ment, under the hairbrained pretence, that in his imagination they advocated sentiments which might prove of dangerous tendency; and if he should have foretold, that such flagrant departures from the law and the constitution would meet with the approval of the highest functionaries of the national government; and if he had also foretold, that within the short space of a year, the world was destined to behold in free and happy America-in the democratic state of New-York, a state convention, an assemblage of one thousand freemen, convened in the temple of the Most High, assailed with lawless violence, insulted, abused, and deprived of their constitutional rights, the freedom of speech, the right peaceably to assemble and deliberate upon subjects intimately concerning the welfare of their own beloved country, and the liberty of the press at the same blow destroyed; and that this foul blow, levelled at the root of liberty, would be struck by men high in power, by our judges and our representatives; what faith would have been given to predictions so wild, and apparently so unlikely to be fulfilled? All would have answered, Such things are not to be witnessed in America, until the names and the virtues of Washington and of Jefferson shall be forgotten.

Yet these scenes we now behold. Invasions of the inalienable rights of freemen have become familiar; we have become accustomed to see the laws of our country and our beloved constitution trampled in the dust; anarchy and civil discord begin to show "their accursed heads."

Not long since, at Vicksburg, & number of citizens of the United States were seized and executed without even the pretence of legal authority, contrary to the express letter of the constitution of the United States, which declares, that "no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Acts equally inconsistent with the constitution and laws of our country have been matters of every day occurrence, but have been regarded as comparatively of little moment, until they had gained the co-operation and sanction of men high in authority.

On the 29th of July, 1835, when the United States mail arrived at Charleston, S. C., it was found to contain large quantities of the publications of the American Anti-slavery Society; whereupon a number of persons assembled about the exchange at between the hours of ten and eleven at night, and with coolness and deliberation made a forcible entry into the post-office by wrenching open one of its windows, and carried off the packages containing these papers, and burnt them in a pile before the citadel. This flagrant violation of the laws of the United States, and of individual rights, soon after received the sanction of a large meeting of citizens, among whom was that arch nullifier, Robert Y. Hayne, who had before been engaged in an attempt to destroy the authority of the government of his country. By this meeting a censorship of the press was virtually established, and a committee of twenty-one appointed to take charge of the United States mail. At this crisis the Postmaster at Charleston, contrary

to an express statute of the United States, and contrary to the oath which he had taken to act in conformity to such statute, arrogated to himself the power to detain in his custody the publications and papers on the subject of slavery, and asked for instructions from the Postmaster General, which the duty of the latter required him to give.

This extraordinary and illegal act of the Postmaster at Charleston, it was justly supposed, would meet with the unqualified condemnation of the Postmaster General, and that he would, as his duty required, immediately direct the Postmaster at Charleston to forward and deliver these papers to the sons entitled to them, and thus sustain the public confidence, so necessary to be reposed in this important branch of our system, vindicate the supremacy of the laws, and the authority of the national government.

per

All men of intelligence could see that the act upon which Amos Kendall was called upon to give an opinion was unlawful, and of such dangerous tendency, as called for the loudest censure, and it is believed that such could not but have been the almost unanimous judgment of the people in the non-slaveholding states, had not the act been sanctioned by some higher authority to which cringing office-seekers are accustomed to bow and sue for favours.

It is unnecessary to inquire into the motives which actuated Mr. Kendall in making up his judg ment upon the question referred to him; it will be sufficient for the purpose of determining the degree

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 carefu! 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 maximFiat justitia ruat cœlum. The course which, by neither sanctioning nor condemning the unlawful