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work was sold, I asked him for an account of it, which he brought me in writing, and in which my half of the profits was stated at one shilling and seven pence halfpenny, or, about twenty-one cents.-Now, nothing posterior to this could possibly diminish the barefacedness of the transaction. I did not actually receive the twenty-one cents; I threw the paper from me with disdain; nor did I ever receive a farthing for the publication in question from that day to this.

I now take leave of the Bradfords, and of all those who have written against me. Peoples opinions must now be made up concerning them and me. Those who still believe the lies that have been vomited forth against me are either too stupid or too perverse to merit further attention. I will, therefore, never write another word in reply to any thing that is published about myself. Bark away, hellhounds, till you are suffocated in your own foam. Your labours are preserved, bound up together in a piece of bear-skin, with the hair on, and nailed up to a post in my shop, where whoever pleases may read them gratis.

END OF THE CENSOR. NO. V.

THE

GROS MOUSQUETON DIPLOMATIQUE;

OR

DIPLOMATIC

BLUNDERBUSS.

CONTAINING,

CITIZEN ADET'S NOTES TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE.

AS ALSO HIS

COCKADE PROCLAMATION.

WITH A

PREFACE.

PREFACE.

WHEN we see an unprincipled, shameless bully, "A dog in forehead, and in heart a deer," who endeavours, by means of a big look, a threatening aspect, and a thundering voice, to terrify peaceable men into a compliance with what he has neither a right to demand, nor power nor courage to enforce, and who, at the same time, acts in such a bungling, stupid manner, as to excite ridicule and contempt in place of fear; when we see such a gasconading, impudent bluff as this (and that we do every day), we call him a Blunderbuss. But, the reader will not, I hope, have conceived me so devoid of all decency and prudence, as to imagine, even for a moment, that it is in this degrading sense that the name of Blunderbuss has been given to the invaluable collection which I here present to the public. Indeed, it is so evident that I could mean no such thing, that this declaration seems hardly necessary; but, as my poor old grandmother used to say, "a burnt child dreads the fire," and after the unrelenting severities of misconception and misconstruction, that a humane and commiserating public have so often seen me endure, they will think it very natural for me to fear, that what I really intended as a compliment, would, if left unexplained,

unexplained, be tortured into insult and abuse, if not into the horrid crime of lèze-republicanism, at the very idea of which my hair stands on end, and my heart dies within me.

"But," cry the Democrats, "in what sense, "then, do you apply the word Blunderbuss? "Come, come, Mr. Peter, none of your shuffling."

-Silence, you yelping devils; go, growl in your dark kennel; slink into your straw, and leave me to my reader: I'll warrant I explain myself to his satisfaction.

Writings of a hostile nature are often metaphorically expressed, in proportion to the noise they make, by different instruments that act by explosion. Thus it is, for instance, that an impotent lampoon is called a Popgun; and that a biting paragraph or epigram, confined to a small circle, is termed a Squib; and thus it is, that, rising in due progression, the collection of CITIZEN ADET'S Notes and Cockade Proclamation is denominated a Blunderbuss, a species of fire arms that exceeds all others, manageable by a single hand, in the noise of its discharge.

If we pursue the metaphor, we shall find the application still more strikingly happy. The first Note is a kind of preparative for the Cockade Proclamation, and this latter adjusts matters for the grand explosion; or, in the military style

Make reddy!

Present!

Fire!

To be sure we are not dead, but this circumstance, instead of mutilating my metaphor, renders it complete; for of all the long list of fire arms, none is so difficult to adjust, or makes so much

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