ice of the convention; ... for in our view, the doctrine to which
those respectable gentlemen seemed to give their public support, was
one to be mentioned, not in the company of honest men, _but only in
the society of footpads, housebreakers, and pickpockets_." In an
earlier number of the same work[3]--which was lashed by the _New York
Review_ for its astounding ignorance of the most celebrated letters of
Junius, and for quoting a judicial opinion of Lord Kaimes's as a
speech in the House of Lords--the reviewer, whose blundering
intrepidity is only saved from the ridiculous by the honesty of his
attempt, comes down on a nobler quarry, and thwacks the memory of Lord
Camden as if he had been another Thersites. Sir Joseph Yates gets a
sound drubbing from the same sturdy avenger of literary property, for
his share in the celebrated case of Millar _versus_ Taylor, as given
in Burrow's Reports.[4] I have been pleased too with the succinct
decision of a writer[5] who has produced an elaborate work on
political ethics, in which he lays it down that "the right of property
in a book seems to be clearer and more easily to be deduced from
absolute principle than any other." Except among the most ultra and
radical of theorists, I have met with nothing in American society, but
a most hearty subscription to such views as these: but, alas!--said
one in conversation upon this subject,--it is nothing that we think
right, nor would it be much to bring the people to agree with us,
unless something shall force it upon our demagogues.

Public opinion is not always sovereign in America, as the remark of my
friend implies. It is curious to see how often a written constitution
deprives a people of the very privileges it was intended to perpetuate
and secure; and how the practical working of the American constitution
is frequently the very reverse of its design. By the constitutional
provisions, it would seem apparent, for instance, that the president
of this confederacy must always be the choice of a majority of the
nation's wisest men, themselves the free choice of the majority of the
people. Yet here I have lived under three successive presidents,
General Harrison, Mr Tyler, and Mr Polk, not one of them succeeding by
the _free choice_ of any one, and Mr Tyler against the suffrages of
all. The undefiled patriotism which is the hypothesis of the
constitution, does not exist; party, which it seems hardly to
anticipate, carries every thing; and p