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The Quaker city may well be the pride of the American nation. Founded by William Penn, shortly after his settlement of Pennsylvania in the year 1682, it has become, after the lapse of two centuries, the most important town in the United States. Second to New York only in the matter of population, it is, at present, the first manufacturing city in the whole country; whilst it has long held supremacy as the centre of literary and philosophical activity. In the centenary year of 1876, Philadelphia possessed no less than 146 daily and weekly newspapers, and twenty public libraries: no bad sign of the state of intellectual advancement of a town containing about seven hundred thousand inhabitants. The population consists largely of members of the Society of Friends, or of their descendants; but there is always a considerable foreign element in the city: the Irish numbering about one-seventh, the Germans one-thirteenth, and the English one-thirtieth. There are at least 400 churches and chapels, and more than 400 public schools; and 100 hospitals and asylums.

The causes of the prosperity of Philadelphia are not difficult to be discovered. It is noticeable, that all flourishing capitals are marked by strong cosmopolitan features, with a background of national characteristic. The characteristic basis of the Pennsylvanian is his Quaker ancestry; and upon this has been grafted, in varying proportions, the religious and political notions, the manners, customs, and national prejudices, of English, Scotch, German, Irish, Welsh, Swedish, and other emigrants, ever since the middle of the last century. The capital of the state took the full-flow of this tide of immigration; further augmented during and after the war of independence, by a number of French people seeking for that peace and security which was denied them in their native land. With all these varying elements, however, the frugal, patient, industrious Quaker spirit has pervaded the place; and reduced all this complexity to some sort of harmony. Of party spirit there has, naturally, been much activity; indeed, at the period of our history, it prevailed more extensively than in almost any other town in the United States; but the cultivation of knowledge, of the useful arts, and of commercial enterprise, have been the agents in producing the prosperous and beautiful capital of Pennsylvania.

The city of Philadelphia would appear to have been the pole, one hundred years ago, which attracted alike the inquiring traveller and the political fugitive. The Abbé Raynal had collected and published, in 1770, an account of the American colonies,[1] which produced a profound sensation in Europe. It was translated into almost every European language. The literary characteristics of the book were great animation and plausibility; and, although it excited many strictures, from the political facts being largely mixed up with rhetorical allusions to the wrongs and errors of past generations, the work was, for a time, exceedingly popular, and furnished a basis for much of the cotemporary information on America. The unfortunate Jean Pierre Brissot, who was at Philadelphia in or about the year 1788, declared that Raynal had exaggerated everything; and Cobbett always qualified any allusion to the Abbé’s writings by some expression or other, to a similar effect. Brissot adds, however, his own impressions of the city, which were high enough, both with reference to the beauty of its situation and of its public buildings, and to the prosperity of its inhabitants.

An English traveller,[2] who visited the States in 1795–6, gave some curious particulars of the condition of society in Philadelphia at that period. Quakers appeared to number about one quarter of the whole population. The average Philadelphian was represented as being deficient in hospitality and politeness towards strangers:—

“Amongst the uppermost circles in Philadelphia, pride, haughtiness, and ostentation are conspicuous. … In the manners of the people in general, there is a coldness and reserve, as if they were suspicious of some designs against them, which chills to the very heart those who come to visit them. In their private societies a tristesse is apparent, near which mirth and gaiety can never approach. It is no unusual thing, in the genteelest houses, to see a large party of from twenty to thirty persons assembled, and seated round a room, without partaking of any other amusement than what arises from the conversation, most frequently in whispers, that passes between the two persons who are seated next to each other. The party meets between six and seven in the evening; tea is served with much form; and at ten, by which time most of the company are wearied with having so long remained stationary, they return to their own homes. Still, however, they are not strangers to music, cards, dancing, &c.”

Until about 1779 no public amusements were suffered in the city; but, after a few years later, Philadelphia would seem to have got a little gayer,[3] at least in the winter time—when the Congress and the State Assembly were sitting, and President Washington made his annual stay of some weeks. The President’s birthday became a special anniversary, when all the citizens (except Quakers) would make a point of paying him a visit. Concerts and public assemblies were held, and two or three theatres, even, were started. The great political revolution, in point of fact, produced a social one of quite as definite a character, even in prim Philadelphia. As concerning the manners of the lower classes, Weld records a sad deficiency: they would return impertinent answers to questions couched in the most civil terms, and would insult a person bearing the appearance of a gentleman, on purpose to show how highly they estimated the principles of liberty and equality. Hostlers and servants always appeared to be “doubtful whether they ought to do anything for you or not;” civility was not to be purchased with money; it seemed incompatible with freedom, and with the ideas which would convince a stranger that he was really in a land of liberty.

