“Porcupine Revived; or, An Old Thing Made New. Being (1) An Argument against the Expediency of a War with England; (2) An Exposition of the Absurdity of sending Albert Gallatin to treat with the British. By William Cobbett, Esq.” (New York, 1813.) The editor is a Federalist, and thinks it surprising that Cobbett should have described so accurately seventeen years ago the _present_ condition of the States. “Letters on the Late War between the United States and Great Britain, &c., &c., by William Cobbett, Esq.” (New York, 1815). The preface is highly eulogistic, and forgives all Cobbett’s former wickedness. “The Pride of Britannia Humbled; or, The Queen of the Ocean Unqueen’d by the American Cock-boats, &c., &c. Illustrated and demonstrated by four Letters to Lord Liverpool, by William Cobbett, Esq.” (Philadelphia, 1815). This editor is also very magnanimous. It was a marked characteristic of the estimates formed by Cobbett’s cotemporaries that the party, or the set, which he for the time being appeared to support, readily overlooked his former opinions and so-called “inconsistencies.” This applies to London, as well as to Philadelphia. Never was a man so readily forgiven. Envy alone was his enduring enemy, as it always is to great abilities and to superior personal character. [2] We get a glimpse of home over this incident:--“The youngest asked where Albany was. He ran to the map. And then the little pamphlet from Boston; they looked into it; they saw the same thing which they had, one or the other of them, written at my dictation only a few months before. Who would barter such pleasures for all the wealth and all the titles in the world?” [3] That cruel urgency, _want of space_, forbids the insertion here of many a smart illustrative extract from Cobbett’s American writings. The following must suffice, being parts of a letter “to the people of Botley,” dated 10th November, 1818:-- “My old Neighbours,--Great as the distance between you and me is, I very often think of you, and especially when I buy _salt_, which our neighbour Warner used to sell us for 19_s._ a bushel, and which I buy here for 2_s._ 6_d._ This salt is made, you know, down somewhere by Hamble. This very salt, when brought here from England, has all the charges of freight, insurance, wharfage, steerage to pay. It pays, besides, one third of its value in duty to the American Government before it be landed here. Then, you will observe, there is the profit of the American salt merchant; and then that of the shopkeeper who sells me the salt. And, after all this, I buy that very Hampshire salt for 2_s._ 6_d._ a bushel, English measure. What a Government, then, must that of the borough-mongers be! The salt is a gift of God. It is thrown on the shore. And yet these tyrants will not suffer us to use it until we have paid them 15_s._ a bushel for liberty to use it.…