest.

The truth, however, is that although Defoe afterwards tried to convince
the Whig leaders that he had written these pamphlets in their interest,
they were written in the interest of Harley. They were calculated to
recommend that Minister to Prince George, in the event of his accession
to the English throne. We see this at once when we examine their
contents by the light of the personal intrigues of the time. Harley was
playing a double game. It was doubtful who the Queen's successor would
be, and he aimed at making himself safe in either of the two possible
contingencies. Very soon after his accession to power in 1710, he made
vague overtures for the restoration of the Stuarts under guarantees for
civil and religious liberty. When pressed to take definite steps in
pursuance of this plan, he deprecated haste, and put off and put off,
till the Pretender's adherents lost patience. All the time he was making
protestations of fidelity to the Court of Hanover. The increasing
vagueness of his promises to the Jacobites seems to show that, as time
went on, he became convinced that the Hanoverian was the winning cause.
No man could better advise him as to the feeling of the English people
than Defoe, who was constantly perambulating the country on secret
services, in all probability for the direct purpose of sounding the
general opinion. It was towards the end of 1712, by which time Harley's
shilly-shallying had effectually disgusted the Jacobites, that the first
of Defoe's series of Anti-Jacobite tracts appeared. It professed to be
written by An Englishman at the Court of Hanover, which affords some
ground, though it must be confessed slight, for supposing that Defoe had
visited Hanover, presumably as the beare