f this kind. Cooper, when his
attention was called to it, treated it with contempt. "The pretense," he
wrote in 1845, "that our courts have ever overruled that the truth is
not a complete defense in a libel suit in the civil action, can only
gain credit with the supremely ignorant." In criminal indictments the
New York statute of 1805 had expressly declared that the truth might be
pleaded in evidence by the defense. The Constitution of 1821 made this
provision part of the fundamental law, and it was adopted from that into
the Constitution of 1846. The assertion owed its origin wholly to the
effort of beaten parties to explain their defeat on some other ground
than that they had been found guilty of the offense with which they had
been charged.

A more preposterous statement even than this was that the question
involved in these suits was the right of editors to criticise the
productions of authors. In not one of these trials was the literary
judgment passed by the reviewer mentioned as having the slightest
bearing on the case. It ought not to be necessary to say that it was the
attack upon the character of the man that alone came under the
consideration of the courts, and not that upon the character of the
book. The impudent pretense was, however, set up at the time that the
press had a right to go behind the writer's work, and assail him
himself. "Does an author," said "The New Yorker" in February, (p. 182)
1837, "subject himself to personal criticism by submitting a work to the
public? If he makes his work the channel of disparagement upon masses of
men, he does."

The most marked feature of these trials is that Cooper fought his battle
single-handed. With a very few exceptions,--notably the "Albany Argus"
and the "New York Evening Post,"--the press of the party with which he
was nominally allied, remained neutral. Some of them were even hostile;
for the novelist's criticism of editors had known no distinction of
politics. On the other hand, the press of the opposition party was
united. From East to West they bore down upon Cooper with a common cry.
No event in his life showed more plainly the fearless and uncompromising
nature of the man; nor again did anything else he was concerned in mark
more clearly his versatility and vigor. In these trials he was assisted
by his nephew, Richard Cooper, who was his regular counsel. But outside
of him, in the civil suits, he had very rarely any help, and in most of
them he