Note 66 — THE LIFE OF DE FOE, BY GEORGE CHALMERS, ESQ.

It is now sufficiently known, that Lord Oxford had relinquished the Treaty of Commerce to its fate, before it was finally debated in parliament. See much curious matter on this subject in Macpherson's State Papers, vol. ii. p. 421-23. It is there said, that he gave up the commercial treaty, in compliment to sir Thomas Hanmer, as he would by no means be an occasion of a breach among friends. The treasurer had other reasons: the treaty had been made by Bolingbroke, whom he did not love; the lords Anglesea and Abingdon had made extravagant demands for their support; and, like a wise man, he thought it idle to drive a nail that would not go. Yet lord Halifax boasted to the Hanoverian minister, that he alone had been the occasion of the treaty being rejected. [Same papers, p. 509-47.]