Autograph letter signed : Philadelphia, to John Nichols, 1797 August 1.

Concerning his writings under the pen-name Peter Porcupine; saying "I am that identical William Cobbett (called Peter Porcupine) whose writings you have now-and-then honoured with your approbation. - I take the liberty of enclosing you a file of my Gazette for the month past, which I shall repeat at the end of every month, begging you to send me in return your useful and entertaining Magazine. - This shall, however, be optional with you. I send you my paper, because, in your hands I know it may become of use to my countrymen. - Mark well all the passages respecting the republican Britons amongst us. Depend on it, they are sunk here below even the par of rascallity and wretchedness. Few booksellers in the United States carry on that branch of business with more life than I do. If you choose, and can fall upon any arrangement, I will receive from you a few Vols. of your Mag. half yearly. If I could depend upon a regular supply, I think I could get 50 if not a hundred subscribers to the work, and this would take off a good number of your surplus dead stock. - This I must leave to yourself, Sir; but let me beg of you not to omit sending me your Mag. half yearly. I want also the 2 vols. for 1796. - I will fall upon some method of getting you the money for these things. Let me have the honor of a letter from good 'Old Sylvanus.' and please to communicate to me the mode in which I can be most useful to your excellent publication. - America is become an interesting scene. - Let me request you to pay particular attention to the humiliation we now experience on account of the weakness of our government, and to beg you to observe, that that weakness grows out of the abominable system of universal suffrage. - But, by reading the Gazette through you will choose for yourself."