An Appeal to Honour and Justice, Though It Be of His Worst Enemies.

If this is a crime, I must plead guilty, and give in the history of my obligation above mentioned as an extenuation at least, if not a justification of my conduct.

Suppose a man's father was guilty of several things unlawful and unjustifiable; a man may heartily detest the unjustifiable thing, and yet it ought not to be expected that he should expose his father. I think the case on my side exactly the same, nor can the duty to a parent be more strongly obliging than the obligation laid on me; but I must allow the case on the other side not the same.

And this brings me to the affirmative, and inquire what the matters of fact are; what I have done, or have not done, on account of these obligations which I am under.

It is a general suggestion, and is affirmed with such assurance, that they tell me it is in vain to contradict it, that I have been employed by the earl of Oxford, late lord treasurer, in the late disputes about public affairs, to write for him, or, to put it into their own particulars, have written by his directions taken the materials from him, been dictated to or instructed by him, or by other persons from him, by his order, and the like; and that I have received a pension, or salary, or payment from his lordship for such services as these. It was impossible, since these things have been so confidently affirmed, but that, if I could put it into words that would more fully express the meaning of these people, I profess I would do it. One would think that some evidence might be produced, some facts might appear, some one or other might be found that could speak of certain knowledge. To say things have been carried too closely to be discovered, is saying nothing, for then they must own that it is not discovered; and how then can they affirm it as they do, with such an assurance as nothing ought to be affirmed by honest men, unless they were able to prove it?

To speak, then, to the fact. Were the reproach upon me only in this particular, I should not mention it. I should not think it a reproach to be directed by a man to whom the queen had at that time entrusted the administration of the government. But, as it is a reproach upon his lordship, justice requires that I do right in this case. The thing is true or false. I would recommend it to those who would be called honest men, to consider but one thing, viz., what if it should not be true? Can they justify the injury done to that person, or to any person concerned? If it cannot be proved, if no vestiges appear to ground it upon, how can they charge men upon rumours and reports, and join to run down men's characters by the stream of clamour?

Sed quo rapit impetus undæ

In answer to the charge, I bear witness to posterity, that every part of it is false and forged. And I do solemnly protest, in the fear and presence of Him that shall judge us all, both the slanderers and the slandered, that I have not received any instructions, directions, orders, or let them call it what they will, of that kind, for the writing of any part of what I have 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. Neither did I ever show, or cause to be shown to his lordship, for his approbation, correction, alteration, or for any other cause, any book, paper, or pamphlet which I have written and published, before the same was worked off at the press and published.

If any man living can detect me of the least prevarication in this, or in any part of it, I desire him to do it by all means; and I challenge all the world to do it. And if they cannot, then I appeal, as in my title, to the honour and justice of my worst enemies, to know upon what foundation of truth or conscience they can affirm these things, and for what it is that I bear these reproaches.

In all my writing, I ever capitulated for my liberty to speak according to my own judgment of things; I ever had that liberty allowed me, nor was I ever imposed upon to write this way or that against my judgment by any person whatsoever.

I come now historically to the point of time when my lord Godolphin was dismissed from his employment, and the late unhappy division broke out at court. I waited on my lord the day he was displaced, and humbly asked his lordship's direction what course I should take? His lordship's answer was, "that he had the same goodwill to assist me, but not the same power; that I was the queen's servant, and that all he had done for me was by her majesty's special and particular direction; and that whoever should succeed him, it was not material to me; he supposed I should be employed in nothing relating to the present differences. My business was to wait till I saw things settled, and then apply myself to the ministers of state, to receive her majesty's commands from them."

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.

By this, I was providentially cast back upon my original benefactor, who, according to his wonted goodness, was pleased to lay my case before her majesty; and thereby I preserved my interest in her majesty's favour, but without any engagement of service.

As for consideration, pension, gratification, or reward, I declare to all the world I have had none, except only that old appointment which her majesty was pleased to make me in the days of the ministry of my lord Godolphin; of which I have spoken already, and which was for services done in a foreign country some years before. Neither have I been employed, directed, or ordered by my lord treasurer aforesaid to do, or not to do, anything in the affairs of the unhappy differences which have so long perplexed us, and for which I have so many, and such unjust reproaches.

I come next to enter into the matters of fact, and what it is I have done, or not done, which may justify the treatment I have met with; and first, for the negative part, what I have not done.

