As this pamphlet was hurried through the press, several mistakes were unavoidable: particularly, in the first three hundred which were sold, the word England instead of France appeared in the first line of the paragraph beginning in the forty-fifth page.”
Mr. Bradford was the publisher (if not the author) of one of these, viz., “The Impostor Detected;” and it seems that Cobbett had, when “The Bone to Gnaw, part ii.” appeared, written a letter to the editor of the Aurora (as an indirect puff), running down the pamphlet. But Mr. Bradford omitted to state that the bookseller had instigated the author. Cobbett, however, acknowledges the fact, in the “Political Censor” for September; and, after duly spitting Mr. Bradford for the breach of confidence, proceeds to justify the “puff indirect” by appealing to precedents, instancing Addison and Pope as persons who had done that sort of thing.
Here is a bit on the Porcupine side, from Mr. Fenno’s Gazette:—
“The enemies of the President of the United States, and of the Federal Government, pretend to be affronted that a man born in England should presume to say a civil thing of the character of George Washington. The consistency of this will appear when the public are assured that very few of the abusive scribblers who slander his reputation have one drop of American blood in their veins.”
Which of course brings up the Aurora, the editor of which is desirous of assuring the public that his contributors are all native Americans.
But this is, perhaps, enough for our purpose, in showing the acrimonious feelings which existed at the period. Suffice it to say that any person who defended George Washington was certain of getting the foulest abuse from his opponents; whilst the idea of a discharged British non-commissioned officer entering the lists was not to be borne. As one correspondent of the democratic newspaper said, “While I am a friend to the unlimited freedom of the press, when exercised by an American, I am an implacable foe to its prostitution to a foreigner, and would at any time assist in hunting out of society any meddling foreigner who should dare to interfere in our politics.” These writers, however, did not allow their principles to govern them so far, that they could deny themselves the duty of interfering in foreign politics, especially those of England. Rounds of abuse follow, from day to day, upon everything that is not revolutionary and anti-monarchical. As for Mr. Pitt’s new notion of uniting Ireland with Great Britain, a more “atrocious and diabolical project” never entered the mind of man.
Peter Porcupine, however, stands all this with calm audacity. The advertisements of his new business appear in the Gazette of the United States; and he announces,—among “New Drawing Books from the Best Masters,” Watson’s “Apology for the Bible,” &c.,—“The Blue Shop,” “The Impostor Detected;” besides a full supply of all “the Grub-street pamphlets vomited forth from the lungs of filth and falsehood against Peter Porcupine.” And this game was carried on, more or less, for a month or two longer; but its very violence was fatal to its continuance, and the combatants seemed to get weary of throwing so much dirt at each other. At the end of September, the “Political Censor,” No. 5, was devoted, partly, to a review of some of the anonymous pamphlets[8] against Porcupine, and to a brisk rejoinder to the misrepresentations of Bradford and his son, relative to his pecuniary transactions with Cobbett. The number concluded as follows:—
“I now take leave of the Bradfords, and of all those who have written against me. People’s opinions must now be made up concerning them and me. Those who still believe the lies that have been vomited forth against me are either too stupid or too perverse to merit further attention. I will, therefore, never write another word in reply to anything that is published about myself. Bark away, hell-hounds, till you are suffocated in your own foam! Your labours are preserved, bound up together in a piece of bear-skin with the hair on, and nailed up to a post in my shop, where whoever pleases may read them gratis.”