though no pamphlet on the subject known for certain to be his has been
preserved. Mr. Lee is over-rash in identifying as Defoe's a quarto sheet
of that date entitled "A Letter containing some Reflections on His
Majesty's declaration for Liberty of Conscience." Defoe may have written
many pamphlets on the stirring events of the time, which have not come
down to us. It may have been then that he acquired, or made a valuable
possession by practice, that marvellous facility with his pen which
stood him in such stead in after-life. It would be no wonder if he wrote
dozens of pamphlets, every one of which disappeared. The pamphlet then
occupied the place of the newspaper leading article. The newspapers of
the time were veritable chronicles of news, and not organs of opinion.
The expression of opinion was not then associated with the dissemination
of facts and rumours. A man who wished to influence public opinion wrote
a pamphlet, small or large, a single leaf or a tract of a few pages, and
had it hawked about the streets and sold in the bookshops. These
pamphlets issued from the press in swarms, were thrown aside when read,
and hardly preserved except by accident. That Defoe, if he wrote any or
many, should not have reprinted them when fifteen years afterwards he
published a collection of his works, is intelligible; he republished
only such of his tracts as had not lost their practical interest. If,
however, we indulge in the fancy, warranted so far by his describing
himself as having been a young "author" in 1683, that Defoe took an
active part in polemical literature under Charles and James, we must
remember that the censorship of the press was then active, and that
Defoe must have published under greater disadvantages than those who
wrote on the side of the Court.

At the Revolution, in 1688, Defoe lost no time in making his adhesion to
the new monarch conspicuous. He was, according to Oldmixon, one of "a
royal regiment of volunteer horse, made up of the chief citizens, who,