It required no ordinary courage in the state of the national temper at that moment to venture upon the line of retort that Defoe adopted.

What were the English, he demanded, that they should make a mock of foreigners?
They were the most mongrel race that ever lived upon the face of the earth; there was no such thing as a true-born Englishman; they were all the offspring of foreigners; what was more, of the scum of foreigners.
"For Englishmen to boast of generation Cancels their knowledge, and lampoons the nation.
A true-born Englishman's a contradiction, In speech an irony, in fact a fiction." * * * * * And here begins the ancient pedigree That so exalts our poor nobility.
'Tis that from some French trooper they derive, Who with the Norman bastard did arrive; The trophies of the families appear, Some show the sword, the bow, and some the spear Which their great ancestor, forsooth, did wear.
These in the herald's register remain, Their noble mean extraction to explain, Yet who the hero was no man can tell, Whether a drummer or colonel; The silent record blushes to reveal Their undescended dark original.
* * * * * "These are the heroes that despise the Dutch And rail at new-come foreigners so much; Forgetting that themselves are all derived From the most scoundrel race that ever lived; A horrid crowd of rambling thieves and drones, Who ransacked kingdoms and dispeopled towns; The Pict and painted Briton, treacherous Scot, By hunger, theft, and rapine hither brought; Norwegian pirates, buccaneering Danes, Whose red-haired offspring everywhere remains; Who joined with Norman French compound the breed From whence your true-born Englishmen proceed." "And lest, by length of time, it be pretended, The climate may this modern breed have mended, Wise Providence, to keep us where we are, Mixes us daily with exceeding care; We have been Europe's sink, the jakes where she Voids all her offal outcast progeny; From our fifth Henry's time the strolling bands Of banished fugitives from neighbouring lands Have here a certain sanctuary found: The eternal refuge of the vagabond, Wherein but half a common age of time, Borrowing new blood and manners from the clime, Proudly they learn all mankind to contemn, And all their race are true-born Englishmen." As may be judged from this specimen, there is little delicacy in Defoe's satire.

The lines run on from beginning to end in the same strain of bold, broad, hearty banter, as if the whole piece had been written off at a heat.

The mob did not lynch the audacious humourist.

In the very height of their fury against foreigners, they stopped short to laugh at themselves.