When the nation flamed with faction, the grand jury of Kent presented to the commons, on the 8th of May, 1701, a petition, which desired them, "to mind the public business more, and their private heats less;" and which contained a sentiment, that there was a design, as Burnet tells, other counties and the city of London should equally adopt. Messrs. Culpeppers, Polhill, Hamilton, and Champneys, who avowed this intrepid paper, were committed to the Gatehouse, amid the applauses of their countrymen. It was on this occasion that De Foe's genius dictated a Remonstrance, which was signed Legion, and which has been recorded in history for its bold truths and seditious petulance. De Foe's zeal induced him to assume a woman's dress, while he delivered this factious paper to Harley, the speaker, as he entered the house of commons[21]. It was then also that our author, who was transported by an equal attachment to the country and the court, published The Original Power of the collective Body of the People of England examined and asserted[22]. This timeful treatise he dedicated to king William, in a dignified strain of nervous eloquence. "It is not the least of the extraordinaries of your majesty's character," says he, "that, as you are king of your people, so you are the people's king; a title, which, as it is the most glorious, so it is the most indisputable." To the lords and commons he addresses himself in a similar tone: The vindication of the original right of all men to the government of themselves, he tells them, is so far from being a derogation from, that it is a confirmation of their legal authority. Every lover of liberty must be pleased with the perusal of a treatise, which vies with Mr. Locke's famous tract in powers of reasoning, and is superior to it in the graces of style. At a time when "union and charity, the one relating to our civil, and the other to our religious concerns, were strangers in the land," De Foe published The Freeholder's Plea against Stock-jobbing Elections of Parliament men[23]. "It is very rational to suppose," says our author, "that they who will buy will sell; or, what seems more rational, they who have bought must sell." This is certainly a persuasive performance, though we may suppose, that many voters were influenced then by arguments still more persuasive. And he concludes with a sentiment, which has not been too often repeated, That nothing can make us formidable to our neighbours, and maintain the reputation of our nation, but union among ourselves.