“Anti-Cobbett; or, The Weekly Patriotic Register” (from the New Times), which appeared about eight times.
“The Detector; an Occasional Paper” (Hatchard). We cannot “detect” the existence of more than four such papers.
These were all on similar lines: extracts from, and references to, the days of Porcupine, spiced with transparent falsehood.
[6] “We believe it is now some five or six years since the Times journal put down the work entitled Cobbett’s Weekly Register, and sunk its author into obscurity and contempt.… Since that time we had thought that his journal had wholly dropped to the ground, some other writers, such as those of the Independent Whig and Examiner, who were more virulent and impudent than himself, having sprung up. We learned, however, lately, that Cobbett’s Register was still in existence, having crept on in obscurity for a series of years.”—Times, Nov. 14, 1816.
[7] For the context, whence these choice epithets are extracted, vide Quarterly Review, 1816-17, passim.
CHAPTER XXII.
“BETWEEN SILENCE AND A DUNGEON LAY MY ONLY CHOICE.”
When your wife, or your nurse, or your mother-in-law, utters that reproach of hers, “Ah, I told you how it would be!”—the spirit within you is not apt to be tinged with a pervading gratefulness.
Similarly, “a man is not likely to be thanked who calls attention to the vast discrepancies between the theory and practice of the Constitution” (as one of our later philosophers remarks). What with the impertinence of the thing—the implied assertion of superiority—the further implication of failure and muddle on the part of the prescriptive interpreters of the Constitution: the counsel offered by outsiders is rejected with disdain, or put down to anything but disinterested motives.