any _arrière pensée_, the affairs of England. If he had first keenly assailed the dissenters, who were his own people, in respect of the compliances by which they made themselves capable of bearing office, and then exposed to grimmest ridicule the adversaries who aimed at rendering them altogether incapable, there was in this no real inconsistency. His championship of King William had been honest and thorough. If he loved to have a finger in every pie, and let loose his opinion at every crisis, there was no contemporary opinion which was better worth having. But now this unwearying critic, this keen observer, this restless, brilliant casuist, this practical man of business, had come to the turning-point of his life. His liberation from Newgate followed closely upon the advent of Harley to power. When this event happened, it is said that one of the first things the new minister did was to send a message to Defoe in prison: “Pray ask that gentleman what I can do for him.” Whether it was in direct sequence to this question, or whether the Queen had formed an independent intention of freeing the prisoner, we need not inquire; but he was set free, Queen Anne furnishing the means of paying his fine. She is said also to have taken an interest in his family, and contributed to their support during his confinement. He declared himself to be liberated on the condition of writing nothing (further modified as nothing “which some people might not like”) for some years; a condition which he immediately fulfilled by publishing an “Elegy on the Author of the True-born Englishman,” to tell the world so, and took no further notice of the prohibition, so far as appears. The real meaning of this curious statement would seem by all evidence to have been that Defoe there and then accepted the position of a secret servant of the government, a writer pledged to support their measures and carry out their views. At the moment, and perhaps in reality during the greater part of his career, their measures were those which he approved; and certainly at this period of his history he has never been accused of writing against his conscience. Even when, after eager championship of peace, he was obliged by political changes to veer into what looked like support of war, he was never without the strong defense to fall back upon, that he demanded peace only after securing certain indispensable conditions, and that war might be, and was, the only means of gaining them--an argument most simple and evident to his mind.