Art. 1. The Republican Judge, or the American Liberty of the Press, as exhibited, explained, and exposed, in the base and partial Prosecution of William Cobbett, for a pretended Libel against the King of Spain and his Embassador, before the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. With an Address to the People of England.
By Peter Porcupine. 8vo., pp. 96. Price 2s. Wright, London.
The past writings of Mr. William Cobbett, who has assumed the appellation of Peter Porcupine, are too well known in England to require any explanation from us, either of their tendency, or of the author’s principles. Were any doubt entertained on the subject, nothing more would be requisite to dispel it than a mere reference to the comments of all the Jacobin Reviewers; who have, without exception, in defiance alike of decency and of truth, lavished on them the most indiscriminate censure and the most scurrilous abuse. Strange as it may appear, it is indisputably true that the individual exertions of Mr. Cobbett have more essentially contributed to give a proper tone to the public spirit in America than all the efforts of the well-disposed part of the native Americans: for a considerable length of time he combated alone a host of foes, “himself a host”; stemmed the impetuous tide of democracy; and checked the irruptions of French anarchy and atheism, which threatened to overwhelm the American States, and, with the ruins of their confliction, to crush everything for which the Americans, at the period of their revolution, professed to fight, and which they have ever since professed to cherish. The adoption of such a line of conduct was alone sufficient to draw down upon our author the vengeance of all whose treasonable designs his manly efforts were intended to defeat. Accordingly, nothing was spared by the infuriated advocates of anarchy to injure him in the public mind, and, by blasting his reputation, to deprive him of that credit which was indispensably necessary to secure the success of his works. No imputation however base, no lie however atrocious, none of those black and diabolical arts, in short, which, issuing from the bubbling cauldron of democracy, were so skilfully employed to blacken the first and fairest character in France, as a necessary prelude to the establishment of the virtuous republic of the Great Nation, were neglected in the glorious attempt to achieve the ruin of this worthy individual. When these were found to fail of producing the desired effect, recourse was had to personal threats—the coward’s weapon—with the hope of inducing him, by the means of intimidation, to quit a country in which his enemies endeavoured to convince him that his life was daily exposed to most imminent danger. But neither the dread of calumny, nor the fear of assassination, could lead the object of their persecution to forego his laudable design. He manfully persevered, and has at length, though not without infinite difficulty, succeeded in opening the eyes of the Americans to their own interest, and in the infamous machinations of France, and of American traitors in the pay of France—for England is not the ONLY country in which foreign gold is employed as a stimulus to domestic treason.[[330]] In the course of his exertions to produce this desirable end, honest Peter had occasion to comment on the pusillanimous conduct of the Spanish monarch, in bending the knee to, and forming an alliance with, the base plunderers and assassins of his family, and on the insidious and criminal efforts of the Spanish ambassador to strengthen the hands of the French faction in America. These comments, it seems, excited the indignation of Don Carlos Martinez de Trojo, who determined to bring the author to condign punishment; and it was the very unwarrantable conduct which the latter experienced on the occasion that gave rise to the publication before us.
Peter begins his tract by stating the dangers to which he knew himself exposed, on account of his political principles, when he established his residence in the state of Pennsylvania, “where the government, generally speaking, was in the hands of those who had (and sometimes with great indecency) manifested an uniform partiality for the sans-culotte French, and as uniform an opposition to the ministers and measures of the federal government”. That men should ever be placed in situations of trust and importance, whose principles are avowedly adverse to the constitution whence they derive their subsistence, and which it is their bounden duty to protect, is a circumstance that would excite universal astonishment if it did not, unhappily, so often occur. Still the frequency of its occurrence does not alter its nature, nor should it be allowed to diminish that ample portion of censure which must ever attach to the authors of such appointments. It is such conduct as this that justifies one of the wisest observations that ever fell from the pen of Voltaire—“A GOVERNMENT CAN ONLY PERISH BY SUICIDE”—an observation confirmed by the fate of every country that has been recently reduced beneath the iron yoke of republican France.