The first thing in the unhappy breaches which have fallen out, is the heaping up scandal upon the persons and conduct of men of honour on one side as well as the other; those unworthy methods of falling upon one another by personal calumny and reproach. This I have often in print complained of as an unchristian, ungenerous, and unjustifiable practice. Not a word can be found in all I have written reflecting on the persons or conduct of any of the former ministry. I served her majesty under their administration; they acted honourably and justly in every transaction in which I had the honour to be concerned with them, and I never published or said anything dishonourable of any of them in my life; nor can the worst enemy I have produce any such thing against me. I always regretted the change, and looked upon it as a great disaster to the nation in general, I am sure it was so to me in particular; and the divisions and feuds among parties which followed that change were doubtless a disaster to us all.

The next thing that followed the change was the peace: no man can say that ever I once said in my life that I approved of the peace. I wrote a public paper at that time, and there it remains upon record against me. I printed it openly, and that so plainly as others durst not do, that I did not like the peace; neither that which was made, nor that which was before making; that I thought the protestant interest was not taken care of in either; and that the peace I was for was such as should neither have given the Spanish monarchy to the house of Bourbon nor to the house of Austria, but that this bone of contention should have been broken to pieces, that it might not be dangerous to Europe; and that the protestant powers, viz., Britain and the States, should have so strengthened and fortified their interest by their sharing the commerce and strength of Spain, as should have made them no more afraid of France or the emperor: so that the protestant interest should have been superior to all the powers of Europe, and been in no more danger of exorbitant powers whether French or Austrian. This was the peace I always argued for, pursuant to the design of king William in the Treaty of Partition, and pursuant to that article of the grand alliance which was directed by the same glorious hand at the beginning of this last war, viz., that all we should conquer in the Spanish West Indies should be our own.

This was the true design, that England and Holland should have turned their naval power, which was eminently superior to that of France, to the conquest of the Spanish West Indies, by which the channel of trade and return of bullion, which now enriches the enemies of both, had been ours; and as the wealth, so the strength of the world had been in protestant hands. Spain, whoever had it, must then have been dependent upon us. The house of Bourbon would have found it so poor without us, as to be scarce worth fighting for: and the people so averse to them, for want of their commerce, as not to make it ever likely that France could keep it.

This was the foundation I ever acted upon with relation to the peace. It is true, that when it was made, and could not be otherwise, I thought our business was to make the best of it, and rather to inquire what improvements were to be made of it, than to be continually exclaiming at those who made it; and where the objection lies against this part, I cannot yet see.

While I spoke of things in this manner, I bore infinite reproaches from clamouring pens, of being in the French interest, being hired and bribed to defend a bad peace, and the like; and most of this was upon a supposition of my writing, or being the author of, abundance of pamphlets which came out every day, and which I had no hand in. And indeed, as I shall observe again by and by, this was one of the greatest pieces of injustice that could be done me, and which I labour still under without any redress; that whenever any piece comes out which is not liked, I am immediately charged with being the author; and very often the first knowledge I have had of a book being published, has been from seeing myself abused for being the author of it, in some other pamphlet published in answer to it.

Finding myself treated in this manner, I declined writing at all, and for a great part of a year never set pen to paper, except in the public paper called the Review. After this I was long absent in the north of England; and, observing the insolence of the jacobite party, and how they insinuated fine things into the heads of the common people, of the right and claim of the pretender, and of the great things he would do for us if he were to come in; of his being to turn a protestant, of his being resolved to maintain our liberties, support our friends, give liberty to dissenters, and the like; and finding that the people began to be deluded, and that the jacobites gained ground among them by these insinuations, I thought it the best service I could do the protestant interest, and the best way to open people's eyes of the protestant succession, if I took some course effectually to alarm the people with what they really ought to expect, if the pretender should come to be king. And this made me set pen to paper again.

And this brings me to the affirmative part, or to what really I have done; and in this, I am sorry to say, I have one of the foulest, most unjust, and unchristian clamours to complain of, that any man has suffered, I believe, since the days of the tyranny of king James II. The fact is thus: —

In order to detect the influence of jacobite emissaries, as above, the first thing I wrote was a small tract, called A Seasonable Caution; a book sincerely written to open the eyes of the poor, ignorant country people, and to warn them against the subtle insinuations of the emissaries of the pretender; and that it might be effectual to that purpose, I prevailed with several of my friends to give them away among the poor people, all over England, especially in the north; and several thousands were actually given away, the price being reduced so low, that the bare expense of paper and press was only preserved, that every one might be convinced that nothing of gain was designed, but a sincere endeavour to do a public good, and assist to keep the people entirely in the interest of the protestant succession.

