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Although it may appear from this that Defoe’s pen was for hire by whichever party was in power, in point of fact, Defoe’s political views were remarkably congruent with those of both Harley and Godolphin. All three were staunch supporters of England’s commercial interests, the Hanoverian Succession, liberty of conscience for Dissenters and Nonconformists, and the terms of the Revolution Settlement. It must be remembered that Godolphin and Harley were both moderates, each trying to chart his course between the extremes of the parties. They, like Daniel Defoe, saw their loyalty being to England and to the Queen, not to a party. Like Defoe, they both discovered that politics often make strange bedfellows. Godolphin, faced with a large Whig majority in the House of Commons after the General Election of 1708, found that his fortunes were bound to those of the Junto. Harley, after the General Election of 1710, discovered the necessity of courting the High-Church Tories far more than he would have liked.

Argyll’s slate of Scottish peers for the November election included men who were even more extreme in their Toryism than the majority of High-Church English Tories. Most of the sixteen were High-Church, many had strong Catholic leanings; all of them were against increasing the religious liberties of the Scottish Presbyterians (and thus those of the English Dissenters and Nonconformists). Several of these peers had been openly professed Jacobites and all were, in some degree, sympathetic to France. To have men with such beliefs in Parliament meant, to Defoe, the chance that Marlborough’s victories in France would be negotiated away, the loss of what the Toleration Act of 1689 had gained, and finally, the spector of the Pretender on the throne. In short, such men could mean the loss of all that the Revolution and the war with France had won. Yet, in the late autumn of 1710, Defoe found himself in Edinburgh, the agent and propagandist of the man on whose behalf Argyll had engineered the election of men of such politics.

Defoe’s mission in Edinburgh that autumn was to allay the fears of the Presbyterian clergy and Whig merchants about the new Tory Ministry. His message to them was, in Professor Sutherland’s words, that

What the country needed … was steady, moderate men, whether they called themselves Whig or Tory, men who would uphold the Protestant succession and avoid extreme measures; and that on the whole was what it had now got [appearances to the contrary notwithstanding]. The Ministry was not going to give way to the clamours of the High Tory rank and file; and the Queen would certainly not countenance any form of persecution.[5]

In short, Defoe was charged with convincing his Scottish friends and associates (and, by means of the Review, the nation at large) the opposite of all that Argyll’s actions and words bespoke of Harley’s intentions.

Defoe wrote Harley from Edinburgh on 18 November (eight days after the election of the peers) to voice his dismay at the tactics that had been used by Argyll. By them his own mission on Harley’s behalf had been impaired:

I hint this Sir to Confirm my Censure of the Conduct aforesaid as Imprudent and as what has rendred [sic] the quieting these people, which was Easy before, Very Difficult now.[6]

Further, he suggests that Harley’s heretofore moderate allies, the Squadrone, have been pushed by Argyll into league with the old Court Party that had supported the Godolphin Ministry. This letter also contains a brief summary of the main events which were to form the plot of Atalantis Major, but it does not attack Argyll with the same bitterness that the longer work does. Defoe writes:

In the late Election, the Conduct of the D of 60 [Argyll], the E of 163 [Islay], and the Earle of 194 [Mar] is Very Perticular…. [They] Declared Openly [that] the Quallification of those to be Chosen … [was] their agreeing to Impeach 140 [Godolphin] and 193 [Marlborough], Nor did the Impudence End there, but On all Occasions to Say in So Many Words They had her Majties Orders to Choose Such and Such and it must be don: This was So abandonning all Reserves, that it has disgusted the Generallity, and has Put them Upon Measures of Uniteing, which may shut the door upon all future Measures, what Ever the Occasion may be….