Aware of his danger, our author thought the best means of averting it was, by seeking for some standard, as a safe rule for his conduct in respect to the liberty of this press. “The English press was said to be enslaved; but, when I came to consult the practice of this enslaved press, I found it still to be far too free for me to attempt to follow its example. Finally, it appeared to me to be the safest way, to form to myself some rule founded on the liberty exercised by the American press. I concluded that I might without danger go as great lengths in attacking the enemies of the country as others went in attacking its friends: that as much zeal might be shown in defending the general government and administration as in accusing and traducing them: and that as great warmth would be admissible in the cause of virtue, order, and religion, as had been tolerated in the wicked cause of villainy, insurrection, and blasphemy” (p. [21]). Alas! Peter, at this time, knew but little of the “spirit and temper,” as Mr. Barrister Erskine would express it, of democracy and Jacobinism. He knew not that the men who profess those principles are for the most part vindictive, malignant, oppressive, and intolerant; and that under the mask of liberty they exercise the most insupportable tyranny over their families and dependents, and that in their general conduct to their inferiors—unless when impelled by interest or urged by ambition, they irritate their passions with toasts and flattery, from a tavern-chair, or influence their minds by seditious discourses and treasonable insinuations, from a tribune or a scaffold—they are supercilious, arrogant, insolent, and overbearing. He knew not, it would seem, that those whose whole duty is to defend the laws often sleep on their posts, while their enemies are ever vigilant, active, and alert; that when the former are attacked, a tardiness of zeal, amounting nearly to torpor, secures, with few exceptions, impunity to the assailant; whereas any exposure of the latter draws forth a malignity of revenge which is the certain fore-runner of persecution. Indeed, the inveteracy of the discontented, of that class which includes all those who aspire to the possession of place and power, and are little scrupulous about the means of attaining them; and all the determined revolutionists or subverters of established institutions, may be traced to a natural source. Unable to support by reason a cause which reason disavows, unable to strengthen by arguments positions which set all argument at defiance, it becomes their business to inflame by passion and to dazzle with sophistry. Hence arises an extreme facility of exposing their weakness and detecting their infamy, and not having the means of resisting such exposure, being wholly destitute of the sentiments which are necessary for a successful reply, they are reduced to the degrading alternative of abandoning the field to a triumphant adversary, or of seeking, by the adoption of violent measures, to punish the opponent whom they did not dare to encounter. This it is that renders revenge an active principle in their minds.
The first step taken by the Spanish ambassador was an application to the federal government to prosecute our author “for certain matters published in his Gazette against himself and that poor, unfortunate, and humbled mortal, Charles IV., King of Spain”. The government consented, and Peter was accordingly bound over to appear in the federal district court before Judge Peters. Don Carlos, however, soon found that his prosecution would be more likely to succeed, if brought in a district where the defendant had more personal enemies, and where the people were more generally disposed to the adoption of revolutionary principles. A memorial was, accordingly, “delivered in to the federal government, requesting that the trial might come on before the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, of which Court McKean is Chief Justice”. Of this republican Judge our author gives such an account as must convey to English minds a strange idea of the administration of republican Justice. It is to be found in P. [22]—When Britons contemplate the character here delineated, and contrast it with the characters of their own Judges to which even the licentious tongue of faction has not dared to impute the smallest stain, their bosoms must glow with satisfaction of the most exalted kind; they must exult in the superior excellence of that form of government and of those laws which effectually secure them from the evils of a vicious, corrupt, or partial distribution of justice. After giving an historical detail of the proceedings against him, accompanied by copies of the warrant to apprehend him, the imputed libels, the bill of indictment, and the Judge’s charge, Peter exclaims—“This, when it comes to be served up in Britain, will be a dish for a king. The royalists will lick their lips, and the republicans will cry, God bless us! The emigrations for liberty’s sake will cease, and we shall have nothing but the pure unadulterated dregs of Newgate and the Fleet, the candidates for Tyburn and Botany Bay—Blessed cargo! All patriots to the backbone: true philanthropists and universal citizens: fit for any place but England in this world and heaven in the next!”
