While he was yet under thirty, and had mortified no great man by his satire, or offended any party by his pamphlets, he had acquired friends by his powers of pleasing, who did not, with the usual instability of friendships, desert him amidst his distresses. They offered to settle him as a factor at Cadiz, where, as a trader, he had some previous correspondence. In this situation he might have procured business by his care, and accumulated wealth without a risk; but, as he assures us in his old age, _Providence, which had other work for him to do, placed a secret aversion in his mind to quitting England_[14]. He had confidence enough in his own talents to think, that on this field he could gather laurels, or at least gain a livelihood. In a projecting age, as our author denominates king William's reign, he was himself a projector. While he was yet young, De Foe was prompted by a vigorous mind to think of many schemes, and to offer, what was most pleasing to the ruling powers, ways and means for carrying on the war. He wrote, as he says, many sheets about the coin; he proposed a register for seamen, long before the act of parliament was thought of; he projected county banks, and factories for goods; he mentioned a proposal for a commission of inquiries into bankrupt's estates; he contrived a pension-office for the relief of the poor[15]. At length, in January 1696-7, he published his Essay upon Projects; which he dedicated to Dalby Thomas, not as a commissioner of glass duties, under whom he then served, or as a friend to whom he acknowledges obligations, but as to the most proper judge on the subject. It is always curious to trace a thought, in order to see where it first originated, or how it was afterwards expanded. Among other projects, which show a wide range of knowledge, he suggests to king William the imitation of Lewis XIV., in the establishment of a society "for encouraging polite learning, for refining the English language, and for preventing barbarisms of manners." Prior offered in 1700 the same project to king William, in his _Carmen Seculare_; Swift mentioned in 1710 to lord Oxford a proposal for improving the English tongue; and Tickell flatters himself in his Prospect of Peace, that "our daring language, shall sport no more in arbitrary sound." However his projects were taken, certain it is, that when De Foe ceased to be a trader, he was, by the interposition of Dalby Thomas probably, appointed, in 1695, accountant to the commissioners for managing the duties on glass; who, with our author, ceased to act on the 1st of August, 1699, when the tax was suppressed by act of parliament[16].