note signed a petition for a pardon, which Bryant indignantly opposed, but Gov. Seward granted it. Chief among the _Courier’s_ morning rivals was the _Journal of Commerce_, founded in 1827 as an advocate of the introduction of religion into business affairs, which went into the hands of David Hale and Gerard Hallock after the abolitionist silk merchant, Tappan, gave it up. It refused to advertise theaters and other amusement-places, and was considered a little fanatical, but it showed extraordinary enterprise for that day in news-gathering. In 1828 it stationed a swift craft off Sandy Hook to intercept incoming ships and bring the first European news up the harbor, and it subsequently arranged a relay of fast horses from Philadelphia to bring the Congressional debates a day in advance of its competitors. Webb followed the example, extending the pony relay to Washington, and spending from $15,000 to $20,000 a year on his clipper boats. Some episodes of this rivalry are amusing. After the fall of Warsaw in the Polish war, the _Courier and Enquirer_, to punish its competitors for news-stealing, printed a small edition denying--upon the strength of dispatches by the ship _Ajax_--the reported fall, and saw that copies reached the doorstep of all morning journals. There was no such arrival as the _Ajax_. Several newspapers reprinted the bogus news without credit, the _Journal of Commerce_ doing so in its country but not its city edition; and great was the _Courier’s_ sarcastic glee. Though Webb was too explosive, too dissipated, and too slender in ability to be a great editor, he had the money to obtain able lieutenants. One was the Jewish journalist M. M. Noah, who had edited the _National Advocate_ in Coleman’s day, and written patriotic dramas. In 1825, conceiving that the time had come for the “restoration of the Jews,” Noah had appeared at Grand Island, near Buffalo, in the insignia of one of the Hebrew monarchs, and dedicated it as the future Jerusalem and capital of the Jewish nation, calling it Ararat in honor of the original Noah. Disillusioned in this project, Noah bought a share in the _Courier_ in 1831, and in 1832 resigned it. Another worker on the _Courier_ was Charles King; James K. Paulding contributed; and in the forties it obtained Henry J. Raymond’s services. But the most notable of its writers when the year 1829 ended was a smart young Scotchman named James Gordon Bennett, who, after knocking about from Boston to Charleston in various employments--he had even essayed to open a commercial school in New York--had made a shining success in 1828 as Washington correspondent for Webb.