striking cases of fanatical enterprises languishing and being abandoned, when those engaged in them were suf. fered to take their own course, without any other hinderance than such as was necessary to prevent their overleaping the safeguards of society.

Fanaticism is a species of insanity and requires analogous treatment. In regard to both, the soothing system is proved by its results to be the most effectual. The mind slightly touched with lunacy, may soon be exasperated into frenzy by opposition, or soon restored to perfect sanity by gentle and assuasive means. So, too, the mind, excited to fanaticism on any particular subject, religious, political, or philanthropic, is but heated to more dangerous fervour by violence, when it might easily be reduced to the temperature of health by the lenitives which reason and moderation should apply.

The first great impulse which the abolition cause received in this city was, we are persuaded, the attempt to suppress it by the means of mobs; and the greatest promoters of the abolition doctrines have been, in our judg. ment, not Thompson nor Garrison, but the Courier and Enquirer, the Journal of Commerce and the Commercial Advertiser. We do not speak this in a spirit of crimination ; for our desire is to assuage and conciliate, not to inflame and exasperate. We express the opinion more with a view to its influence on future conduct, than to reprehend that which is past; and we do hope that, in view of the pernicious consequences which have flow. ed from violent measures hitherto, a course more consistent with the meekness of Christianity, and with the sacred rights of free discussion, will be pursued henceforth.

While we believe most fully that the abolitionists are justly chargeable with fanaticism, we consider it worse than folly to misrepresent their character in other respects. They are not knaves nor fools, but men of wealth,

education, respectability and intelligence, misguided on a single subject, but actuated by a sincere desire to promote the welfare of their kind. This, it will hardly be denied, is a true description, of at least a large proportion of those termed abolitionists. Is it not apparent on the face of the matter, that invective, denunciations, burnings in effigy, mob violence, and the like proceedings, do not constitute the proper mode of changing the opinions or conduct of such men ? The true way is, either to point out their error by temperate arguments, or better still leave them to discover it themselves. The fire, unsupplied with fuel, soon flickers and goes out, which stirred and fed, will rise to a fearful conflagration, and destroy whatever falls within the reach of its fury. With regard to the outrage lately committed in Charleston, we do not believe it constitutes any exception to our remarks. The effects of all such proceedings must be to increase the zeal of fanaticism, which always rises in proportion to the violence of the opposition it encounters. Some of the Charleston papers, we perceived, spoke of the attack on the Post Office as premature, and thought it ought not to have been made until the result was received of an application which had been forwarded to the General Post Office for relief. Neither the General Post Office, nor the General Government itself, possesses any power to prohihit the transportation by mail of abolition tracts. On the contrary it is the bounden duty of the Government to protect the abolitionists in their constitutional right of free discussion; and opposed, sincerely and zealously as we are, to their doctrines and practise, we should be still more opposed to any infringe. ment of their political or civil rights. If the Government once begins to discriminate as to what is orthodox and what heterodox in opinion, what is safe and what is

unsafe in its tendency, farewell, a long farewell to our freedom.

The true course to be pursued, in order to protect the South as far as practicable, and yet not violate the great principle of equal freedom, is to revise the post-office laws, and establish the rates of postage on a more just gradation on some system more equal in its operation and more consonant with the doctrines of economic science. The pretext under which a large part of the matters sent by mail are now sent free of postage-either positively or comparatively-is wholly unsound. "To encourage the diffusion of knowledge" is a very good object in itself; but Government has no right to extend this encouragement to one at the expense of another. Newspapers, pamphlets, commercial and religious tracts, and all sorts of printed documents, as well as letters, ought to pay postage, and all ought to pay it according to the graduation of some just and equal rule. If such a system were once established, making the postage in all cases payable in advance, with duplicate postage on those letters and papers which should be returned, not only the flood of abolition pamphlets would be stayed, but the circulation of a vast deal of harmful trash at the public expense would be prevented, creating a vacuum which would naturally be filled with matters of a better stamp.

MR. KENDALL'S LETTER.

[From the Evening Post, August 12, 1835.]

THE following letter has been addressed by the Post Master General to the Post Master at Richmond, enclosing a copy of his letter to the Post Master at Charleston, South Carolina.

Sir My views in relation to the subject of your letter of the 3d inst. may be learnt from the enclosed copy of a letter to the Post Master at Charleston, S. C., dated 4th inst.

:

August 4th, 1835.

Sir In your letter of the 29th ult. just received, you inform me that by the steamboat mail from New-York your office had been filled with pamphlets and tracts upon slavery that the public mind was highly excited upon the subject, that you doubted the safety of the mail itself out of your possession: that you had determined, as the wisest course, to detain these papers: and you now ask instructions from the Department.

Upon a careful 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. The Post Office Department was created to serve the people of each and all of the United States, and not to be used as the instrument of their destruction. None of the papers detained have been forwarded to me, and I cannot judge for my. self of their character and tendency; but you inform me that they are, in character," the most inflammatory and incendiary—and insurrectionary in the highest degree.”

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. Entertaining these views I cannot sanction, and will not condemn the step you have taken.

"Your justification must be looked for in the character of the papers detained, and the circumstances by which you are surrounded."

In giving place to the above letter, we cannot refrain from accompanying 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 du. ties 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 VOL. II.-2