So, this is how it was in Philadelphia, in these lively times. The most enlightened and philosophical city in the United States was, at the same time, the hot-bed of democracy: the home of all that was aspiring in the human heart and mind. Thus, we can understand something of the feelings which animate the breast of Mr. William Cobbett, ardent Loyalist. He knows little of theoretical politics; his short experience of republicanism has only, at present, served to show him that man is little better off as the subject of a sovereign people, than as a subject of a sovereign king; provided that similar constitutional principles prevail. His recollections of Tom Paine’s animated book, and his former enthusiasm for republicanism, are--as in the minds of thousands of his cotemporaries--crushed and buried beneath the torrent of blood and tears which has been shed in France. A natural reaction has set in: his native land, with all her faults, comes back to his memory as a land of average comfort and well-being; and the thought is uppermost that, perish “liberty and equality,” if all their results are to consist in a murdered king, and in the home of his childhood desolated by the bloodthirsty apostles of progress. One of these emigrants was Mr. James Thomson Callender. His reading of English history had caused his mind to dwell, somewhat heavily, upon the underhand means which ministers and parties had used, to carry their points, during the last century. Abuses in Church and State: this is the sort of _pabulum_ for the public taste, and Mr. Callender, accordingly, undertakes to put them all into a popular form, under the title of “The Political Progress of Britain.”[10] The result is, that he is a fugitive before many weeks are over his head, and any further attacks which he has to make, upon the government of Mr. Pitt and his predecessors, must be offered from the other side of the Atlantic. The pamphlet, republished in Philadelphia, comes under the eye of our neophyte politician, and Mr. Cobbett sniffs war. The “Political progress” presented just the sort of topic which would serve as provocation: here was another villain maligning his country, and the wretch must be made an example of. Accordingly, on the 8th of January, 1795, Mr. Thomas Bradford has for sale, “A Bone to Gnaw for the Democrats;” consisting of a review of Callender’s book, followed by a still more daring attack upon the democratic press and upon the numerous clubs connected with the party.