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