sir, from misapprehension or misinformation have been tempted to make them, your mistake should be corrected.

Judge PETERS. I think we have nothing to do with parties; we are only to consider the subject before us. I wish you had thought proper to make an affidavit of your property. I have nothing to do, sitting here, to inquire whether a party in whose favour you may be, or you, are to pay the fine. I shall only consider your circumstances, and impose a fine which I think adequate; we ought to avoid any oppression. It appears that you depend chiefly upon your profession for support. Imprisonment for any time would tend to increase the fine, as your family would be deprived of your professional abilities to maintain them.

Judge CHASE. We will take time to consider this. Mr. Cooper, you may attend here again."

Thursday. Mr. Cooper attended, and the court sentenced him to pay a fine of four hundred dollars; to be imprisoned for six months, and, at the end of that period, to find surety for his good behaviour, himself in a thousand, and two sureties in five hundred dollars each.*

Judge Chase's conduct in this case, which was marked with a moderation in strong contrast with the harshness afterwards exhibited in the prosecution of Callender, (Post 688,) was ably defended by Mr. Harper, in a speech on the Sedition Act, in the House of Representatives in January 1801, (Harper's works, 375,) and was not thought sufficiently marked, to entitle it even to a nominal place in the memorable articles of impeachment, of November, 1804. Mr. Cooper's defence, however, so written out by himself as to make up a review of the whole administration, attracted great attention; and his imprisonment for an offence thought so trivial, was a popular subject for electioneering declamation. Mr. Adams himself thought the thing had gone too far, and would have pardoned him, had not Mr. Cooper issued a letter, in which he told him, that, so far from asking for clemency, he would not "accept" it, unless coupled with an acknowledgment by the President of the breach of good faith which the publication of the alleged provocatory letter involved:-(see Aurora, for May 10th, 1700.) Of course nothing could be done but let the imprisonment run out. This it did, and the fine was paid. Forty years afterwards, at the same time with that imposed upon Lyon, (Ante, 344,) it was repaid with interest. In Porcupine, Mr. Cooper, as well as Dr. Priestley, were among the principal subjects of ridicule and denunciation; but, perhaps, the most bitter notice taken of them by Cobbett, was a poem called "Prison Eclogue," published by him in London, in 1801, and afterwards incorporated in Porcupine's works. The student will find in the Aurora of May 6, May 9, and May 19, papers of some interest emanating from Mr. Cooper on the subject of the trial in the text.

Mr. Cooper's life, however, is so connected with American history, as to require more than a general notice. He was born in London in 1759, and was educated at Oxford. Intended for the law, he did not confine himself to merely legal studies, but devoted himself with great success to the natural sciences, particularly chemistry, over which he soon obtained a mastery. His professional studies, so far as his history shows, never were very severely conducted; and soon after his advent at the bar, he allowed himself to be carried into another orbit, by accepting an ambassadorship from a democratic club in England, to a democratic club in France. For this both he, himself, and his patron Mr. Watt, of steam engine fame, from whom his diplomatic credentials had issued, were assailed in the House of Commons by Mr. Burke. This gave Mr. Cooper an opportunity which he but too gladly seized; and at once there issued a pamphlet reply, which made up for the want of vivacity of its style by the excessive inflammation of its temper. "As long as you sell this at a high price,” said Sir John Scott, "you can do no harm; but the moment it is turned into a penny slip, that moment I will prosecute you." This kindly caution of course shrunk the circulation of the "reply," and the result was, that Mr. Cooper, abandoning for a time politics, undertook to introduce into practice in Manchester, the important secret of extracting chlorine from common salt, which though afterwards so valuable, he was not then able to bring into suc cessful operation.

Leaving the wreck both of business and of political fortune, Mr. Cooper at last made up his mind to accompany Dr. Priestley to America, not free, it must be admitted,—at least so far as Dr. Priestley is concerned,-from the conviction that, resist it as they might, the young re

public would soon press them into the ranks of its law-makers. But this seemed to be a mistake, and the result was, that Mr. Cooper soon went into a violent opposition to Mr. Adams, the then President, not, however, until he had first somewhat circuitously intimated that he might accept the post of Commissioner of the British Treaty. (See Ante, p. 659.) Of this opposition, the prosecution in the text was the fruit.

