capitulated for his liberty to speak
according to his own judgment of things," and we may easily believe him.
He was much too clever a servant to need instructions.

His secret services to Harley in the new elections are probably buried
in oblivion. In the _Review_ he pursued a strain which to the reader who
does not take his articles in connexion with the politics of the time,
might appear to be thoroughly consistent with his advice to the electors
on previous occasions. He meant to confine himself, he said at starting,
rather to the manner of choosing than to the persons to be chosen, and
he never denounced bribery, intimidation, rioting, rabbling, and every
form of interference with the electors' freedom of choice, in more
energetic language. As regarded the persons to be chosen, his advice was
as before, to choose moderate men--men of sense and temper, not men of
fire and fury. But he no longer asserted, as he had done before, the
exclusive possession of good qualities by the Whigs. He now recognised
that there were hot Whigs as well as moderate Whigs, moderate Tories as
well as hot Tories. It was for the nation to avoid both extremes and
rally round the men of moderation, whether Whig or Tory. "If we have a
Tory High-flying Parliament, we Tories are undone. If we have a hot Whig
Parliament, we Whigs are undone."

The terms of Defoe's advice were unexceptionable, but the Whigs
perceived a change from the time when he declared that if ever we have a
Tory Parliament the nation is undone. It was as if a Republican writer,
after the _coup d'etat_ of the 16th May, 1877, had warned the French
against electing extreme Republicans, and had echoed the
Marshal-President's advice to give their votes to moderate men of all
parties. Defoe did not increase the conviction of his party loyalty when
a Tory Parliament was returned, by trying to prove that whatever the new
members might call themselves, they must inevitably be Whigs. He
admitted in the most unqualified way that the elections had been
disgracefully riotous and disorderly, and lectured the constituencies
freely on their conduct. "It is not," he said, "a Free Parliament that
you have chosen. You have met, mobbed, rabbled, and thrown dirt at one
another, but election by mob is no more free election than Oliver's
election by a standing army. Parliaments and rabbles are contrary
things." Yet he had hopes of the gentlemen who had been thus chosen.

"I have it upon many