of the southern postmasters themselves, as far as they go corroborate this assertion. Here then one important part of the "concurrent testimony" on which Mr. Kendall relies is seen to be defective.

But let us admit that the pamphlets and newspapers of the Anti-Slavery Society are as incendiary as alleg ed, and that they are intended for the perusal of slaves even more than of masters, still we maintain that a much more effectual, and certainly much more legal means of defeating the object of the abolitionists was in the power of the southern people than disobedience of the law, and violation of their oaths on the part of the public officers of the United States. We are frequently told, with various degrees of vaunting, that on this question of abolition, the south is as one man-that it presents an undivided front-that there is no dissenting voice. By the means then, of quiet and efficient organization, by vigilance committees, and the other measures of internal police which the nature of the evil would naturally suggest to them, they might more certainly prevent the circulation. of the dreaded publications, than by any forcible seizure of the post-office, or any violation of his sworn duty by the postmaster in their behalf. If they secure the postoffice, either by their own violence, or the treachery of its guardian, they block up but one channel of the stream of free opinion. By the peaceable means which we have suggested they would dam them all. The necessity of vigilance would still press upon them as to other sources of danger, if all fears of the post-office were lulled to rest; so that a little added watchfulness for the few months that must elapse before Congress can revise the postoffice laws is not an evil of so greivous a character as to justify Mr. Kendall's denominating the proceeding of Mr. Gouverneur "a measure of great public necessity."

But the most important, the most startling part of Mr.

Kendall's letter we have not yet at all considered. He wishes to throw the question on the popular ground of state rights, and expresses a strong doubt whether the abolitionists have a right to make use of the public mails in distributing their papers through the southern states. The question here arises, who are the abolitionists! The Courier and Enquirer, a print which says more, and therefore ought to know more on the subject than any other in the United States, calls this journal an abolition print. The Albany Argus, has intimated the same thing, and the Lynchburg Virginian, with some foul-mouthed personalties about "the cashiered midshipman," repeats the slander. The American, also, for opposing this new and "fearfully dangerous" species of censorship of the press which the Postmaster General labours so hard to estab lish, and in which he is so readily seconded by the prac tical efforts of Mr. Gouverneur-the American, also, has been styled an abolition newspaper. Now, we ask, who is to decide what journals are abolition and what not? Is Samuel L. Gouverneur to sit in judgment over the American and the Evening Post, and decide whether they shall be permitted to pass to their southern subscribers? whether there is not some law, in some slave state, which would include our sheets within its ban, for daring to exercise the right of free discussion, on a momentous question, under the warrant of that provision in the Constitution, of the United States, repeated in almost every state Constitution which guarantees to every citizen the freedom of speech and of the press ?

But let us pass over this difficulty which lies at the threshold, and take a full view of Mr. Kendall's new state rights doctrine as applicable to the post office. When the southern states, he says, became independent, "they acquired a right to prohibit abolition papers within

their territories; and the power over the subject of slavery and all its incidents was in no degree diminished by the adoption of the federal constitution." He further states that, under this sovereign power, some states have made the circulation of abolition papers a capital crime, and others a felony; and concludes by asking whether the people have a right to do by the mail carriers and Postmasters, what if done by themselves or agents would subject them to the most degrading punishment. It is a great mistake to say that the power of the southern states over slavery and all its incidents was in no degree diminished by the adoption of the federal constitution. One of the "incidents," the power of importing slaves, was certainly taken away. But every other "incident" of slavery, with which any single provision of the federal constitution conflicts was necessarily diminished. The Constitution, no matter what were the previous laws of the state, became, on its adoption, the supreme fundamental law of the confederacy. So far from the incidents of slavery being in no wise impaired, many of the sagest men in the Virginia Convention, among them Governor Ran dolph, Mason, and Patrick Henry, were decidedly of opinion that the Constitution gave the General Government the power of abolishing slavery altogether, in various ways, either by the operation of inordinate taxes, or by requiring the slaves to do military service, and emancipating them as the reward. One of the first things, it is true, which the Congress did under the existing Constitution, was to disavow any right on the part of the General Government to interfere with the subject of slavery. But a resolution of Congress has not the force of Constitutional law. Passed at one session it may be rescinded at another, and even expunged from the journals, as we trust will soon be corroborated by a conspicu ous instance.

When the several states adopted a Constitution which gave to the federal government the power to establish the post office, and the power also to make all laws necessary and proper to carry that clause into effect, they gave up all right of extending their local penal enactments, as to the circulation of prohibited publications of any kind, so as to include those officers of the General Government who were merely carrying into effect the provisions of a constitutional law, clearly sheltered under the ceded power above referred to. A constitutional doubt of this kind, when it touches the question of slavery, is of a more exciting character, than when it embraces other matters; but it rests precisely on the same foundation as many other doubts which have been started and settled, and must have the same disposition made of it. The question of the Sunday mail is one of precisely analagous character. Many persons, as fanatical with regard to violations of the Sabbath as the abolitionists are on the subject of slavery, were of opinion that the sovereign power of the states extended over the subject of religion so far as to authorize the stopping of the mails on Sunday. The question was tried, and the result proved otherwise.

Yet if the power "to establish post-offices and postroads" includes, as a necessary incident, the power to run mails every day and hour, through every state in the confederacy, it must also include the power to preserve those mails inviolable until their contents are safely delivered into the hands to which they are addressed. If the Government possesses the one power it necessarily does the other. If it possesses neither, the post office clause in the Constitution is a mere mockery-the shadow of a shade.

Our article has run out to such an unexpected length that we must now cut it short, though there are still sevVOL. II.-5

eral topics on which we wished to express our views. Mr. Kendall's ingenious, but most heterodox and 'nullifying letter concludes with the expression of a hope, that Mr. Gouverneur and the other postmasters who have assumed the responsibility of stopping the publications of the Anti-Slavery Society, "will see the necessity of performing their duty in transmitting and delivering ordinary newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets, with perfect punctuality." Verily we have fallen on evil times when such a request or injunction from a high officer of the General Government to his subordinates is necessary. Does not that very sentence include within itself a whole volume of commentary ?

TROUBLE IN HAVERHILL.

[From the Evening Post, September 3, 1835.]

"LAST evening, (Sunday,) Mr. May, the abolitionist lecturer, attempted to hold forth in Kaverhill, Mass. At the hour of assembling, the meeting-house was filled with numbers of both sexes, and the lecturer commenced his discourse, when a volley of stones and lighted firecrackers were showerd through the windows into the pulpit and upon the congregation, who immediately dispersed. A piece of ordnance was brought upon the spot, probably to frighten the congregation."

So says Brigg's Boston Bulletin. The rights of free discussion are forsooth marvellously well respected in this land of liberty! Formerly, in frontier settlements, beyond the regular operation of law, and in cases where the offences of criminals were too clear to admit of doubt and too base to deserve the slightest lenity, Judge Lynch, so called, was content with administering a species of codex robustus, which the criminal himself did not