dismissed minister Sunderland, with whom Defoe had been in personal
relations during the negotiations for the Union, he spoke in terms of
the warmest praise, always with a formal profession of not challenging
the Queen's judgment in discharging her servant. "My Lord Sunderland,"
he said, "leaves the Ministry with the most unblemished character that
ever I read of any statesman in the world." "I am making no court to my
Lord Sunderland. The unpolished author of this paper never had the
talent of making his court to the great men of the age." But where is
the objection against his conduct? Not a dog of the party can bark
against him. "They cannot show me a man of their party that ever did act
like him, or of whom they can say we should believe he would if he had
the opportunity." The Tories were clamouring for the dismissal of all
the other Whigs. High-Church addresses to the Queen were pouring in,
claiming to represent the sense of the nation, and hinting an absolute
want of confidence in the Administration. Defoe examined the conduct of
the ministers severally and collectively, and demanded where was the
charge against them, where the complaint, where the treasure misapplied?

As for the sense of the nation, there was one sure way of testing this
better than any got-up addresses, namely, the rise or fall of the public
credit. The public stocks fell immediately on the news of Sunderland's
dismissal, and were only partially revived upon Her Majesty's assurance
to the Directors of the Bank that she meant to keep the Ministry
otherwise unchanged. A rumour that Parliament was to be dissolved had
sent them down again. If the public credit is thus affected by the mere
apprehension of a turn of affairs in England, Defoe said, the thing
itself will be a fatal blow to it. The coy Lady Credit had been wavering
in her attachment to England; any sudden change would fright her away
altogether. As for the pooh-pooh cry of the Tories that the national
credit was of no consequence, that a nation could not be in debt to