Next to this, and with the same sincere design, I wrote two pamphlets, one entituled, What if the Pretender should come? the other, Reasons against the Succession of the House of Hanover.

Nothing can be more plain than that the titles of these books were amusements, in order to put the books into the hands of those people whom the jacobites had deluded, and to bring them to be read by them.

Previous to what I shall further say of these books, I must observe that all these books met with so general a reception and approbation among those who were most sincere for the protestant succession, that they sent them all over the kingdom, and recommended them to the people as excellent and useful pieces; insomuch that about seven editions of them were printed, and they were reprinted in other places. And I do protest, had his present majesty, then elector of Hanover, given me a thousand pounds to have written for the interest of his succession, and to expose and render the interest of the pretender odious and ridiculous, I could have done nothing more effectual to those purposes than these books were.

And that I may make my worst enemies, to whom this is a fair appeal, judges of this, I must take leave, by and by, to repeat some of the expressions in these books, which were direct and need no explanation, which I think no man that was in the interest of the pretender, nay, which no man but one who was entirely in the interest of the Hanover succession, could write.

Nothing can be severer in the fate of a man than to act so between two parties, that both sides should be provoked against him. It is certain, the jacobites cursed those tracts and the author, and when they came to read them, being deluded by the titles according to the design, they threw them by with the greatest indignation imaginable. Had the pretender ever come to the throne, I could have expected nothing but death, and all the ignominy and reproach that the most inveterate enemy of his person and claim could be supposed to suffer.

On the other hand, I leave it to any considering man to judge, what a surprise it must be to me to meet with all the public clamour that informers could invent, as being guilty of writing against the Hanover succession, and as having written several pamphlets in favour of the pretender.

No man in this nation ever had a more rivetted aversion to the pretender, and to all the family he pretended to come of, than I; a man that had been in arms under the duke of Monmouth, against the cruelty and arbitrary government of his pretended father; that for twenty years had to my utmost opposed him (king James) and his party after his abdication; and had served king William to his satisfaction, and the friends of the revolution after his death, at all hazards and upon all occasions; that had suffered and been ruined under the administration of high-fliers and jacobites, of whom some at this day counterfeit whigs. It could not be! The nature of the thing could by no means allow it; it must be monstrous; and that the wonder may cease, I shall take leave to quote some of the expressions out of these books, of which the worst enemy I have in the world is left to judge whether they are in favour of the pretender or no; but of this in its place. For these books I was prosecuted, taken into custody, and obliged to give 800l. bail.

I do not in the least object here against, or design to reflect upon, the proceedings of the judges which were subsequent to this. I acknowledged then, and now acknowledge again, that upon the information given, there was a sufficient ground for all they did; and my unhappy entering upon my own vindication in print, while the case was before their lordships in a judicial way, was an error which I did not understand, and which I did not foresee; and therefore, although I had great reason to reflect upon the informers, yet I was wrong in making that defence in the manner and time I then made it; and which when I found, I made no scruple afterwards to petition the judges, and acknowledge they had just ground to resent it. Upon which petition and acknowledgment their lordships were pleased, with particular marks of goodness, to release me, and not to take the advantage of an error of ignorance, as if it had been considered and premeditated.

But against the informers I think I have great reason to complain; and against the injustice of those writers who, in many pamphlets, charged me with writing for the pretender, and the government with pardoning an author who wrote for the pretender. And, indeed, the justice of these men can be in nothing more clearly stated than in this case of mine; where the charge, in their printed papers and public discourse, was brought; not that they themselves believed me guilty of the crime, but because it was necessary to blacken the man, that a general reproach might serve for an answer to whatever he should say that was not for their turn. So that it was the person, not the crime, they fell upon; and they may justly be said to persecute for the sake of persecution, as will thus appear.

This matter making some noise, people began to inquire into it, and ask what De Foe was prosecuted for, seeing the books were manifestly written against the pretender, and for the interest of the house of Hanover. And my friends expostulated freely with some of the men who appeared in it, who answered with more truth than honesty, that they knew this book had nothing in it, and that it was meant another way; but that De Foe had disobliged them in other things, and they were resolved to take the advantage they had, both to punish and expose him. They were no inconsiderable people who said this; and had the case come to a trial, I had provided good evidence to prove the words.

This is the christianity and justice by which I have been treated, and this in justice is the thing I complain of.

