On 18 September 1718 Defoe launched, or helped to launch, a new thrice-weekly journal, the White-Hall Evening Post, and in its issue for 29 November there appeared a letter to the editor, signed ‘SPANISH’, which could very possibly be by Defoe himself, but anyway seems to throw light on him. The letter takes to task the ‘Author’ of the ‘White-Hall Evening Post’ – no doubt meaning the writer of the ‘Sir Andrew Politick’ letters – for arguing against a war between Britain and Spain. For is not a war absolutely necessary to defend Britain's trade? If the writer of the present letter has guessed the identity of the ‘Author’ rightly, he has heard this man say he ‘would be glad of an Opportunity to retrieve the good Opinion of his Friends, which he lost by being drawn into former Follies’. The editor should tell him that now is the time for him to rejoin his friends and ‘let the World see, that whatever he might be formerly biass'd to say in a Case which he could not defend, like a Counsel pleading for his fee, and obliged to make the best of a bad Cause; yet that now he speaks from Inclination, and has a Cause that must go along with his Judgment, as well as with the duty of an Author’.