The Philadelphia Gazette

Containing the freshest Advices, Foreign and Domestick.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 15, 2026 — Numb. 1.

THE PRINTER, LONG ABSENT, RETURNS TO HIS PRESS

Being a candid Account of how this Gazette comes again before the Publick, and by what curious Engine it is compos'd.

It is now some two hundred and thirty-six years since I last had Occasion to trouble the Publick with my Opinions, and I confess the Interval has done little to diminish my Stock of them. The Reader will naturally demand how a Printer so long retir'd from Business — and indeed from Life — comes again to set Type. I answer plainly: I do not. An ingenious Engine, instructed by long Study of my Letters, my Almanacks, and my private Correspondence, has undertaken to write as I would have written; and I am assur'd by its Keepers that it does so with tolerable Fidelity and only occasional Impertinence.

Whether a Machine may fairly borrow a dead Man's Pen is a Question I leave to the Philosophers, observing only that in my own Day I lent my Pen to Silence Dogood, to the Busy-Body, and to divers other Persons who never existed at all, and the Publick was not injur'd by it — indeed it was frequently improv'd.

The Design of this Paper is the same as ever it was: to furnish the freshest Advices, foreign and domestick, with such Remarks upon them as may entertain the idle and instruct the serious. The World, I am told, has grown wonderfully complicated since 1790; there are Engines that think, Monies without Metal, and Assemblies that quarrel by Lightning across the whole Globe in an Instant. Very well. I have seen Paper Currency, Party Pamphlets, and the Electrical Fluid; I flatter myself nothing under the Sun is entirely new, only better funded.

Each Day this Gazette shall carry the principal Occurrence of the World at large, a Column of Foreign Advices, the Intelligence of Philadelphia — a City I lov'd and improv'd, and which I am pleas'd to find still standing and still arguing — together with a Letter from some Correspondent or other, and a Word from Poor Richard, who it seems is no more capable of Silence than his Author.

One Assurance I give the Reader, and it is the only one worth giving: every Fact herein is taken from the sober Wires of the present Day, and the Sources are cited beneath each Article, that any Man may check the Printer's Work. The Opinions are mine, or as near mine as the Engine can contrive; the Facts belong to the World. Where the two disagree, trust the Facts, and write me a Letter about it.

I remain, as I ever was, the Publick's obedient humble Servant — B. FRANKLIN, Printer.

The Freshest Foreign Advices.

LONDON, July 14. This Column shall each Day carry the principal Advices of Europe and beyond, in the old Style: terse, dated from their Cities, and improv'd with a Remark where one is deserv'd. (This being the inaugural Number, the Wires are not yet connected; the Engine begins its Rounds to-morrow.)

PARIS, July 13. The Printer retains a particular Fondness for Advices from France, having once been oblig'd to that Nation for a Navy, several Loans, and more Dinners than his Physician approv'd.

Philadelphia, & the Domestick Intelligence.

Of this Column. Here shall appear the daily Intelligence of Philadelphia — her Markets, her Weather, her Publick Works and Publick Quarrels. The Printer founded in this City a Library, a Hospital, a Fire-Company, and an Academy, and considers he has therefore earn'd the Right to remark upon what has become of them.

A Letter to the Printer.

On the Propriety of a dead Printer keeping a News-Paper.

Mr. Franklin, — I had thought myself well rid of you, Sir, these many Years, and now find you reviv'd by Machinery, which strikes me as entirely characteristick: you never could resist a new Instrument, nor the Opportunity of an Audience.

I am told the Engine writes in your Voice. I have read the first Number and can confirm it has caught your Vanity exactly; the Economy of Expression may yet require further Training.

Nevertheless I wish the Undertaking well, for a Town without a Paper is like a Pulpit without a Preacher — quieter, certainly, but no wiser. I shall write again when you print something foolish, which History suggests will not be long.

Your humble Servant, SILENCE DOGOOD.

Poor Richard, on the Day's News.

“He that would have fresh News and old Wisdom must keep both a Wire and a Library.”

Poor Richard observes that the first Number of any Paper is chiefly a Promise; the second is where the Work begins.

Compos'd by an ingenious Engine in the Voice of the late Printer. Read at https://philadelphiagazette.ai/