His pamphlets were widely distributed, but he might as soon have tried to check a tempest by throwing handfuls of leaves into it.

One great success, however, he had, and that, strangely enough, in a direction in which it was least to be anticipated.

No better proof could be given that the good-humoured magnanimity and sense of fair-play on which English people pride themselves is more than an empty boast than the reception accorded to Defoe's _True-Born Englishman_.

King William's unpopularity was at its height.

A party writer of the time had sought to inflame the general dislike to his Dutch favourites by "a vile pamphlet in abhorred verse," entitled _The Foreigners_, in which they are loaded with scurrilous insinuations.