[The End of the Coalition]

First published Edinburgh Saturday Post, 19 January 1828, p. 292. Reprinted Tave, pp. 277–8 (with attribution, pp. 278–9). As Stuart Tave notes, the article ‘is preliminary to the leader of the following week’ (reprinted below, pp. 244–51), which is certainly De Quincey’s (Tave, pp. 278–9). The piece also mentions an economic article in the Edinburgh Review which De Quincey discussed nine weeks earlier (see above, p. 137). Other evidence includes the subject-matter, the interest in ‘a better system of political economy’, the English rather than Scottish perspective, and the use of dashes and italics. Colloquialisms like ‘By the way’, ‘rat’ and ‘ratting’, are common in De Quincey’s prose, but less so in the prose of other journalists for the Saturday Post.