e
hearts of the people, [727]

There was indeed a Jacobite literature in which no trace of this
patriotic spirit can be detected, a literature the remains of which
prove that there were Englishmen perfectly willing to see the English
flag dishonoured, the English soil invaded, the English capital sacked,
the English crown worn by a vassal of Lewis, if only they might avenge
themselves on their enemies, and especially on William, whom they hated
with a hatred half frightful half ludicrous. But this literature was
altogether a work of darkness. The law by which the Parliament of James
had subjected the press to the control of censors was still in force;
and, though the officers whose business it was to prevent the infraction
of that law were not extreme to mark every irregularity committed by a
bookseller who understood the art of conveying a guinea in a squeeze
of the hand, they could not wink at the open vending of unlicensed
pamphlets filled with ribald insults to the Sovereign, and with direct
instigations to rebellion. But there had long lurked in the garrets of
London a class of printers who worked steadily at their calling with
precautions resembling those employed by coiners and forgers. Women were
on the watch to give the alarm by their screams if an officer appeared
near the workshop. The press was immediately pushed into a closet
behind the bed; the types were flung into the coalhole, and covered with
cinders: the compositor disappeared through a trapdoor in the roof, and
made off over the tiles of the neighbouring houses. In these dens were
manufactured treasonable works of all classes and sizes, from halfpenny
broadsides of doggrel verse up to massy quartos filled with Hebrew
quotations. It was not safe to exhibit such publications openly on a
counter. They were sold only by trusty agents, and in secret places.
Some tracts which were thought likely to produce a great effect were
given away in immense numbers at the expense of wealthy Jacobites.
Sometimes a paper was thrust under a door, sometimes dropped on the
table of a coffeehouse. One day a thousand copies of a scurrilous
pamphlet went out by the postbags. On another day, when the shopkeepers
rose early to take down their shutters, they found the whole of Fleet
Street and the Strand white with seditious handbills, [728]

Of the numerous performances which were ushered into the world by such
shifts as these, none produced a greater sensation than a little