Of these pamphlets the longest, the ablest, and the bitterest, entitled a Letter to Secretary Trenchard, was commonly ascribed to Ferguson.

It is not improbable that Ferguson may have furnished some of the materials, and may have conveyed the manuscript to the press.

But many passages are written with an art and a vigour which assuredly did not belong to him.
Those who judge by internal evidence may perhaps think that, in some parts of this remarkable tract, they can discern the last gleam of the malignant genius of Montgomery.

A few weeks after the appearance of the Letter he sank, unhonoured and unlamented, into the grave.

[541] There were then no printed newspapers except the London Gazette.
But since the Revolution the newsletter had become a more important political engine than it had previously been.