The unmistakable success which had attended the publication of “Mr. Windham’s Gazette” (as the _Register_ was nicknamed) soon made a revolution in Cobbett’s plans for the future. It had been his cherished thought to resume a semi-rural life, visiting London once or twice a week, in the case of being enabled to relinquish the bookselling business. It was not until 1805 that a permanent removal was made out of London; meanwhile, however, the shop in Pall Mall had long been relinquished. In March, 1803 (according to a notification in the _Register_), it appears that Mr. Harding had just taken the business over,[1] whilst John Morgan had also returned to Philadelphia to recommence bookselling there. Besides the ordinary trade, the firm had produced the long-promised “Selections from Porcupine’s Works,” issued in May, 1801, and dedicated to John Reeves. The list of subscribers, printed in the first volume, includes the Royal Princes, the chief supporters of Government, and about 750 other names in England and America. A second edition of his translation of Martens’ “Law of Nations” was also published in June, 1802, with the treaties brought down to the current date. It is pretty certain, therefore, that the business in Pall Mall was a flourishing concern. Among other labours, independent of the _Register_, were, a translation of “L’Empire Germanique,” a tract of the period,[2] accompanied by a memoir on the political and military state of Europe; and a reproduction of the “English Grammar for Frenchmen.” And, as though he were not yet fully occupied, Mr. Cobbett must needs undertake one more grand scheme. This was nothing less than a plan for publishing the parliamentary debates. The inadequacy of the existing reports had long since attracted Mr. Cobbett’s notice, and he had endeavoured to supply the need by printing the bulk of the debates in the early supplements to the _Political Register_. At last, toward the close of the year 1803, he resolved to issue, periodically, full and accurate reports, giving as his reason that the debates, “as at present communicated to the world, reflect very little credit on the nation.” Accordingly, on the 3rd of December, 1803, appeared the first number, price one shilling, of “Cobbett’s Parliamentary Debates.”[3] The person who was selected as reporter and editor was a man very well qualified for the task--no other than Mr. John Wright, formerly bookseller in Piccadilly. He had failed in 1801, and his bankruptcy was attributed by Cobbett, partly to taking “more delight in reading of books than in selling of them,” and partly to “the misfortune of being bookseller to Messrs. Canning, Frere, Ellis, and the other Anti-Jacobins, by whose works, though such a puffing was made over them, he lost many hundreds of pounds.”… “Seeing him once more ready to begin the world afresh, I proposed to him the editing of the parliamentary debates, of which we have now [1810] continued the publication since the year 1803.”