On coming out of prison, Mr. Cooper found the minority rapidly turning into a majority, and in a short time, the administration which had prosecuted him was overthrown. His untiring industry, his almost universal philosophical attainments, and his courageous temper, but more particularly the sufferings he had undergone in the maintenance of the freedom of the press, placed him high in the esteem of the dominant party. After having been appointed a commissioner to negotiate a settlement of the Luzerne difficulties in Pennsylvaniaa duty he discharged with remarkable skill and success-he was nominated by Governor McKean to the president judgeship of a judicial district.

Mr. Cooper's proceedings after he became the wielder of judicial power, form an odd sequel to his experience when he was its subject. Scarcely five years had passed after he was out of prison, before he was on the bench; and scarcely five years more had passed before he was impeached before the Senate of Pennsylvania, upon charges, which, were it not that they were gravely preferred and amply supported, might be considered burlesques of those upon which he was instrumental in impeaching Judge Chase, in the Senate of the United States. He was charged with pouncing upon delinquent jurors on the first day of the court, with fines and bench warrants, in violation of the venerable Pennsylvania practice, of giving them the quarto die post; with imprisoning a Quaker for not pulling off his hat; with committing three parties for "whispering," an offence for which he declared he would hear no apology; with issuing warrants without previous oath, and then committing the constables who refused to serve them; with insisting in one case in examining under oath, a prisoner charged with crime, as to his own guilt; with sending private notes to juries in criminal cases, tending to extract a verdict of guilty; with carting a Luzerne convict to the Philadelphia prison, a thing not then provided for, which ended in the convict being kept in abeyance by the Philadelphia jailor, who refused to receive him, and the court who refused to take him back, thereby, under this new ambulatory commitment, withdrawing the sheriff from his public duties; and with brow-beating counsel, witnesses and parties, in cases so numerous as to make their recapitulation cover three pages. The Presby terian and Quaker professions, he was charged with declaring in open court, to be "all damned hypocrisy and nonsense;" and divers specifications were given of illegal interfer ence on his part in the profits of cases before him, and of private speculations in interests which were to pass under his adjudication. On Feb. 21, 1811, these charges having been formally laid before the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, were referred to a com mittee, who two days afterwards reported, that the evidence produced before them sufficiently substantiated the specifications of passionate and oppressive judicial bearing, leaving, however, the accusation of peculation without any further basis than that afforded by an imprudent purchase of certain property, sold at sheriff's sale under process from the court, a transaction which, though clear from any moral stain, the committee thought to be of doubtful propriety and dangerous precedent. They submitted, in conclusion, a resolution, "that a committee be appointed to draft an address to the Governor for the removal of Thomas Cooper, Esq., from the office of President Judge of the eighth judicial district of Pennsylvania." Under this resolution, which passed 73 to 20, a committee was appointed which reported an address to the Governor, which was carried 59 to 34, in the face of a very powerful protest by Mr. Gibson, now Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, who took the ground that the offences specified by the committee were misdemeanours, cognizable by impeachment alone. To this was joined a paper, in which the greater portion of the minority joined, declaring, that whatever may have been the peculiarities of manner of Mr. Cooper, there was no evidence which showed judicial misconduct.

Under the Pennsylvania Constitution, the governor "may," on address from the legisla ture, remove a judge from office; and, as Governor Snyder on a former occasion, when the attempt had been made to shake off the judges of the Supreme Court, had declared that "may" sometimes means "wont," a vigorous effort was now made to induce him to give once more the same lenient grammatical construction. The governor, it seems, had been the client of Mr. Cooper in former times, and had lived with him for many years on terms of personal intimacy, but whether from this account he felt a greater delicacy in interfering, or whether, in fact, he thought that the case was one in which he ought not to defeat the legislative will, the only reply he made, was a note through the Secretary of the Commonwealth, announcing that Mr. Cooper's judicial tenure was closed.

