ia Weekly Mercury_ of October
30, 1740, is the announcement of a prospective magazine to be edited by
John Webbe and printed by Andrew Bradford, to be issued monthly, to
contain four sheets, and to cost twelve shillings Pennsylvania money a
year. The magazine, it was promised, should contain speeches of
governors, addresses and answers of assemblies, their resolutions and
debates, extracts of laws, with the reasons on which they were founded
and the grievances intended to be remedied by them; accounts of the
climate, soil, productions, trade and manufactures of all the British
plantations, the constitutions of the several colonies with their
respective views and interests; of remarkable trials, civil and
criminal; of the course of exchange and the proportion between sterling
and the several paper currencies, and the price of goods in the
principal trading marts of the plantations. One thing only the new
magazine should not contain: its pages should never be smeared by
falsehood, nor sullied by defamatory libelling.

In the _Pennsylvania Gazette_ of November 13, 1740, Franklin announced a
monthly magazine to be called _The General Magazine and Historical
Chronicle for all the British Plantations in America_. The price was to
be nine-pence Pennsylvania money, with considerable allowance to shopmen
who should take quantities. The brevity of Franklin's advertisement is
in strong contrast to the learned length of Webbe's pedantic prospectus.
He claims that the idea of the magazine had long been in his mind, and
that Webbe had stolen his plans. Before he had divulged the scheme to
Webbe he had proceeded so far in the matter as to choose his writers and
to buy his small type.

Webbe wrote a wrathful reply in the _Mercury_ of November 13, and
continued it under the title of "The Detection" through three numbers.
He admitted that Franklin did communicate to him his desire to print a
magazine, and asked him to compose it. But this did not restrain him
from publishing at any other press without Mr. Franklin's leave. In the
third number of "The Detection," Webbe accused Franklin of using his
place of Postmaster to shut the _Mercury_ out of the post, and of
refusing to allow the riders to carry it. Up to this point Franklin had
made no reply to Webbe's abuse, but upon this new attack he dropped the
advertisement of the magazine and put a letter in its stead in the
_Gazette_ of December 11. He acknowledged it to be true that the rid