Happy should I think myself in joining with you in welcoming to this country every friend of liberty, who is exposed to danger from the tyranny of the British Government, and who, while they continue under it, must expect to share in those calamities, which its present infatuation must, sooner or later, bring upon it. But let us all join in supplications to the Great Parent of the Universe, that for the sake of the many excellent characters in our native country its government may be reformed, and the judgments impending over it prevented.
The hearty reception accorded Dr. Priestley met in due course with a cruel attack upon him by William Cobbett, known under the pen-name of Peter Porcupine, an Englishman, who after arrival in this country enjoyed a rather prosperous life by formulating scurrilous literature—attacks upon men of prominence, stars shining brightly in the human firmament.
An old paper, the Argus, for the year 1796, said of this Peter Porcupine:
When this political caterpillar was crawling about at St. John's, Nova Scotia, in support of his Britannic Majesty's glorious cause, against the United States, and holding the rank of serjeant major in the 54th regiment, then quartered in that land, "flowing with milk and honey," and GRINDSTONES, and commanded by Colonel Bruce; it was customary for some of the officers to hire out the soldiers to the country people, instead of keeping them to military duty, and to pocket the money themselves. Peter found he could make a speck out of this, and therefore kept a watchful eye over the sins of his superiors. When the regiment was recalled and had returned to England—Peter, brimful of amor patriæ, was about to prefer a complaint against the officers, when they came down with a round sum of the ready rino, and a promise of his discharge, in case of secrecy.—This so staggered our incorruptible and independent hero and quill driver, that he agreed to the terms, received that very honorable discharge, mentioned with so
much emphasis, in the history of his important life—got cash enough to come to America, by circuitous route and to set himself up with the necessary implements of scandal and abuse.
This flea, this spider, this corporal, has dared to point his impotent spleen at the memory of that illustrious patriot, statesman and philosopher, Benjamin Franklin.
Let the buzzing insect reflect on this truth—that
"Succeeding times great Franklin's works shall quote,
When 'tis forgot—this Peter ever wrote."
And the Advertiser declared: