s of the freeholders that they had
exceeded their powers in imprisoning the men who had prayed them to
"turn their loyal addresses into Bills of Supply." When the Kentish
Petitioners were liberated from the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms, and
feasted by the citizens at Mercers' Hall, Defoe was seated next to them
as an honoured guest.

Unfortunately for Defoe, William did not live long after he had been
honoured with his Majesty's confidence. He declared afterwards that he
had often been privately consulted by the King. The pamphlets which he
wrote during the close of the reign are all such as might have been
directly inspired. That on the Succession is chiefly memorable as
containing a suggestion that the heirs of the Duke of Monmouth should be
heard as to King Charles's alleged marriage with Lucy Walters. It is
possible that this idea may have been sanctioned by the King, who had
had painful experience of the disadvantages attending a ruler of foreign
extraction, and besides had reason to doubt the attachment of the
Princess Sophia to the Protestant faith. When the passionate aversion to
war in the popular mind was suddenly changed by the recognition of the
Pretender into an equally passionate thirst for it, and the King seized
the opportunity to dissolve Parliament and get a new House in accord
with the altered temper of the people, Defoe justified the appeal to the
freeholders by an examination and assertion of "the Original Power of
the Collective Body of the People of England." His last service to the
King was a pamphlet bearing the paradoxical title, _Reasons against a
War with France_. As Defoe had for nearly a year been zealously working
the public mind to a warlike pitch, this title is at first surprising,
but the surprise disappears when we find that the pamphlet is an
ingenious plea for beginning with a declaration of war against Spain,
showing that not only was there just cause for such a war, but that it
would be extremely profitable, inasmuch as it would afford occasion for
plundering the Spaniards in the West Indies, and thereby making up for
whatever losses our trade might suffer from the French privateers. And
it was more than a mere plundering descent that Defoe had in view; his
object was that England should take actual possession of the Spanish
Indies, and so rob Spain of its chief source of wealth. There was a most
powerful buccaneering spirit concealed under the peaceful title of this
pamphlet. T