The old Earl of Sunderland's suggestion to William III.

had not taken root in constitutional practice; this was the fulfilment of it under the gradual pressure of circumstances.
Defoe's conduct while the political balance was rocking, and after the Whig side had decisively kicked the beam, is a curious study.

One hardly knows which to admire most, the loyalty with which he stuck to the falling house till the moment of its collapse, or the adroitness with which he escaped from the ruins.

Censure of his shiftiness is partly disarmed by the fact that there were so many in that troubled and uncertain time who would have acted like him if they had had the skill.
Besides, he acted so steadily and with such sleepless vigilance and energy on the principle that the appearance of honesty is the best policy, that at this distance of time it is not easy to catch him tripping, and if we refuse to be guided by the opinion of his contemporaries, we almost inevitably fall victims to his incomparable plausibility.

Deviations in his political writings from the course of the honest patriot are almost as difficult to detect as flaws in the verisimilitude of _Robinson Crusoe_ or the _Journal of the Plague_.
During the two months' interval between the substitution of Dartmouth for Sunderland and the fall of Godolphin, Defoe used all his powers of eloquence and argument to avert the threatened changes in the Ministry, and keep the Tories out.