Webbe wrote a wrathful reply in the _Mercury_ of November 13, and continued it under the title of "The Detection" through three numbers. He admitted that Franklin did communicate to him his desire to print a magazine, and asked him to compose it. But this did not restrain him from publishing at any other press without Mr. Franklin's leave. In the third number of "The Detection," Webbe accused Franklin of using his place of Postmaster to shut the _Mercury_ out of the post, and of refusing to allow the riders to carry it. Up to this point Franklin had made no reply to Webbe's abuse, but upon this new attack he dropped the advertisement of the magazine and put a letter in its stead in the _Gazette_ of December 11. He acknowledged it to be true that the riders did not carry Bradford's _Mercury_, but explained that the Postmaster-General, Colonel Spotswood, had forbidden it because Mr. Bradford had refused to settle his accounts as late Postmaster at Philadelphia. Webbe had the last word in the controversy in a reply to this letter (_Mercury_, December 18), in which he showed that Franklin had not complied with the order of Colonel Spotswood until the personal letters appeared in the _Mercury_. In January of the following year Andrew Bradford published _The American Magazine; or a Monthly View of the Political State of the British Colonies_. Three days later Franklin issued _The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle for all the British Plantations in America_. Three numbers only of Bradford's periodical appeared, and only one copy is known to exist. It is lodged in the New York Historical Society. Franklin's magazine contained parliamentary proceedings, extracts from sermons, a bit of verse of more than Franklinian foulness, rhymes eulogizing Gilbert Tennent, and a manual of arms. The title-page wore the coronet and plumes of the Prince of Wales. Franklin ridiculed his rival's magazine in doggerel verse; his own he made no mention of in his autobiography. Its publication ceased in June, 1741.