Reasons against the Succession of the House of Hanover

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Of Defoe’s Reasons against the Succession of the House of Hanover

The Vigor with which Daniel Defoe advocated for the Act of Union and the policies of the Harley administration, did at one-point land him in hot water. Reasons against the Succession was a pamphlet in which Defoe mimics a Jacobite voice, but clearly belittles their perspective. While intended as a satire of the Jacobite Position, the Whig’s saw it as cleaving to close to Harley, Defoe’s original employer, whom they did not trust. Defoe was pardoned, as the Queen still held Lord Oxford as minister, and Defoe continued to write, but began shifting his attention to other subjects, releasing Robinson Crusoe in 1719.

“Heavy with sarcasm, this pamphlet argues not only that the English people need to stop arguing about the succession (the Queen is still alive after all and “may well enough linger out Twenty or Thirty Years, and not be a Huge Old Wife neither”  but that it would be better for the House of Hanover not to succeed to the throne. The arguments are all tongue-in-cheek, however, and by the end, Defoe clearly shows himself to be against any claim of the Pretender to the throne. For one thing, he argues, when James abdicated the throne, he abdicated it not only for himself but for his child.”  Indiana University Defoe Exhibition online