#All things done by common consent how to#

(Just as they get much of the credit when their words make positive changes in the world). But I also think that writers bear some of the blame when their words are misunderstood and even abused. I am quite committed to the freedom of speech.

I wouldn’t vote to make harsh satire like this illegal. How could those silly judges not get the joke? How could they punish a brilliant writer-the guy who basically invented the novel-for meaning exactly the opposite of what he said? This was why the eighteenth century couldn’t have nice things.īut I don’t feel that way now. When I first heard this story in a graduate seminar, I was incensed for Defoe. Defoe was convicted and placed in the stocks, ruining his credit and his ability to enter business, so he became a writer instead. He tried to argue that it was satire, but the judges ruled that satire was not a defense. When Defoe was discovered to be the author, he was tried and convicted for irresponsibly calling for the deaths of Her Majesty’s subjects. Most people thought it was for real, and it caused a huge stir, with some people attacking and others defending the argument. It was brilliant satire, but very few people got it. In 1702, Defoe wrote an anonymous pamphlet called The Shortest Way with the Dissenters in which he repeated most of the Anglican arguments for coerced conformity and then took them one step further to argue that those who would not conform should be killed. But he was also a dissenting Protestant at a time when conformity to the Church of England was compulsory under the law.

He wanted to be a wealthy merchant, and he had all kinds of idea about how to do so. Daniel Defoe did not set out to become a writer. We owe Robinson Crusoe to the 18 th-century public’s inability to understand satire.

#All things done by common consent how to#