Of this procedure, in everything but its result, a duodecimo of the more solemn trial, which in the Senate of the United States Judge Chase was the subject, not the least remark. able feature was, that it was carried on, with a few exceptions, by the very party of which Mr. Cooper had been lately one of the most lively leaders, and for which,—if political persecution by an outgoing administration is to be considered as a calamity,-he was one of the

46

greatest sufferers. It may be that, like Callender, he felt a natural disgust when he found that under Mr. Jefferson, many men were put ahead of him who had not received the honours of martyrdom under Mr. Adams; or it may be that when he got on the bench,for which, by the way, he had not received the necessary professional training, he became subject to that nervous debility by which the most plethoric patriotism is sometimes there prostrated; but it is certain that very soon he cooled towards the democrats, and, as was alleged in the evidence before the house committee, even went so far as to drop, when in court, expressions by no means complimentary to their persons, or their doctrines. This change though not the overt acts said to have sprung from it-he confesses in an address issued from him at the close of the proceedings, at Lancaster, April 4, 1811. Nor have I been anxious to conceal," he says, "that during a long course of observation on the conduct of parties in this country, I have not found that the democrats or republicans have much reason to boast of more disinterested views, or more tolerant principles, than their oppo. nents. I have long found it impossible for me to go all lengths with the party to which I belonged, and, of course, I have shared the fate of all moderate men; I have influence with no party, and have willingly and deliberately incurred the decided hatred of the most violent and thorough going of my own. I went over to France in 1792, an enthusiast, and I left it in disgust. I came here; and seventeen years experience of a democratic government in this country, has also served to convince me it may have its faults; that it is not quite so perfect in practice, as it is beautiful in theory, and that the speculations of my youth do not receive the full sanction of my maturer age; nor do I find that justice and disinterestedness, wisdom, and tolerance, are the necessary fruits of universal suffrage, as it is exercised in Pennsylvania, for these are not always the qualifications that procure a man to be sent as the representative of the people."

Mr. Cooper's fine chemical acquirements, which, during all the storms of his eventful life, had never been submerged, now gave him a safe retreat. He was first placed in a philosophical professorship in Dickinson College, and afterwards in a highly honourable post in the Univer sity of Pennsylvania, which he finally abandoned for the chemical chair in Columbia College, South Carolina, of which he soon became president. In the nullification struggle he took a bold part, issuing documents of the most ultra States' rights tone, and showing that if he had added nothing to the sprightliness, he had lost nothing of the fire, of the pamphleteer of 1795-1800. He died in 1840, when engaged in revising the South Carolina Statutes, a duty charged on him by the legislature, after having published, besides numberless tracts on politics, divinity, and metaphysics, a treatise on the bankrupt laws, a translation of Justinian, a treatise on political economy, a manual of chemistry, as well as a general compendium of useful information.

TRIAL

OF

DANIEL THOMAS, ET AL.,

FOR

OPENING LETTERS OF A FOREIGN MINISTER.

IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR
THE PENNSYLVANIA DISTRICT.

PHILADELPHIA, 1800.

IN two indictments, one of which was returned ignoramus, and the other of which was never pressed, it was charged that defendants did 'open, and the contents thereof did promulgate and make known," two letters addressed by Mr. Liston, the British minister in Philadelphia, to Mr. Russel, President of the British frontier in Upper Canada. The evidence on which the prosecution rested, appears to have been that the defendants, who were shown to have acted under the sheriff of Bucks county, who was armed with a bench warrant, arrested a man named Isaac Livezey, (who was charged with horse-stealing, but who turned out to be a messenger from Mr. Liston to Mr. Russel,) and broke open his trunk, from which the letters mentioned in the indictment were taken. That the proceedings against Livezey were bona fide, afterwards amply appeared, the stolen horses being found in his custody; and under the belief that the searching of his trunks and opening of the letters, was but an ordinary case of police power, as well as from doubts as to jurisdiction, the prosecution was not carried on*

This case is only here introduced, in consequence of the public interest excited by the publication of the letters which the defendants were charged with opening. They were as follows:

Philadelphia, 6th May, 1799.

