William Cobbett, Proto-Blogger:

I just ran across a fascinating pamphlet by William Cobbett (also known as Peter Porcupine), an indefatigable newspaperman, commentator, and occasional politician of late 1700s and early 1800s England and America. The pamphlet discussed at some length his prosecution in Pennsylvania for supposedly libeling the King of Spain and the Spanish Ambassador; and something about its style reminds me of some aspects of modern blogging. Perhaps it’s the fisking of Judge McKean’s grand jury charge; perhaps it’s the nom de plume “Peter Porcupine”; but perhaps it’s that the discussion of the bill of indictment struck me as quite similar to how bloggers speak about the nastygrams they sometimes receive from lawyers. Cobbett quotes the bill of indictment (which the grand jury refused to sign) in its entirety, and then adds:

This Bill of Indictment, however insignificant it may be in itself, has already made considerable noise in the world, and it will yet make a great deal more. Papers of this sort generally travel from the court to the clerk’s office, and there they lodge in eternal sleep. But this Bill is certainly destined to another fate. Neptune will lend his waves and Aeolus his winds to conduct it over the deep. It will see climes that the inventors of it never saw, nor ever will see. Little did they imagine, that they were becoming authors, and authors of such celebrity too, as if it please God, I will render them.

Quote that next time you want to thumb your nose at your target’s lawyers.

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