and thy water shall be sure.' I have
espoused an honest interest, and have steadily
adhered to it all my days; I never forsook
it when it was oppressed, I never made a
gain by it when it was advanced; and I
thank God it is not in the power of all the
courts and parties in Christendom to bid a
price high enough to buy me off from it,
or make me desert it."

Before coming to the third and con-
cluding period of Defoe's life, when, after
the accession of George the First, he is
supposed to have retired from the political
arena, and to have devoted the remainder
of his days to the composition of less
ephemeral works, the immortal story of
Robinson Crusoe among the number, let
us glance a little while at the subjects
unconnected with party politics that occupied
him. Free trade was familiar to his thoughts
a dozen years before Adam Smith was born,
and a generation before the grandfathers of
Peel, Cobden, and Bright were thought of.
In a pamphlet published in 1713, on the
recently concluded treaty of peace and
commerce with France, he expatiated largely
on the advantages of free trade: asserting
that the international reduction and abolition
of the Customs duties would increase
trade, cheapen commodities, promote
national and individual wealth, and become,
in the course of time, the truest guarantee
of peace among all nations. What more
or what better could Mr. Gladstone or Mr.
Bright say in the year 1869? Under the
pseudonym of Andrew Moreton, in a
pamphlet entitled Augusta Triumphans; or,
the Way to make London the most
Flourishing City in the World, he
suggested six methods for the moral, intellectual,
and physical advancement of the
metropolis. These were, first, "the establishment
of a university where gentlemen may
have academical education under the eye of
their friends." This idea of Defoe was
brought into practice a hundred years afterwards,
and University College, in Gower-street,
and King's College, in the Strand,
testify to this generation the forethought
of this remarkable man. Second, "to prevent
child murder, &c., by establishing
a hospital for foundlings." The good
Captain Coram, in an after time, carried
out this idea. Third, "the suppression
of pretended madhouses, where many of
the fair sex are unjustly confined by their
husbands and others, and many widows are
locked up for the sake of their jointure."
The law in due time took up this idea
also, and the licensing and visitation of
public and private madhouses and lunatic
asylums were made, as Defoe suggested, a
matter of public policy. Fourth, "to save
our youth from destruction by clearing the
streets of impudent strumpets, suppressing
gaming tables, &c." This reform has only
been partially carried out in our day, but
none the less is the merit of Defoe for having
suggested and urged it a century and a half
ago. Fifth, "to avoid the extensive
importation of foreign musicians by forming an
academy of our own." This also has been
done, though without the national effects
anticipated. Sixth, "to save our lower
class of people from utter ruin, by preventing
the immoderate use of Geneva and other
spirituous liquors." This, too, has been
attempted, and still occupies the attention
of theorists and philanthropists, though
the end aimed at seems still as distant as
when Defoe wrote. Another of Defoe's
projects was to supersede the London
watchmen of his day, whom he called
"decrepit superannuated wretches, with one
foot in the grave and the other ready to
follow, and so feeble that a puff of breath
could blow them down," and replace them
by a watch of stout able-bodied men, "one
man to every forty houses, twenty on one
side of the way, and twenty on the other —
the said men to be armed." It was fully a
hundred years after Defoe's time that the
late Sir Robert Peel acted on Defoe's idea,
abolished the stupid old watchmen, and
established what even now is sometimes
called the "new" police. What, after all,
would mere statesmanship be, if genius had
not gone before it, preparing the way, and
accustoming the minds of men to the new
thing, which men will, somehow or other,
never consent to accept until the idea of it
has grown old and familiar?

The death of Queen Anne, like that
of King William, marks an important
epoch in the career of Defoe, who, as he
says, had been "thirteen times rich and
thirteen times poor, and felt all the
difference between the closet of a king (or
queen), and the dungeon in Newgate!"
Yet Defoe, who had been in the confidence
of two sovereigns and their advisers, was
not destined to fall either into obscurity or
idleness. The new king could not speak a
word of English, differing in this respect
from all his predecessors since the days of the
earliest Plantagenets; and could not therefore
know, except by report, how powerful
an English writer Defoe was, and what good
service he had rendered, and was yet
capable of rendering, to the principles which