, and urged that the English fleet should be
sent into the Baltic to interrupt his communications. Disunion among
Protestants, argued Defoe, was the main cause of French greatness; if
the Swedish King would not join the Confederacy of his own free will, he
should be compelled to join it, or at least to refrain from weakening
it.

Defoe treated the revolt of the Hungarians against the Emperor with the
same regard to the interests of the Protestant cause. Some uneasiness
was felt in England at co-operating with an ally who so cruelly
oppressed his Protestant subjects, and some scruple of conscience at
seeming to countenance the oppression. Defoe fully admitted the wrongs
of the Hungarians, but argued that this was not the time for them to
press their claims for redress. He would not allow that they were
justified at such a moment in calling in the aid of the Turks against
the Emperor. "It is not enough that a nation be Protestant and the
people our friends; if they will join with our enemies, they are
Papists, Turks, and Heathens, to us." "If the Protestants in Hungary
will make the Protestant religion in Hungary clash with the Protestant
religion in all the rest of Europe, we must prefer the major interest to
the minor." Defoe treats every foreign question from the cool
high-political point of view, generally taking up a position from which
he can expose the unreasonableness of both sides. In the case of the
Cevennois insurgents, one party had used the argument that it was
unlawful to encourage rebellion even among the subjects of a prince with
whom we were at war. With this Defoe dealt in one article, proving with
quite a superfluity of illustration that we were justified by all the
precedents of recent history in sending support to the rebellious
subjects of Louis XIV. It was the general custom of Europe to "assist
the malcontents of our neighbours." Then in another article he
considered whether, being lawful, it was also expedient, and he answered
this in the negative, treating with scorn a passionate appeal for the
Cevennois entitled "Europe enslaved if the Camisars are not relieved."
"What nonsense is this," he cried, "about a poor despicable handful of
men who have only made a little diversion in the great war!" "The haste
these men are in to have that done which they cannot show us the way to
do!" he cried; and proceeded to prove in a minute discussion of
conceivable strategic movements that it was impossible for