[No News from Navarino]

First published Edinburgh Saturday Post, 10 November 1827, p. 212. Never reprinted. This brief leader appears in the usual place under the masthead, immediately before the essay entitled ‘Political Economy’ (reprinted below, pp. 124–9). It concerns the same trouble-spots that De Quincey wrote about, in his other leaders for the Post, with the same concern over ‘the treaty of July 6’, and the same healthy skepticism of rumours in the press. Other apparent signs include the sentence beginning with ‘But’, the colloquialism ‘slip out of’, and the term ‘English’, where the Scottish contributors would probably use ‘British’. The sentence beginning ‘The Grande Seignor, it seems, is still doubtful whether the Allies are seriously determined to act’ sounds De Quinceyan in its sarcasm, which is directed at both the Turkish leader, Ibrahim, and Britain and its allies. Finally, this is the only leading article in the Saturday Post which is not separated from the succeeding article by a horizontal line. The inconsistency suggests that both pieces are by the same writer. In the absence of any ‘definitive intelligence’, De Quincey may have wished to give most of his attention this Saturday to the article in the Standard which had criticized his views on political economy.