Note 288 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS; (continued 2)

It is useful to remind the public that they are often played upon in this manner by the artifices of political writers. We have observed symptoms of this deception practised at present. It is an old trick of the craft, and was greatly used at a time when the nation seemed maddened with political factions. In a pamphlet of “A View of London and Westminster, or the Town-spy,” 1725, I find this account:—“The seeming quarrel, formerly, between Mist’s Journal and the Flying Post was secretly concerted between themselves, in order to decoy the eyes of all the parties on both their papers; and the project succeeded beyond all expectation; for I have been told that the former narrowly missed getting an estate by it.”—p. 32.