"SIR:-The government of the United States appears to be nearly in the same situation with regard to the Shawenese Indians, that that of Canada is with respect to the Mohawks. The Shawenese wish the United States to make some alteration of their limits, as fixed by the treaty of Grenville; and at the same time to confirm the sales of lands they have already made, and authorize future alterations.

The American ministers, on the other hand, are determined not to grant this favour, and are embarrassed by the persevering importunity of the Indians. Advices lately arrived from Fort Wayne inform the Administration that the Shawenese intend this spring to call

a general council of the nation, (composed of representatives from several tribes,) with a view to take such measures as may be thought best calculated to obtain some modifica tions of the Grenville treaty. And the information adds, that this idea was first suggested by the late Colonel M'Kee, Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs.

The government consider this interference as unfriendly and injurious to their interests, and a complaint has been made to me on the subject, by the Secretary of State, with a request that I would make such representation of the matter to you, as might produce a defeat of the project at present, and prevent all intervention of a similar nature in future.

I informed the Secretary of State, that I could scarcely bring myself to credit the report respecting Colonel M Kee; that at all events, I could not conceive anything unfavourable to the United States could have been contemplated by a public officer in the service of Great Britain; but that I would of course make the representation requested; that I made no doubt of its having the desired effect, because, I was confident that you were sincerely disposed to ward off every incident that could give just cause of misunderstanding between the two nations.

The situation of public affairs in this country continues the same as at the date of my last letters, unless it be that the government has given a new subject of provocation to France, by encouraging, (in conjunction with us,) the Negro Chief Toussaint, in measures which appear ultimately to tend to a separation of the Island of St Domingo from the mother country. Whether this affront will be pocketed by the directory, I do not pretend to decide; but I cannot persuade myself that it is probable.

I have the honour to be, with great truth and respect, Sir,
Your most obedient humble servant,

The Hon. President Russel.

ROBERT LISTON.

Philadelphia, 23d May, 1799. SIR-My last having been entrusted to a person who was not going directly to Upper Canada, I am uncertain whether it may yet have reached your hands, and therefore, take an opportunity of transmitting a duplicate.

On public affairs I have scarcely anything to add. One step farther on the road to a formal war, between France and the United States, has been taken by the Governor of Guadaloupe, who, in consequence of the capture of the Insurgente frigate, has authorized French ships of war to capture all American vessels, whether belonging to the government or to individuals. But the resolution of the Directory on the great question of peace or war is not yet known. Perhaps the new explosion of the continent of Europe may give them a degree of employment that may retard their decision.

In the interior of this country, the declamations of the democratic faction, on the constitutionality and nullity of certain acts of the legislature, have misled a number of poor ignorant wretches into a resistance of the laws, and a formal insurrection. This frivolous rebellion has been quelled by a spirited effort of certain volunteer corps lately embodied, who deserve every degree of praise. But the conduct of these gentlemen having been shamefully calumniated by some of the popular newspapers, they have ventured to take the law into their own hands, and punish one or two of the printers (by a smart flogging); a circumstance which has given rise to much animosity, to threats, and to a commencement of armed associations, on the side of the democrats, (particularly the united Irishmen,) and some apprehend that the affair may lead to a partial civil war. The portion, however, of the Jacobinic party, who could carry matters to this extremity, is but small; the government is on its guard and determined to act with vigour; and I do not, on the whole, apprehend any serious danger. I have the honour to be, with great truth and respect, sir, Your most obedient humble servant,

ROBERT LISTON."

The allegation in the first of these letters that the American government had coöperated with the British in setting on Toussaint to revolt against the mother country, was calculated to embitter against the administration not only the favourers of a French alliance, but the Southern States generally. The federal papers denied the charge, but it continued to be reiterated by the opposition with much effect, until the election. It is due to the adminis tration, however, to say that no corroboration was ever found of Mr. Liston's statement; and that it may now be looked upon as arising from either diplomatic gasconade or personal misapprehension.