He never appeals to passion or imagination; what he strives to enlist on his side is homely self-interest, and the ordinary sense of what is right and reasonable.

There is little regularity of method in the development of his argument; that he leaves to more anxious and elaborate masters of style.

For himself he is content to start from a bold and clear statement of his own opinion, and proceeds buoyantly and discursively to engage and scatter his enemies as they turn up, without the least fear of being able to fight his way back to his original base.

He wrote for a class to whom a prolonged intellectual operation, however comprehensive and complete, was distasteful.

To persuade the mass of the freeholders was his object, and for such an object there are no political tracts in the language at all comparable to Defoe's.