So, from this period, the Federal press began to gain upon its opponents, and one of its acknowledged leaders was Mr. William Cobbett.
The “Political Censor” was continued to the eighth number, being published monthly, excepting when interrupted by a pamphlet with some distinctive aim. One of these latter was a collection of Adet’s notes and proclamations above alluded to, under the title of “The Diplomatic Blunderbuss.” The “Censor,” besides a running commentary on the debates in Congress, was occupied by violent attacks on Tom Paine (including a reproduction of George Chalmers’s biography of that worthy), and upon the French sympathizers; one whole number being devoted to “Remarks on the Blunderbuss.”
But the tardy publication of a monthly protest against his opponents was not enough for the now full-fledged powers of Peter Porcupine. He feels his feet: he knows his strength. Friends and admirers are flocking to his shop, urging him to the fray.
The political part of the daily press which possessed the best literary talent was, in Philadelphia, mainly on the side of the Democrats; whilst many Englishmen were there, disinclined to be known as such, and none daring (except this “daring scoundrell”) to utter a word in public in defence of his native country. There must, therefore, be a daily Federal paper, of most distinctive principles, established in the camp.
Accordingly, an announcement appears, in Mr. Fenno’s Gazette of the 1st of February, 1797, as follows:—
“Proposals by William Cobbett, opposite Christ Church, Philadelphia, for publishing a newspaper, to be entitled,—
“Porcupine’s Gazette and Daily Advertiser.
“Methinks I hear the reader exclaim: ‘What! have we not gazettes enough already?’ Yes, and far too many; but those that we have are, in general, conducted in such a manner that their great number, instead of rendering mine unnecessary, is the only cause that calls for its establishment.
“The gazettes in this country have done it more real injury than all its enemies ever did, or can do. They mislead the people at home, and misrepresent them abroad. It was these vehicles of sedition and discord that encouraged the counties in the west to rebel; it was they that gave rise to the depredations of Britain, by exciting the people to such acts of violence against that nation as left no room to doubt that we were determined on war; and it was they, when an accommodation had been happily effected, that stirred up an opposition to it such as has seldom been witnessed, and which was overcome by mere chance. These gazettes it was that, by misrepresenting the dispositions of the people, encouraged the French to proceed from one degree of insolence to another, till at last their minister braves the President in his chair, and a bullying commander comes and tells us that his only business is to seize our vessels, in violation of a treaty, in virtue of which alone he claims a right to enter our ports: and it is these gazettes that now have the impudence to defend what their falsehood and malice have produced.