ABSTRACT
The cry of Dunkirk was closely related to the trade policies of the Whigs, with which Steele had shown his alignment in the Guardian of August the 7th. The trade treaty with France, voted down by Whig opposition in June, was intended to revive Anglo-French trade by ending high protection on both sides; but it had been fought and defeated by the Whigs on the issues of industrial protection and balance of trade. In the airing of these questions, the pamphlet press was led by two periodicals: The Mercator, in which the arguments for free trade were marshalled for the Tory Ministry by Defoe, and The British Merchant, subsidized by Stanhope and Halifax and edited by Henry Martyn, presenting the Whig case for protectionism.
