MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 17

 

court into the tory or high-church party. ‘The heat and fury of the clergy
went to that height (says De Foe) that even it became ludicrous, and attended
with all the little excesses which a person elevated beyond the government of
himself by some sudden joy is usually subject to. And, as a known author
remarks, that upon the restoration of King Charles II., the excesses and trans-
ports of the clergy and people ran out into revels, may-poles, and all manner
of extravagancies; so at this time, there were more may-poles set up in one
year in England than had been in twenty years before. Ballads for the church
was another expression of their zeal, wherein generally the chorus or burden
of the song was, ‘Down with the Presbyterians.’ And to such a height were
things brought, that the dissenters began to be insulted in every place; their
mecting-houses and assemblies assaulted by the mobs; and even their ministers
and preachers were scarce admitted to pass the streets.” Pamphlets inveigh-
ing against the dissenters were hawked about the streets, and the pulpits
especially resounded with the most violent tirades, and the lenity of the queen
in extending to them toleration was unscrupulously condemned. Familiar with
the sentiments and language of the high-church party, De Foe collected them
into a three-sheet pamphlet, entitled “‘The Shortest Way with the Dissenters;
or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church.”

“When the book first appeared in the world,” says he, “and before those
high-flown gentlemen knew its author; whilst the piece in its outward. figure
tooked so natural, and was so like a brat of their own begetting, that, like two
apples, they could not know them asunder, the author’s true design in the
writing it had its immediate effect. The gentlemen of the high-church imme-
diately fell in with the project. Nothing could have been more grateful to
them than arguments to prove the necessity of ruining the dissenters, and
removing those obstructions to the church’s glory out of the way. We have
innumerable testimonies of the pleasure with which the party embraced the
proposal of sending all the dissenting ministers to the gallows and the galleys;
of having all their meeting-houses demolished ; and being let loose upon the
people to plunder and destroy them. The soberer churchmen, whose princi-
ples were founded on charity, and who had their eye upon the laws and con-
stitution of their country, as that to which their own liberties were annexed,
though they still believed the book to be written by a high-churchman, yet
openly exclaimed against the proposal, condemned the warmth that appeared
in the clergy against their brethren, and openly professed that such a man as
Sacheverell and his brethren would blow up the foundations of the church.
But either side had scarce time to discover their sentiments, when the book
uppeared to have been written by a dissenter; that it was designed in derision
of the standard held up by Sacheverell and others; that it was a. gatire upon
the fury of the churchmen, and a plot to make the rest discover tebmselves.
Nothing was more strange than to see the effect upcn the whole nation which
this little book, 2 contemptible pamphlet of but three sheets of paper, had,
und in so short a time too. The most forward, hot and furious, as well among

the clergy as others, blushed when they reflected how far they had applauded:
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