"At no period of time, in no era of important events from the first establishment of social government, have the liberties of man, have the rights even of human nature, been more deeply interested than at the time in which we presume to address you. While Liberty, the noblest ornament of society, and without which no community can be well organized, seemed to pine and sicken under the trammels of despotic restraint in every one of the ancient nations of the earth, it fairly promises to resume its pristine majesty here, and the new world begins to emerge from the fangs and tyranny of the old.... One of the first sources of her decline in those countries where she last resided spring from the wanton and unhallowed restraints which the jealous arm of despotism hath imposed on the freedom of the press.... "That freemen may be made acquainted with the real state of their affairs, and that the characters of their public servants, both individually and collectively, be made manifest, is our object. With this patriotic view, and under the tutelage of law and the constitution, has the subscriber opened a Free Press, universally free to every citizen indiscriminately, whose principles coincide with those of the Revolution, and whose object is confessedly known to point at public or private good." From this time until June, 1784, Freneau resided principally in Philadelphia, and edited the journal. During all of this time his muse was exceedingly active. He followed carefully the last years of the war, and put into satiric verse every movement of the "insolent foe." He sang the victory of Jones, and mourned in plaintive numbers the dead at Eutaw Springs. He voiced his indignation over the destructive career of Cornwallis, and burst into a _Laus Deo_ at his fall. The ludicrous plight of Rivington and Gaine, the distress of the Tories, and the final departure of the British filled him with glee, which he poured out in song after song. It was his most prolific and spontaneous period. He wrote, too, an abundance of prose. The series of graceful papers entitled "The Pilgrim" is from his pen, besides many a political study and literary sketch signed with a sounding name. Everywhere are manifest his love of true literature and his desire to lead a merely literary life, but here and there are notes of discouragement. "Barbers cannot possibly exist as such," he writes, "among a people who have neither hair nor beards. How, then, can a poet hope for success in a city where there are not three persons possessed of elegant ideas?"