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burglary_ or _arson_, or at the very least, of petty larceny. _Time, place and circumstances_, are all stated. The candidate for Congress or the Presidency, is broadly asserted to have _picked pockets_, or pocketed silver spoons, or to have been guilty of something equally mean and contemptible. Two instances of this, occur at this moment to my memory. In one newspaper, a member of Congress was denounced as having feloniously broken open a scrutoire, and having thence stolen certain bills and banknotes; another was charged with selling franks at twopence a piece, and thus coppering his pockets at the expense of the public." But let me add the authority of Americans. Mr Webster, in his celebrated speech on the public lands, observes in that powerful and nervous language for which he is so celebrated:--"It is one of the thousand calumnies with which the press teemed, during an excited political canvass. It was a charge, of which there was not only no proof or probability, but which was, in itself, wholly impossible to be true. No man of common information ever believed a syllable of it. Yet it was of that class of falsehoods, which by continued repetition, through all the organs of detraction and abuse, are capable of misleading those who are already far misled, and of farther fanning passion, already kindled into flame. Doubtless, it served in its day, and, in greater or less degree, the end designed by it. Having done that, it has sunk into the general mass of stale and loathed calumnies. It is the very cast-off slough of a _polluted_ and _shameless_ press." And Mr Cooper observes--"Every honest man appears to admit that the press in America is fast getting to be _intolerable_. In escaping from the tyranny of foreign aristocrats, we have created in our bosoms a _tyranny of a character_ so _insupportable_, that a change of some sort is getting indispensable to peace." Indeed, the spirit of defamation, so rife in America, is so intimately connected with its principal channel, the press, that it is impossible to mention one, without the other, and I shall, therefore, at once enter into the question. Defamation is the greatest curse in the United States, and its effects upon society I shall presently point out. It appears to be inseparable from a democratic form of government, and must continue to flourish in it, until it pleases the Supreme to change the hearts of men. When Aristides inquired of the coun
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