Now, Mr. William Cobbett, late of his Majesty’s 54th Regiment, had heard of this new country. His reading, hitherto, had been purely literary; but, plunged into the world of London—a novice in politics—he imbibes the then popular notions of republicanism, and is an enthusiastic admirer of the new ideas. The eloquent pages of Tom Paine—unanswerable in themselves, yet, at that day, rigorously proscribed—help to intoxicate; and, boiling with indignation (as he says) at the abuses he had witnessed, he has, indeed, become a republican. That is, a theoretical republican: for, when he soon comes to see all sides of republicanism, he reverts to his intrinsic love for the constitution under which he was born.

And to this new land of liberty he will go.

He landed in Philadelphia in October, 1792, and, for a short time, took up his residence at Wilmington, a little port[4] on a creek of the Delaware, about twenty-eight miles below Philadelphia. Here Cobbett found the very thing to give him a start in life; for the place was swarming with French emigrants, who wanted, above all things, to learn the English language. After a little time it appears that he found Philadelphia itself a better field for his energies; and, accordingly, having removed thither, he soon had as many pupils as he could attend to. This occupation was the occasion, also, which produced the “English Grammar for Frenchmen:”—

“When I afterwards came to teach the English language to French people in Philadelphia, I found that none of the grammars, then to be had, were of much use to me. I found them so defective, that I wrote down instructions and gave them to my scholars in manuscript. At the end of a few months, this became too troublesome; and these manuscript instructions assumed the shape of a grammar in print, the copyright of which I sold to Thomas Bradford,[5] a bookseller in Philadelphia, for 100 dollars (or 22l. 11s. 6d.); which grammar, under the title of Maître d’Anglais, is now in general use all over Europe.”

Cobbett seems to have held a rather qualified opinion upon this French grammar: for he elsewhere says it was “a very hasty production,” and that it was so defective that he was almost ashamed to look into it [1829]; but that it had the great merit of “clearness, and of making the learner see the reason of the rules.” Yet the book still holds its own; and it has been repeatedly reprinted in France, Belgium, &c.[6]

Besides the teaching of English to the emigrants, there was some translating done for the booksellers. The first of any importance, and which Cobbett alludes to somewhere as his “coup d’essai in the authoring way,” was the work of Von Martens on the “Law of Nations;” at that date a book of considerable authority:—

“Soon after I was married, I translated, for a bookseller in Philadelphia, a book on the Law of Nations. A member of Congress had given the original to the bookseller, wishing for him to publish a translation. The book was the work of a Mr. Martens, a German jurist, though it was written in French. I called it Martens’s Law of Nations. … I translated it for a quarter of a dollar (thirteenpence halfpenny) a page; and, as my chief business was to go out in the city to teach French people English, I made it a rule to earn a dollar while my wife was getting the breakfast in the morning, and another dollar after I came home at night, be the hour what it might; and I have earned many a dollar in this way, sitting writing in the same room where my wife and only child were in bed and asleep.”

Another task of similar character was the translation of “A Topographical and Political Description of the Spanish part of St. Domingo,” the author of which was Moreau de St. Méry,[7] one of the more distinguished of the French emigrants. This worthy man’s shop, at No. 84, South Front Street, was probably a favourite resort of the literati, as he was a person of considerable attainments, and a member of the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia; whilst the bulk of his expatriated fellow-countrymen consisted, without doubt, of a cultivated class of men. Louis Philippe and his brothers were there. Talleyrand was there for a time,[8] and Cobbett recalls the fact, many years after, of having met him in St. Méry’s house.

Several of Cobbett’s best anecdotes of Philadelphian life are associated with Frenchmen; here is one:—

“A Frenchman, who had been driven from St. Domingo to Philadelphia, by the Wilberforces of France, went to church along with me one Sunday. He had never been in a Protestant place of worship before. Upon looking round him, and seeing everybody comfortably seated, while a couple of good stoves were keeping the place as warm as a slack oven, he exclaimed, ‘Pardi! on se sert Dieu bien à son aise ici!’ ”

It need not be imagined, however, that he had no American friends. On the contrary, as we shall see in the sequel, he made some friendships that lasted through life.