Concluding the second volume of Colonel Jacque will be found the ironical Shortest Way with the Dissenters , which placed Defoe in the pillory and in prison. It was written in 1702, the first year of Anne's reign, when the strong Tory influence in the government seemed likely to bring back the persecution of Nonconformists which had ceased in the time of William. From
the early summer, when Dr. Sacheverell preached at Oxford a most inflammatory sermon against the Dissenters, High Church feeling against them grew stronger and stronger. Finally Defoe decided that the best service he could render them was to show the views of the High Church party in all their extreme savageness. The result was the pamphlet, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters; or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church , which appeared on the first of December, 1702.
Defoe was so successful in imagining High Tory sentiments in his pamphlet, that it was received with indignation by the Dissenters themselves and with acclaim by the extreme Churchmen. "I join with" the author "in all he says," wrote one of them, to a friend who had sent him the pamphlet, "and have such a value for the book, that, next to the Holy Bible and the sacred Comments, I take it for the most valuable piece I have." Naturally there was a storm when the truth was discovered and the High Tories found out that what they had praised was ironical. They were immediately shamed into declaring the pamphlet a dangerous libel, intended to stir up the Dissenters to civil war. Defoe's bookseller and printer were accordingly arrested, and a reward was offered for his apprehension. He gave himself up, was tried, and sentenced to pay a fine of two hundred marks, to stand three times in the pillory, and to go to prison for the Queen's pleasure. How Defoe converted his punishment in the pillory into a triumph, and how profitably he employed his time during his imprisonment, have been already told in the introduction to Robinson Crusoe .
G. H. Maynadier.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
Here's room for just and copious observations on the blessings and advantages of a sober and well-governed education, and the ruin of so many thousands of youths of all kinds in this nation for want of it; also, how much public schools and charities might be improved to prevent the destruction of so, many unhappy children as in this town are every year bred up for the gallows.
The miserable condition of unhappy children, many of whose natural tempers are docible, and would lead them to learn the best things rather than the worst, is truly deplorable, and is abundantly seen in the history of this man's childhood; where, though circumstances formed him by necessity to be a thief, a strange rectitude of principles remained with him, and made him early abhor the worst part of his trade, and at last wholly leave it off. If he had come into the world with the advantage of education, and been well instructed how to improve the generous principles he had in him, what a man might he not have been!
The various turns of his fortunes in the world make a delightful field for the reader to wander in; a garden where he may gather wholesome and medicinal fruits, none noxious or poisonous; where he will see virtue and the ways of wisdom everywhere applauded, honoured, encouraged, rewarded; vice and all kinds of wickedness attended with misery, many kinds of infelicities; and at last, sin and shame going together, the persons meeting with reproof and reproach, and the crimes with abhorrence.
Every wicked reader will here be encouraged to a change, and it will appear that the best and only good end of an impious, misspent life is repentance; that in this there is comfort, peace, and oftentimes hope, and that the penitent shall be returned like the prodigal, and his latter end be better than his beginning .
While these things, and such as these, are the ends and designs of the whole book, I think I need not say one word more as an apology for any part of the rest-no, nor for the whole. If discouraging everything that is evil, and encouraging everything that is virtuous and good-I say, if these appear to be the whole scope and design of the publishing this story, no objection can lie against it; neither is it of the least moment to inquire whether the Colonel hath told his own story true or not; if he has made it a History
or a Parable, it will be equally useful, and capable of doing good; and in that it recommends itself without any introduction. Your humble servant,
The Editor.
THE LIFE OF COLONEL JACQUE
My original may be as high as anybody's for aught I know, for my mother kept very good company; but that part belongs to her story more than to mine. All I know of it is by oral tradition, thus: My nurse told me my mother was a gentlewoman, that my father was a man of quality, and she (my nurse) had a good piece of money given her to take me off his hands, and deliver him and my mother from the importunities that usually attend the misfortune of having a child to keep that should not be seen or heard of.