But, notwithstanding the Judge’s charge, the most partial and scandalous charge, we conceive, that ever was delivered out of France, the Grand Jury refused to find the bill, and the prosecution of course ceased. The Judge, not less disappointed than the prosecutor, on this occasion, took an early opportunity—to his infamy be it recorded!—of declaring from the Bench that the Grand Jury would not do their duty. What would the disaffected in this country say were any British Judge to use such language? The gross imputations cast upon the character of our author by this impartial Judge, have extorted from Peter a tribute of justice to himself which the occasion most amply justifies. As the account here given perfectly accords with all the information we have received from persons of undoubted veracity who know him well, and as it fully corroborates the opinion we ourselves have formed of him, from an attentive perusal of his publications, we shall extract it for the satisfaction of our readers:—“It hardly ever becomes a man to say much of his private character or concerns; but on this occasion I trust I shall be indulged for a moment. I will say, and I will make that saying good, whosoever shall oppose it, that I never attacked any one, whose private character is not, in every light in which it can possibly be viewed as far beneath mine as infamy is beneath honour. Nay, I defy the city of Philadelphia, populous as it is, and respectable as are many of its inhabitants, to produce me a single man who is more sober, industrious, or honest; who is a kinder husband, a tenderer father, a better master, a fonder friend, or (though last not least) a more zealous and faithful subject.
“Most certainly it is unseemly in any one to say this much of himself unless compelled to it by some public outrage on his character; but when the accusation is made notorious so ought the defence; and I do again and again repeat, that I fear not a comparison between my character and that of any man in this city: no, not even with that of the very Judge, who held me as the worst of miscreants. His Honour is welcome, if he please, to carry this comparison into all the actions of our lives, public and domestic, and to extend it beyond ourselves to every branch of our families.
“As to my writing, I never did slander any one, if the promulgation of useful truths be not slander. Innocence and virtue I have often endeavoured to defend, but I never defamed either. I have, indeed, stripped the close-drawn veil of hypocrisy; I have ridiculed the follies, and lashed the vices of thousands, and have done it sometimes perhaps with a rude and violent hand. But these are not the days for gentleness and mercy. Such as is the temper of the foe, such must be that of his opponent. Seeing myself published as a rogue, and my wife a whore; being persecuted with such infamous, such base and hellish calumny in the philanthropic city of Philadelphia, merely for asserting the truth respecting others, was not calculated, I assure you, to sweeten my temper, and turn my ink into honey-dew.
“My attachment to order and good government, nothing but the impudence of Jacobinism can deny. The object not only of my own publications, but also of all those which I have introduced or encouraged, from the first moment that I appeared on the public scene to the present day, has been to lend some aid in stemming the torrent of anarchy and confusion. To undeceive the misguided, by tearing the mask from the artful and ferocious villains who owing to the infatuation of the poor, and the supineness of the rich, have made such fearful progress in the destruction of all that is amiable and good and sacred among men. To the government of this country in particular it has been my constant study to yield all the support in my power. When that government, or the worthy men who administer it have been traduced and vilified, I have stood forward in their defence, and that too, in times when its friends were some of them locked up in silence, and others giving way to the audacious violence of its foes. Not that I am so foolishly vain as to attribute to my illiterate voter a thousandth part of the merit my friends are inclined to allow it. As I wrote the other day to a gentleman who had paid me some compliments on this score, ‘I should never look on my family with a dry eye if I did not hope to outlive my works’. They are mere transitory beings to which the revolutionary storm has given life, and which with that storm will expire. But, what I contend for and what nobody can deny, I have done all that laid in my power, all that I was able by any means to accomplish in order to counteract the nefarious effects of the enemies of the American government and nation.