of influence which his conduct ought to have upon the public mind, to present him in the following strange predicament, in which he is placed by his answer to the Postmaster at Charleston, bearing date August 4, 1835.*

After stating the case, he says, "Upon a careful examination of the law, I am satisfied that the Postmaster General has no legal authority to exclude newspapers from the mail, nor prohibit their carriage or delivery on account of their character or tendency, real or supposed. Probably it was not thought safe to confer on the head of an executive department a power over the press, which might be perverted and abused. But I am not prepared to direct you to forward or deliver the papers of which you speak." After recapitulating what the Postmaster at Charleston had informed him respecting the papers in question, he says, "By no act or direction of mine, official or private, could I be induced to aid knowingly in giving circulation to papers of this description, directly or indirectly. We owe an obligation to the laws, but a higher one to the communities in which we live; and if the former be perverted to destroy the latter, it is patriotism to disregard them."

A most appropriate answer to Mr. Kendall's sentiments was given in the New-York Evening Post, an administration paper, and one which has ever been uniform and unbending in the course it has pursued. These are its words :-"In giving place to the above letter, we cannot refrain from accom* See Appendix, No. 1.

panying it with an expression of our surprise and regret, that Mr. Kendall, in an official communication, should have expressed such sentiments as this extraordinary letter contains. If, according to his ideas of the duties of patriotism, every Postmaster may constitute himself a judge of the laws, and suspend their operation, whenever, in his supreme discretion, it shall seem proper, we trust Mr. Kendall may be permitted to retire from a post where such opinions have extensive influence, and enjoy his notions of patriotism in a private station. A pretty thing it is, to be sure, when the head officer of the Post-office establishment of the United States, and a member ex officio of the administration of the general government, while he confesses in one breath that he has no power to prevent the carriage or delivery of any newspaper, whatever be the nature of its contents, declares in the next, that by no act of his, will he aid, directly or indirectly, in circulating publications of an incendiary and inflammatory character. Who gives him a right to judge what is incendiary and inflammatory? Was there any reservation of that sort in his oath of office? Mr. Kendall has not met the question presented by recent occurrences at the south as boldly and manfully as we should have supposed he would. He has quailed in the discharge of his duty. He has truckled to the domineering pretensions of the slave-holders. In the trepidation occasioned by his embarrassing position, he has lost sight of the noble maxim— Fiat justitia ruat cœlum. The course which, by neither sanctioning nor condemning the unlawful

conduct of the Postmaster at Charleston, he has virtually authorized him, and the other Postmasters at the south, to pursue, is neither more nor less than practical nullification. It is worse than that-it is establishing a censorship of the press in its worst possible form, by allowing every twopenny Postmaster through the country to be the judge of what species of intelligence is proper to circulate, and what to withhold from the people. A less evil than this drew forth in former days, the Aeropagitica from the master mind of Milton; but we little dreamed that new arguments in favour of freedom of speech and of the press would ever become necessary in our country."

The insertion of the following letter, taken from the same paper which treats the subject with great ability, and has been the subject of much comment, will be exceedingly appropriate.

TO THE POST MASTER GENERAL.

SIR, A letter has just been published in the northern papers taken from the Richmond Whig, bearing date the 4th instant, and purporting to have been addressed by you to the Postmaster at Charleston. I wish there was reason to believe the publication unauthentic. The sentiments expressed in this communication are of too singular a character, emanating as they do from authority so high, to be passed over with the little attention as yet given to them.

The Postmaster at Charleston, an agent appointed simply for the purpose of receiving and distributing

communications through his office, receives packages of papers addressed to private individuals, which he deems "inflammatory and incendiaryinsurrectionary in the highest degree." I know not, in the first place, how he arrived at this knowledge of the contents of sealed packets, unless by a violation of his duty, which is certainly not to examine the contents of communications. But waiving the question as to the manner in which he obtained his information, instead of discharging his plain and positive duty, that of distributing them to such persons as should ask for them, he is intimidated by a mob, and resolves to write you for instructions. Your reply is the letter above alluded to.

You commence by expressing yourself satisfied "that the Postmaster General has no legal authority to prohibit the delivery of newspapers on account of their character or tendency real or supposed: probably it was not thought safe to confer on the head of an executive department power over the press which might be perverted or abused." Probably, as you say, sir, it was not. It is indeed probable from an impartial survey of the history of this country that it was not intended or meant to make the Postmaster General, Censor of the Press. It is indeed probable that it was not meant to make him the sole arbiter of what intelligence should be transmitted among the people. You were safe, sir, in using the word "probably." Still you seem not altogether to have abandoned the idea, for you say none of the papers detained have been forwarded to me, and I cannot judge for myself of their cha

racter and tendency."-Where do you find, sir, that papers must be forwarded to the Postmaster General for his approbation? Where do you find that he is to judge of the offensive or harmless bearing of what the people choose to write, print, and put in the public mails?

And yet although you disclaim the right for yourself, you go on to grant to your subordinate agent, who derives his official existence from you, the very same power. Excuse me, sir, if I say that this conduct is not so direct and straight forward as your previous career had led us to expect. You say, "I am not prepared to direct you to deliver the papers of which you speak. None of the papers detained have been forwarded to me. Your justification must be looked for in the character of the papers detained, and the circumstances by which you are surrounded." That is to say, though I have no power to determine what shall or shall not be carried by the public mails, yet you, and every other Postmaster, in city, town, or village, may refuse to deliver any communication that you or he shall consider "inflammatory and incendiary-insurrectionary in the highest degree," and provided they are so, then you have nothing to fear. And who shall decide that they are so? Why of course the Postmaster General-the only superior of the Postmasters; and so, sir, in a round about away, you do in effect, constitute yourself what you in a former paragraph protested you could not be-a Censor of the press.

You say, "the Post-office was created to serve the people of each and all of the United States, and