From Franklin’s representations, Bradford was a sorry individual, of low cunning, and sinister; yet I must not deal harshly with him. His, I believe, was the first printing press set up in New-York: he published the laws, and other state papers, and he was the grandfather of Bradford, afterwards Attorney-General of the United States; and as from his loins proceeded Thomas Bradford, the adventurous and patriotic publisher of Rees’s _Cyclopædia_—the most enterprising of the craft, and our greatest patron of engravers—I desire to hold him in grateful memory. Our second newspaper was the _New-York Weekly Journal_, commenced about three years after Bradford’s. John Peter Zenger, its proprietor, was a German by birth, a palatine, and something of a scholar; a man of enlarged liberality, patriotic, and an advocate of popular rights. He attacked the measures of the provincial Governor and Council, was subjected to a prosecution by the officers of the crown, and was brought to trial in 1735, when Andrew Hamilton, the Recorder of Philadelphia, came to this city and successfully defended him. I have before stated that the late illustrious Governor Morris considered the decision of that case in behalf of the press as the dawn of that liberty which subsequently revolutionized America. To the ladies now present, the lovers of sweet sounds, it may not be uninteresting to know that the first piano forte (harpsichord) imported into America, arrived in this city for the musical gratification of the family of the noble Zenger. But I can say at this time little concerning newspapers. Our worthy associate in good works, Edwin Williams, has lately issued a memoir of much value on the subject, to which I must refer you. I regret that his catalogue of early journals is somewhat defective. As he justly observes, our Historical Society is wonderfully rich in these interesting documents. Our most precious treasures in that way are, unquestionably, the Rivington _Royal Gazette_, the old _New-York Daily Advertiser_, containing debates on the State Constitution, the _American Citizen and Republican Watch Tower_, the _New-York Evening Post_, and the _Commercial Advertiser_, through a long series, the _New-York American_, the _Independent Reflector_, containing the patriotic Essays on Toleration, by William Livingston, of New Jersey, and the _Time-Piece of New-York_, replete with invective against the Washington Administration—whose editor, Philip Freneau, verbally assured me that its most vituperative features were from suggestions of Jefferson, during the crisis in our public affairs provoked by Citizen Genet. But I must hasten to other topics.