of their constituents or plotting to enslave them, had projected to
disarm them, and given orders for that purpose; and, finally, that
your President, the unanimous joint choice of the Council and
Assembly, is 'an old rogue, who gave his assent to the Federal
Constitution merely to avoid refunding money he had purloined from
the United States.' There is, indeed, a good deal of man's
inconsistency in all this, and yet a stranger, seeing it in our own
prints, though he does not believe it all, may probably believe
enough of it to conclude that Pennsylvania is peopled by a set of
the most unprincipled, wicked, rascally, and quarrelsome scoundrels
upon the face of the globe. I have sometimes, indeed, suspected
that those papers are the manufacture of foreigners among you, who
write with the view of disgracing your country, and making you
appear contemptible and detestable all the world over; but then I
wonder at the indiscretion of your printers in publishing such
writings. There is, however, one of your inconsistencies that
consoles me a little, which is that though, living, you give one
another the character of devils, dead, you are all angels. It is
delightful, when any of you die, to read what good husbands, good
fathers, good friends, good citizens, and good Christians you were,
concluding with a scrap of poetry that places you with certainty in
heaven. So that I think Pennsylvania a good country to die in,
though a very bad one to live in.'

These remarks, which Franklin makes with such powerful irony, might
apply with equal force to a similar period in the newspaper history of
any country, and most of all to that of England.

The worst features, perhaps, of these writers of _Mercuries_, were the
readiness with which they apostatized, and the systematic and unblushing