Defoe was thus, as he says, providentially cast back upon his original
benefactor. That he received any consideration, pension, gratification,
or reward for his services to Harley, "except that old appointment which
Her Majesty was pleased to make him," he strenuously denied. The denial
is possibly true, and it is extremely probable that he was within the
truth when he protested in the most solemn manner that he had never
"received any instructions, directions, orders, or let them call it what
they will, of that kind, for the writing of any part of what he had
written, or any materials for the putting together, for the forming any
book or pamphlet whatsoever, from the said Earl of Oxford, late Lord
Treasurer, or from any person by his order or direction, since the time
that the late Earl of Godolphin was Lord Treasurer." Defoe declared that
"in all his writing, he ever 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