In short Defoe contended, if the French acquired the upper hand in Spain, nothing but a miracle could save England from becoming practically a French province.
Defoe's appeal to the sense of self-interest fell, however, upon deaf ears.

No eloquence or ingenuity of argument could have availed to stem the strong current of growling prepossession.

He was equally unsuccessful in his attempt to touch deeper feelings by exhibiting in a pamphlet, which is perhaps the ablest of the series, _The danger of the Protestant Religion, from the present prospect of a Religious War in Europe_.

"Surely you cannot object to a standing army for the defence of your religion ?" he argued; "for if you do, then you stand convicted of valuing your liberties more than your religion, which ought to be your first and highest concern." Such scraps of rhetorical logic were but as straws in the storm of anti-warlike passion that was then raging.

Nor did Defoe succeed in turning the elections by addressing "to the good people of England" his _Six Distinguishing Characters of a Parliament Man_, or by protesting as a freeholder against the levity of making the strife between the new and the old East India Companies a testing question, when the very existence of the kingdom was at stake.