writings were collected as a testimony against him, but he met the
charge boldly. The Dissenters ought not to practise occasional
conformity, but if they could reconcile it with their consciences, they
ought not to receive temporal punishment for practising it. The
Dissenters ought to withdraw from the magistracy, but it was persecution
to exclude them. In tract after tract of brilliant and trenchant
argument, he upheld these views, with his usual courage attacking most
fiercely those antagonists who went most nearly on the lines of his own
previous writings. Ignoring what he had said before, he now proved
clearly that the Occasional Conformity Bill was a breach of the Act of
Toleration. There was little difference between his own _Shortest Way to
Peace and Union_, and Sir Humphrey Mackworth's _Peace at Home_, but he
assailed the latter pamphlet vigorously, and showed that it had been the
practice in all countries for Dissenters from the established religion
to have a share in the business of the State. At the same time he never
departed so far from the "moderate" point of view, as to insist that
Dissenters ought to be admitted to a share in the business of the State.
Let the High-Church ministers be dismissed, and moderate men summoned to
the Queen's councils, and the Dissenters would have every reason to be
content. They would acquiesce with pleasure in a ministry and magistracy
of Low-Churchmen.

Defoe's assaults upon the High-Church Tories were neither interdicted
nor resented by the Government, though he lay in prison at their mercy.
Throughout the winter of 1703-4 the extreme members of the Ministry,
though they had still a majority in the House of Commons, felt the
Queen's coldness increase. Their former high place in her regard and
their continued hold upon Parliament tempted them to assume airs of
independence which gave deeper offence than her unruffled courtesy led
either them or their rivals to suspect. At last the crisis came. The