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

not to be used as the instrument of their destruction." Sir, the Post-office was created for the transmission of intelligence, and its agents from the stage drivers up to the Postmaster General, have but one duty to perform, the regular transmission and delivery of every thing put into the separate offices.The moment this plain principle is lost sight of, that moment abuses will spring up at every step. Whig Postmasters will stop Jackson papers, Jackson Postmasters will suppress whig papers, slaveholders will burn abolition documents, and abolitionists will destroy colonization manifestoes. The Charleston Postmaster had no more right to suppress the mail from regard to the wishes of the citizens of that place, than the steamboat captain had to throw it overboard, and in winking at his imbecile conduct, you, sir, have established a dangerous precedent.

You go on, sir, in a still more illegal tone to say: "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." As to the first part of this paragraph, I have only to say, that it proclaims distinctly your determination not to perform those duties of your office for which you were appointed, and which you have been sworn to fulfil. Is it possible, sir, that you have yet to learn that your office is purely ministerial, and that you have

no supervision whatever over the communications transmitted through your office?

As to the latter part of the paragraph, it is a text fit for any homily on the blessings of anarchy and the good consequences of riot. What obligation is that we owe, sir, to the communities in which we live higher than that to the laws? Is it the obligation which the Vicksburgh planters have discharged, by murdering a score of their fellow-citizens, or is it the duty that the Baltimore mob is now fulfilling amid bloodshed and pillage and fire? Sir, this sentiment, if carried into effect, disorganizes the Postoffice; but that is not all-it sets a precedent of a loose and vicious construction of the social relations in every branch of life.

I desire to believe that this letter was written, sir, under the influence of the excitement and alarm created by the riot at Charleston, but we had hoped from your previous career, that you were made of stuff too stern to be frightened from your propriety by so slight a cause. Depend on it, though this letter may find approbation among the prejudices and fears of the slave-holding communities, it will not be acceptable to the people of the northern states. They have prejudices too-prejudices in favour of freedom-in favour of untrammelled discussion of private right-of public law--these are the prejudices of the north, and it may not be altogether inexpedient to consult them.

The frenzy of the abolitionists finds no echo here among our yeomanry; but when we are told that our mails cannot travel without the permission of a

committee of the citizens of Charleston, that our publications cannot be transmitted without a passport from the Postmaster General, and that we cannot discuss the questions of the government of the District of Columbia without being threatened with a dissolution of the Union, there is in all this somewhat too much of the law of force, somewhat too much of bravado, to call forth the sympathy, command the respect, or above all, excite the fears of us of the north."

It is needless to say that these publications were of an ordinary character, addresssd to respectable citizens at the south, some of them masters of slaves, which they could have taken from the office or not as they chose. If they declined taking them, they could hurt nobody, whatever might be their character. But they advocated the immediate abolition of slavery. To say nothing of the expediency of this measure, the question, all will admit, is one of great public moment, and one upon which the philanthropist, the Christian, and the statesman, have a right and ought to speak and write their sentiments; and as well might it be contended, that publications advocating the election of Van Buren, the recharter of the United States Bank, or the reduction of duties on imports, are incendiary and inflammatory, as that those which advocate the immediate emancipation of the slaves are of that character. The truth is, these publications were neither calculated to produce excitement nor alarm, even at the south, had not a hue and cry been raised against them.

The public mind at the south was no doubt somewhat exasperated on this subject; but this state of feeling, it is plain to be seen, was almost wholly produced by the intermeddling of political demagogues, who demanded and endeavoured to obtain a surrender of the liberty of the press, for the advancement of their ambitious schemes. And since the publication of the unprecedented sentiments contained in Mr. Kendall's letter, every effort has been used to produce the highest possible state of excitement, in order that the true character of the publications (as well as the laws and constitution) might be lost sight of, and in the heat of popular indignation condemned without a hearing.

Very few in the now slave-holding states even imagined that the publications referred to were inflammatory or incendiary, or calculated to excite apprehension or alarm, until Mr. Kendall told them So. His conduct was not only uncalled for by the times, but calculated to produce inconceivable mischief. It was the signal for general law-breaking; and it is not so surprising, that soon after Samuel L. Gouverneur, the Postmaster at New-York, should also have arrogated to himself the power to decide what information it is proper to send forth to the public, and have detained in his custody certain publications of the Anti-slavery Society, and asked for the sanction of this same Amos Kendall, which he readily received in his letter bearing date Aug. 22d, 1835.*

*See Appendix, No. II: