efore in New
Brunswick. But his liberty was threatened in consequence of his bringing
a charge of peculation against certain officers in his old regiment, and
he went over to France in March, where he studied the language and
literature. In his absence, the inquiry into his charges ended in an
acquittal.

In September he crossed to the United States, and supported himself at
Wilmington, Delaware, by teaching English to French emigrants. Among
these was Talleyrand, who employed him, according to Cobbett's story,
not because he was ignorant of English, but because he wished to
purchase his pen. Cobbett made his first literary sensation by his
_Observations on the Emigration of a Martyr to the Cause of Liberty_, a
clever retort on Dr Priestley, who had just landed in America
complaining of the treatment he had received in England. This pamphlet
was followed by a number of papers, signed "Peter Porcupine," and
entitled _Prospect from the Congress Gallery_, the _Political Censor_
and the _Porcupine's Gazette_. In the spring of 1796, having quarrelled
with his publisher, he set up in Philadelphia as bookseller and
publisher of his own works. On the day of opening, his windows were
filled with prints of the most extravagant of the French Revolutionists
and of the founders of the American Republic placed side by side, along
with portraits of George III., the British ministers, and any one else
he could find likely to be obnoxious to the people; and he continued to
pour forth praises of Great Britain and scorn of the institutions of the
United States, with special abuse of the French party. Abuse and threats
were of course in turn showered upon him, and in August 1797, for one of
his attacks on Spain, he was prosecuted, though unsuccessfully, by the
Spanish ambassador. Immediately on this he was taken up for libels upon
American statesmen, and bound in recognizances to the amount of $4000,
and shortly after he was prosecuted a third time for saying that Dr
Benjamin Rush, who was much addicted to blood-letting, killed nearly all
the patients he attended. The trial was repeatedly deferred, and was not
settled till the end of 1799, when he was fined $5000. After this last
misfortune, for a few months Cobbett carried on a newspaper called the
_Rushlight_; but in June 1800 he set sail for England.

At home he found himself regarded as the champion of order and monarchy.
Windham invited him to dinner, introduced him to Pitt, and begg