our and interests were deeply engaged, became a hot
partisan against them, and used all their blunders to break down their
power at Court. Day by day she impressed upon the Queen the necessity
of peace and union at home in the face of the troubles abroad. The
moderate men of both parties must be rallied round the throne. Extremes
on both sides must be discouraged. Spies were set to work to take note
of such rash expressions among "the hot and angry men" as would be
likely to damage them in the Queen's favour. Queen Anne had not a little
of the quiet tenacity and spitefulness of enfeebled constitutions, but
in the end reason prevailed, resentment at importunity was overcome, and
the hold of the High-Churchmen on her affections gave way.

Nobody, Swift has told us, could better disguise her feelings than the
Queen. The first intimation which the High-Church party had of her
change of views was her opening speech to Parliament on the 9th
November, 1703, in which she earnestly desired parties in both Houses to
avoid heats and divisions. Defoe at once threw himself in front of the
rising tide. Whether he divined for himself that the influence of the
Earl of Nottingham, the Secretary of State, to whom he owed his
prosecution and imprisonment, was waning, or obtained a hint to that
effect from his Whig friends, we do not know, but he lost no time in
issuing from his prison a bold attack upon the High-Churchmen. In his
_Challenge, of Peace, addressed to the whole Nation_, he denounced them
as Church Vultures and Ecclesiastical Harpies. It was they and not the
Dissenters that were the prime movers of strife and dissension. How are
peace and union to be obtained, he asks. He will show people first how
peace and union cannot be obtained.

"First, Sacheverell's Bloody Flag of Defiance is not the way to Peace
and Union. _The shortest way to destroy is not the shortest way to
unite_. Persecution, Laws to Compel, Restrain or force the Conscience of
one another, is not the way to this Union, which her Majesty has so
earnestly recommended."

"Secondly, to repeal or contract the late Act of Toleration is not the
way for this so much wished-for happiness; to have laws revived that
should set one party a plundering, excommunicating and unchurching
another, that should renew the oppressions and devastations of late
reigns, this will not by any means contribute to this Peace, which all
good men desire."

"New Associations and proposals t