Now, as this was the plot of a few men to see if they could brand me in the world for a jacobite, and persuade rash and ignorant people that I was turned about for the pretender, I think they might as easily have proved me to be a mahometan; therefore, I say, this obliges me to state the matter as it really stands, that impartial men may judge whether those books were written for or against the pretender. And this cannot be better done than by the account of what followed after the information, which, in a few words, was this: —

Upon the several days appointed, I appeared at the Queen's Bench bar to discharge my bail; and at last had an indictment for high crimes and misdemeanors exhibited against me by her majesty's attorney-general, which, as I was informed, contained two hundred sheets of paper.

What was the substance of the indictment I shall not mention here, neither could I enter upon it, having never seen the particulars; but I was told that I should be brought to trial the very next term.

I was not ignorant that in such cases it is easy to make any book a libel, and that the jury must have found the matter of fact in the indictment, viz., that I had written such books, and then what might have followed I knew not. Wherefore, I thought it was my only way to cast myself on the clemency of her majesty, of whose goodness I had so much experience many ways; representing in my petition, that I was far from the least intention to favour the interest of the pretender, but that the books were all written with a sincere design to promote the interest of the house of Hanover; and humbly laid before her majesty, as I do now before the rest of the world, the books themselves to plead in my behalf; representing further, that I was maliciously informed against by those who were willing to put a construction upon the expressions different from my true meaning; and therefore, flying to her majesty's goodness and clemency, I entreated her gracious pardon.

It was not only the native disposition of her majesty to acts of clemency and goodness that obtained me this pardon; but, as I was informed, her majesty was pleased to express it in the council, "She saw nothing but private pique in the first prosecution." And therefore I think I cannot give a better and clearer vindication of myself; than what is contained in the preamble to the pardon which her majesty was pleased to grant me; and I must be allowed to say to those who are still willing to object, that I think what satisfied her majesty might be sufficient to satisfy them; and I can assure them that this pardon was not granted without her majesty's being specially and particularly acquainted with the things alleged in the petition, the books also being looked into, to find the expressions quoted in the petition. The preamble to the patent for a pardon, as far as relates to the matters of fact, runs thus: —

"Whereas, in the term of the Holy Trinity last past, our attorney-general did exhibit an information, in our court of Queen's Bench at Westminster, against Daniel De Foe, late of London, gent., for writing, printing, and publishing, and causing to be written, printed, and published, three libels, the one entituled, Reasons against the Succession of the House of Hanover; with an Inquiry how far the Abdication of King James, supposing it to be legal, ought to affect the person of the Pretender. One other, entituled, And what if the Pretender should come? or, Some Considerations of the Advantages and real Consequences of the Pretender's possessing the Crown of Great Britain. And one other, entituled, An Answer to a Question that nobody thinks of, viz., What if the Queen should die?

"And whereas the said Daniel De Foe hath by his humble petition represented to us, that he, with a sincere design to propagate the interest of the Hanover succession, and to animate the people against the designs of the pretender, whom he always looked on as an enemy to our sacred person and government, did publish the said pamphlets: in all which books, although the titles seemed to look as if written in favour of the pretender, and several expressions, as in all ironical writing it must be, may be wrested against the true design of the whole, and turned to a meaning quite different from the intention of the author, yet the petitioner humbly assures us, in the solemnest manner, that his true and only design in all the said books was, by an ironical discourse of recommending the pretender, in the strongest and most forcible manner to expose his designs, and the ruinous consequences of his succeeding therein; which, as the petitioner humbly represents, will appear to our satisfaction by the books themselves, where the following expressions are very plain: viz:, 'That the pretender is recommended as a person proper to amass the English liberties into his own sovereignty; supply them with the privilege of wearing wooden shoes; easing them of the trouble of choosing parliaments; and the nobility and gentry of the hazard and expense of winter journeys, by governing them in that more righteous method, of his absolute will, and enforcing the laws by a glorious standing army; paying all the nation's debts at once by stopping the funds and shutting up the exchequer; easing and quieting their differences in religion, by bringing them to the union of popery, or leaving them at liberty to have no religion at all:' that these were some of the very expressions in the said books, which the petitioner sincerely designed to expose and oppose, and as far as in him lies, the interest of the pretender, and with no other intention; nevertheless, the petitioner, to his great surprise, has been misrepresented, and his said books misconstrued, as if written in favour of the pretender; and the petitioner is now under prosecution for the same; which prosecution, if further carried on, will be the utter ruin of the petitioner and his family. Wherefore, the petitioner, humbly assuring us of the innocence of his design as aforesaid, flies to our clemency, and most humbly prays our most gracious and free pardon.