Note 32 — THE LIFE OF DE FOE, BY GEORGE CHALMERS, ESQ.

The next paragraph of the passage further explains De Foe's object. "The 'Sermon preached at Oxford,' the 'New Association,' the 'Poetical Observator,' with numberless others, have said the same things in terms very little darker; and this book stands fair to let these gentlemen know, that what they design can no further take with mankind, than as their real meaning stands disguised by artifice of words; but that, when the persecution and destruction of the dissenters, the very thing they drive at, is put into plain English, the whole nation will start other notions, and condemn the author to be hanged for his impudence. He humbly hopes, he shall find no harder treatment for plain English without design, than those gentlemen for their plain design, in duller and darker English. The meaning then of the paper is, in short, to tell these gentlemen that it is nonsense to go round about and tell us of the crimes of the dissenters, to prepare the world to believe they are not fit to live in a human society; that they are enemies to the government and the laws, to the queen, and the public peace, and the like; the shortest way and the soonest, would be to tell us plainly, that they would have them all hanged, banished, and destroyed."