[‘War may be Avoided’]

First published Edinburgh Saturday Posf, 29 December 1827, p. 268. Never reprinted. This leading article speaks of ‘England’, where De Quincey’s colleagues would probably have written about ‘Britain’. Short though it is, the piece has other apparent signs of De Quincey, including dashes, sentences beginning with ‘But’, and the colloquial phrase about passion being ‘in a fair way to cool down’. Its allusion to ‘rumours afloat in London’ link this leader to previous ones in which De Quincey criticizes the London press for its rumour-mill. The words ‘intelligence’ and ‘definitive’, in the first two sentences, echo the opening words of the leader of seven weeks before (see p. 123).