the filling up of the North Loch at
the foot of the Castle Rock, and suggested
the laying out of a new city, on the very site
on which it was afterwards built. In
Edinburgh he published his History of the Union
of Great Britain: a work which his exertions
had greatly aided to bring to the
historical point. So intimate a knowledge did
he acquire of Scotland, that after the Act
of Union had been accomplished, and when
there was reason to believe that a Jacobite
rebellion, instigated by France, was in
progress, Defoe, who had in the interval returned
to London, was despatched to Scotland on
a second secret mission. Previous to his
departure he had his second interview with
Queen Anne, upon which occasion, he says,
"Her Majesty was pleased to tell me, with
a goodness peculiar to herself, that she had
much satisfaction in my former services,
that she had appointed me for another
affair, which was something nice (sic), and
that my lord treasurer should tell me the
rest." This mission, the precise object of
which appears never to have been divulged
by Defoe, though he says "it was an
errand which was far from being unfit for
a sovereign to direct or an honest man to
perform," was probably, as Mr. Lee and his
other biographers suppose, to direct the
public opinion of Scotland against the
principles and purposes of the Jacobites, and
to confirm the minds of the people in favour
of the Hanoverian succession. Defoe felt
strongly on the subject, and at the first
rumour of a French invasion of Scotland, to
support a rising in favour of the Pretender,
recommended the offer of a reward for the
capture of the Pretender, and the arrest of
forty or fifty of the Highland chieftains
and other foremost Jacobites."This
done," he added, "the Pretender may
come when he pleases; he'll meet with but
cold entertainment in the North of Britain."

Space would fail us if we were to attempt
to go minutely through the services and the
writings of Defoe from this period to the
imprisonment of his friend and benefactor,
Harley, Earl of Oxford, and the death of
Queen Anne. His pen was never idle,
and as he took his side in politics, and a
very marked and decisive one, at a time
when men's passions were greatly excited,
and the bosom of society was still throbbing
and heaving with the under-swell
of a revolution that had not yet consolidated
itself into an unchangeable fact, it
is not to be supposed that the number of
his enemies was not as great as that of his
friends, and that his enemies were not
louder in their attacks upon him than his
friends in their defence of him. One of the
most pertinacious charges brought against
him was, that he wrote for hire, always
coupled with the dirty inuendo that he wrote
for the side which paid best, and that he
had no personal predilections for one side
more than the other. Defoe never denied
that he lived by the rewards of his literary
labour, but with manly indignation
repelled the calumny that he ever wrote in
opposition to his honest conviction. "If,"
said he, in a strain of true eloquence, "I
have espoused a wrong cause; if I have
acted in a good cause in an unfair manner;
if I have for fear, favour, or by the bias of
any man in the world, great or small, acted
against what I always professed, or what
is the known interest of the nation; if I
have in any way abandoned that glorious
principle of truth and liberty which I was
ever embarked in, and which I trust I shall
never, through fear or hope, step one inch
back from; if I have done thus, then, as
Job says, in another case, let thistles grow
instead of wheat, and cockles instead of
barley. Then, and not till then, may I be
esteemed a mercenary, a missionary, a spy,
or what you please. But if the cause be
just; if it be the peace, security, and
happiness of both nations; if I have done it
honestly and effectually, how does it alter
the case if I have been fairly encouraged,
supported, and rewarded in the work, as
God knows I have not? Does the mission
disable the messenger, or does it depend
upon the merit of the message? Cease
your inquiry, then, about my being sent
by this or that person or party, till you can
agree who it is, when I shall be glad of an
opportunity to own it, as I see no cause to
be ashamed of my errand. Oh, but 'tis a
scandalous employment to write for bread!
The worse for him, gentlemen, that he
should take so much pains, run so many
risks, make himself so many enemies, and
expose himself to so much scurrilous treatment
for bread, and not get it neither.
Assure yourselves, had not Providence
found out other and unlooked-for supplies
by mere wonders of goodness, you had
long ago had the desire of your hearts— to
starve him out of this employment. But,
after all, suppose you say true— that all I
do is for bread which I assure you is very
false— what are all the employments in the
world pursued for, but for bread? But
though it has been quite otherwise in my
case, I am easy, and can depend upon that
promise, 'Thy bread shall be given thee,