The roguery was there, but as usual there was no intelligence to back it up and make it work. The intriguer had counted on a smooth explanation to fend off the man in whose name he was practicing on Truesdale. Instead, Joseph Weldon felt outraged when he learned what was going on, rushed down from Boston, swore that he never gave anyone any authority to act for him, and added that at the time he did not even know of Harison’s existence. After this scandal there was no place in New York for Francis Harison. Even his protector in the governor’s mansion could not save him. A Grand Jury indicted him for using Weldon’s name, whereupon he fled from the Colony in May of 1735, made his way to England, and never came back. From then on his story is virtually a blank, the last word on him being that he was down-and-out when he died. However, this melancholy denouement was in the future and unforeseen when Cosby put Harison in charge of the _Gazette_ in 1732. The new editor began to ride very high indeed, for he was in the enviable position of one who could both flatter his own side and castigate its critics with impunity since there was no rival newspaper to contradict him. With Harison in command, the administration’s mouthpiece lavished on William Cosby the adulation that he loved and could get only from a trusted henchman, interspersing at the same time quick jabs at Morris, Van Dam, Alexander, and the rest. Here is the way the _Gazette_ covered one meeting between the Governor and the Assembly: The harmony and good understanding between the several branches of the legislature—whereby nothing came to be demanded on the one side but what was for the public general good and welfare of His Majesty’s people, and everything done on the other which may recommend the honorable House to His Majesty, to his representative and to their constituents—will, we hope, continue to us all those blessings which we enjoy under a government greatly envied, and too often disturbed by such as, instead thereof, are struggling to introduce discord and public confusion.[10] The _Gazette_ resorted to verse to make its case: Cosby the mild, the happy, good and great, The strongest guard of our little state; Let malcontents in crabbed language write, And the D...h H...s belch, tho’ they cannot bite. He unconcerned will let the wretches roar, And govern just, as others did before.[11] It went to Pope’s translation of the _Odyssey_ to find a suitable description of the opposing faction: Thersites only clamored in the throng, Loquacious, loud, and turbulent of tongue, And by no shame, by no respect controlled; In scandal busy, in reproaches bold; But chief, he gloried with licentious style, To lash the great, and rulers to revile.[12]