What was the result of all this? The greatest bitterness was created, and pamphlets, full of scurrility and violence, literally swarmed. Among the writers of these productions, Daniel Defoe was the most eminent. The pamphlet which, above all others, occasioned the greatest commotion, was his “Shortest Way with Dissenters; or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church.” This was published anonymously, and pretended to be written by one of the High Church party, and to set forth their complaints and wishes. The Church is said to have harboured Dissenters too long, and to have nourished the viperous brood till they hissed and flew in the face of the mother that had cherished them. The Church had been huffed and bullied by the Act of Toleration, and canting synagogues had been set up at its very doors. The Dissenters had butchered one king, deposed another, and made a mock monarch of a third, and yet expected to be employed by the fourth. If James I. had sent all the Puritans in England away to the West Indies, the Church of England would have been kept undivided and entire; but these Puritans, to requite the lenity of the father, took up arms against the son, put to death God’s anointed, and set up a sordid impostor who had neither the title nor the understanding to manage the nation. Coming into power, they shared the church lands among their soldiers, and turned the clergy out to starve. During the reign of their own King William, they had crept into all places of trust and profit, and had been preferred to the highest posts in England; while, in Scotland, they had trampled down the sacred orders, suppressed the Episcopacy, and made an entire conquest of the Church. For such reasons, they ought to be rooted out from the face of the land, and never would the nation enjoy uninterrupted union and tranquillity till their spirit of Whiggism, faction, and schism were melted down like the old money. It was true, that Queen Anne had promised them toleration, but she had also promised to protect and defend the Church; and if she could not effectually do that without the destruction of the Dissenters, she must, of course, dispense with one promise in order to fulfil the other. The Parliament, protected and encouraged by a Church of England queen, had now the opportunity to suppress the spirit of enthusiasm, and to free the nation from the vipers that had so long sucked the blood of their mother. If they were permitted to remain, they would corrupt posterity, plunder the estates of the members of the Church, drag their persons to gaols, gibbets, and scaffolds, and swallow up the Church itself in schism, faction, and enthusiasm. If one severe law were made and executed, that all found at a conventicle should be transported, and their preacher be hanged, they would soon all come to church, and an age would make all parties one again. Why should an enthusiast be less a criminal than a Jesuit? Why