Defoe, Political Parties, and the Monarch

Defoe, Political Parties, and the M onarch M AN U EL SC H O N H O RN gfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA In 1958 Professor Caroline Robbins published a study of the ac­ ceptance of party by Englishmen of the eighteenth century.1 She fo­ cused her attention on a host of writers who had not only recognized the existence of party but also "had accepted with varying degrees of enthusiasm or fatalism the role of parties in a free state" (p. 100). Discussing the virtues of party, she cited John Toland, Walter Moyle, and journalists in the reign of George I. She concluded with a writer who, in RQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA A p p le b e e ' s J o u r n a l in May 1723, "maintained that 'discordant parties' were sometimes the safety of states" (p. 117). Her quotation, and the title of her study, come from the title of that 1723 essay.2 That writer was Defoe. Subsequent historians, British and Ameri­ can, have reprinted Defoe's essay and have echoed her conclusion. For example, it is reprinted, and Defoe's positive attitude to party affirmed, in J. A. W. Gunn's collection, F a c t io n s N o M o r e , A t t it u d e s t o G o v e r n m e n t a n d O p p o s it io n in E ig h t e e n t h - C e n t u r y E n g la n d : E x t r a c t s fr o m C o n t e m p o r a r y S o u r c e s . In his introduction to "Section II: The Uses of Conflict," Professor Gunn writes: "The seemingly paradoxical con­ clusion that conflict could be valuable appealed in different ways to Shaftesbury and Paterson, Defoe and Gordon."3 But the fact is that the title of Professor Robbins' study, which is the putative title of Defoe's essay, and which perhaps prompted her misreading of Defoe's attitude to party, suggesting a paradox, is not and never was Defoe's. The essay from A p p le b e e ' s J o u r n a l has been read by all in William Lee's collection of Defoe's voluminous journal­ ism, published in 1869. The titles, Lee wrote in his introduction, "placed above the articles, are my own, prefixed only to correspond 187 188 / SCHONHORN with a Table of Contents, and to make every part of each volume conveniently accessible."4 If one had paid attention to Lee's introduction, and to Defoe's es­ says printed a year earlier in which he examined the spirit of party and concluded that it lead to unnatural conduct and corrupt historical writing,5 Defoe's mature attitude to party and faction in his day would not have been misunderstood; more important, we would have been prompted to reconsider his judgments about the powers and prac­ tices of the monarch. For Defoe's essay on "discordant parties" is the second in a series of six successive essays on the subject of parties and kings. The series began with some ambiguous and skeptical re­ marks on John Toland's RQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA T h e A r t o f G o v e r n in g b y P a r t ie s (1701) and con­ cluded with critical and strident answers to a forthright and unam­ biguous question: What is the main evil of parties?6 Now, what is Defoe really saying in these essays, as I read them? Throughout, two ideas are prominent that have significant bearing on his attitude toward monarchy. The first is the metaphor of play. Defoe does accept the fact that there are factions, parties, in the world, but "since Divisions must come, the Politick Statesmen will make their Advantage of it, and make their Market of both. When the subtle Angler fishes for Gudgeons, he takes a long Pole, and rummages and disturbs the Gravel at the bottom of the River, makes an Uproar in...