Review 9: 1712–1713 by Daniel Defoe (review)

With this two-part set, which constitutes Volume 9 of the Review, Mr. McVeagh brings to a close his highly commendable edition of the complete run of Daniel Defoe’s periodical known (prior to this volume) as A Review of the State of the British Nation. And thanks to the General Index to vols. 1–9 at the end of this volume, researchers may now conduct a name or subject search of Defoe’s views on such matters as England’s trade and commerce, the nature of credit and the problem of bankruptcy, the war in Europe and the royal successions in England and Spain, the state of the church and dissenters in England and Scotland, or Defoe’s contentious relationship with politicians of both parties and with his fellow journalists over the course of the Review’s nine-year run from February 19, 1704 to June 11, 1713.

Prior to volume 9, the format of the Review was four pages, published triweekly on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Many numbers included both a principal essay and a “Miscellanea” section, both of which were likely to continue the threads of arguments begun in previous numbers, or even in previous volumes, so that, for example, the trade in African slaves is discussed in some twelve numbers in Volumes 6 through 9. Fully to understand the African trade, however, one also must see the cross-referenced entries for the Royal African Company, the West Indies, Colonies and Plantations, and America, which appear in all nine volumes. Mr. McVeagh’s meticulous Index allows the researcher to read the Review as a continuously evolving dialogue between “Mr. Review” and his readers, whom he treats increasingly as his antagonists.

The ninth volume begins with an acknowledgment that, due to the new tax on publications, the Review would henceforth publish on Tuesdays and Saturdays only, and would be printed on a half-sheet rather than a full sheet. Though Mr. Review promises that, with the use of smaller type, the reader “will soon find, that there are as many Words in a Review, tho’ in less compass, than before,” the essays were in fact about a third shorter. Shorter too was Defoe’s patience: readers who “please to read it with Temper, may find it Useful and Instructing,” but those who are resolved to condemn it “right or wrong, I bid them DEFIANCE.” In a later “Miscellanea” (Dec. 30, 1712), Mr. Review distinguishes himself from the Spectator and other journals: “they court you to read, invite you, propose to make you smile, and contrive to do it, that you may read and buy their Papers”; but he writes to force them to understand their interests: “these [interests] oblige you to read this Paper, and therefore the Author thinks himself not at all oblig’d to you, but you to him. . . . So that designing to write upon these Points, which you daily want to hear; he resolves it shall [be] your loss not to read, and none of his Affliction if you forbear.” Whether his antagonistic tone was the cause or the result of a decline in readership, Defoe seems to have known that the end of the Review was in sight, and the final volume can be read as a long swan song on most of his favorite themes.

A constant topic in the Review is the need to control trade with Spain, particularly the trade in woolen goods. The treaty of commerce that will be part of the peace of Utrecht must ensure that England, rather than France, will supply Spain with the wool and woolen goods that are needed to carry on the trade with the Spanish colonies in Mexico and the West Indies. If the French succeed in establishing themselves in the trade in woolens, the resulting river of gold and silver bullion from New Spain will keep the war alive indefinitely...