During Anne's reign Swift paid frequent visits to England, and became closely connected with the leading Tories. In 1710 he broke with the Whigs and united with Harley and the Tory administration. The five last years of Anne's government found him playing a prominent part in English politics as the leading political writer of the Tories. He was on terms of the closest intimacy with Oxford (Harley) and Bolingbroke, and attempted to heal the breach between the rival statesmen. He helped the Tories in a paper called the _Examiner_, upholding the policy of the ministers and supplying his party with the arguments they would have used if they had had the brains to think of them. This series of articles culminated in the "Conduct of the Allies," a pamphlet which brought about the disgrace of Marlborough and made the peace popular. In it the author denounced the war as the plot of a ring of Whig stock-jobbers and monied men. These weekly papers in the _Examiner_ produced a great effect upon the public mind and called forth a multitude of opponents. Swift gave the Press the wonderful position it holds now. He almost created the "leading article;" and though his contributions will not bear comparison with the light style of our own day, they suited his times. They were written in a plain, homely style, for Swift had a thorough contempt for abstract thought and abstract politics; indeed, his low estimate of men convinced him that they were about as good for flying as for thinking. Mr. Leslie Stephen aptly states that Swift's pamphlets were rather "blows than words;" he had serious political effects to produce, and what he had to prove it was necessary to say in plain words, for honest Tory squires of the country party to understand and obey. The _Examiner_, the _Medley_, the _Tattler_, and the pamphlets of that day bear no analogy to the modern newspaper; their influence did not penetrate to the lower classes of the community, who were still without education. Swift is condemned by many who are not conversant with his character, his writings, or the times in which he lived. In detached views, no man was more liable to be misunderstood; his individual acts must be compared with his entire conduct, in order to give him his proper place in the gallery of historical characters. The charge of deserting his party is answered by Dr. Johnson, whose evidence is of greater value as he never professed to be his friend. "Swift, by early education, had been associated with the Whigs; but he deserted them when they deserted their principles, yet he never ran into the opposite extreme; for he continued throughout his life to retain the disposition which he assigned to the Church of England man, of thinking commonly with the Whigs of the State and with the Tories of the Church."