miserable young man, Mr. Spencer, whom | if he had any message to his friends. He replied Captain Mackenzie hanged, was the eldest son of a prominent statesman of America, the Hon. Mr. Spencer, Secretary at War to the present government of Washington. So connected with "His Accidency," as the "Courier" loves to style the President, we need not say that Mr. Spencer had been the mark of all the most venemous abuse that this vile print could direct against him. Which indeed it had pursued with its most perfect hatred, Mr. Spencer or "Captain Tyler," would be perhaps difficult to say. There was an article specially devoted to both some few days before the arrival of Captain Mackenzie, in which "miserable trick," """veriest wretch," "unprincipled politician," "imbecile," "traitor," "disgraceful imbecile," "greatest curse," were the choicest epithets applied to the President of America and his Secretary at War. The last man then, we would say, with whom So fares the only attempt to dispute, by Captain Mackenzie should have entered into direct means, a single statement or opinion communication on the subject of the dread- in the "Foreign Quarterly Review!"the basest of which we have already advertOther artifices are adopted of course, to

that he had none, but that he died wishing them every happiness. I deserve death,' he added, fear is that my repentance may be too late. 'for this as well as for other crimes. My only When I asked him if he could or would mention any one whom he had particularly injured, and whom he might save from obloquy, he answered not for some time, but at last said he had injured chiefly his parents, and that his death would kill his poor mother.' I was not till then aware would not have been more guilty had he succeeded in his designs. He replied that I do not know what would have become of me if I had succeeded. I fear it may yet injure my father.' I replied that it was then too late to think of that, and told him that if he had succeeded it would have injured his father much more-that it would not have been in nature for his father not to interpose to save him; AND THAT FOR THOSE WHO HAD MONEY AND FRIENDS IN AMERICA, THERE WAS NO PUNISHMENT FOR THE WORST OF CRIMES."*

that he had a mother. I then asked him if he

ful events in which he had borne chief part, was the man signalized by his hatred of the family whom those events had plunged into ed. The most natural and the most amusdeepest affliction-the editor of this "Cou- ing we will now detail. It is very trite to rier and Enquirer." But as we have said, have to remind the reader of the wellhe was the first. And he has paid the favor known propensity of delinquents of all back with all fitting gratitude. He has zeatimes and countries, when detected in some lously defended Captain Mackenzie through-common and notorious villany, to catch at out, and upheld him as a friend.

แ

Even this friend, therefore, we will now bring to justify the only special passage in our "Review" which his advocate has dared to dispute. We do not apologize for having detained the reader with the episode necessary to introduce this evidence, because it has served at the same time to throw valuable illustration on other points of our subject. We asserted, that to convict a man in America, unless he was a hegro, was no necessary prelude to his punishment. We said that a murderer, whether of life, or of character without which life is worthless, had infinite chances, if he happened to have a white face. And, asks the editor of the "Courier" triumphantly, what say my countrymen to the truth of that? Let Captain Mackenzie answer, in a description of the last interview he held with the youth he was about to hang, as given in his memorable narrative.

"I then turned to Spencer, and again asked him which might accrue to Commander Mackenzie. in case of his justification by the tribunal to whose ordeal he expected he would be subjected, was solicited for the benefit of his nephew, O. H. Perry, whom he recommended as a fit and proper person TO BE APPOINTED IN THE ROOM OF MIDSHIPMAN SPENCER." (!!!)

that desperate chance of escape which seems to them always, by some universal process of no-reasoning, to be implied in the treacherous turning round on their associates. There is, happily for the virtuous, no confidence, no friendship in crime. Thus, in the case before us, it has been sought to make the "New York Herald"

* The note which was appended to this satisfactory statement of the moral condition of the newspaper-ridden republic, was not less happily characwith his editorial friend, in all probability, at his teristic. "Perhaps," says Captain Mackenzieelbow-" perhaps this is an erroneous opinion, which I could not justify; but I must now record faithfully what was said on this melancholy occasion." Let us fortify, however, the delicate perhaps of the Captain-so scrupulous when men are not waiting to be hanged-and quote upon this subject an authority probably better than his own. The "New York American," one of those few well-written papers of the States-" rarissimi nantes in gurgite vasto❞— which, as we formerly remarked, not even the curse of party can purge of its title to respect-thus remarked upon the point in issue before the Mackenzie narrative appeared. "We have had of late such melancholy evidence of the facility with which criminals having wealthy and influential friends, can evade the hands of justice, and set the law at defiance, that we can hardly suppose that this abandoned young man would have received the just desert of his crime, had he not paid the penalty on the very deck on which he had determined to consummate his guilt."

"The great burthen of this Review, is to fix upon the Press of the United States, the folly, the obscenity, the recklessness, and the vulgarity of the New York Herald;' a paper for which, as well knows, the American people entertain no other sentiment than unmitigated disgust, and which happens to be edited by a band panions, and co-laborers on some of the most of foreigners, who were actually his boon comscurrilous of the London papers” (!!!)

the sole luckless scape-goat. "It is noto- repudiate (it is a good American word, rious," says the "Journal of Commerce," that!) his worthy associate. "that the Herald' was established among us after the model of the London press.' [Oh! excellent Westminster' reviewer, what a prize you will be to your worthy associates!] "And now they have the impudence to come out and disown their own bantling. We have frequently thought," adds this cautious and considerate journal, "that the influence of that violent and abusive paper amongst us was exaggerated; that is, The allusion is to the distinguished wrisupposing it was not full of obscenities, for which unhappily readers may be found ter on whom, for purposes before described, every where." In other words, the reputhe authorship of our Review has been atdiation might run thus: Our violent and tempted to be fastened; and on whom, we abusive associate would really, after all, former article, he will not have known what are very well aware-though, as with the get no more by his violence and abuse than we do; but he is so peculiarly admirable in we are now writing, will not have been conthe obscene line, which everybody is un-word of it till it is made public to all the sulted respecting it, will not have seen a happily inclined to, that there, we must world-the ruffianly libeller and his friends admit, he carries the day. We sympathize will seek to fix the responsibility of the with the journalist of Commerce in his confessed inability, that way, to compete present article also. Equally, and as wilwith his more successful rival, and we will fully, does he mistake the "great burthen" of that Review of October. It was to fix add to his credit, that we cannot say we have ever observed him even make the at- upon the press of the United States, in tempt. Indeed this "Journal of Commerce" companionship with like qualities of the "New York Herald," the folly, the obscenis on the whole a very dull, and (as far as any thing of the genus "newspaper" can the "New York Courier and Enquirer." ity, the recklessness, and the vulgarity of be in America) a very harmless journal-He knows this, and he knows that we have one, for example, as it naïvely confessed on the 10th of January last, who "cannot see the 'Courier's' wit in telling OUTRAGEOUS LIES directly in the face of public knowledge"

-and we should not have made further mention of it, if it had not fallen into this fit of anger against ourselves. But now for the WIT of the "Courier."

He cries out, too, of course, and in far

louder tone, the precious "Tu Quoque" argument. "Pooh!" exclaims the wit, in his least indecent mood and phrase, American press compared with the English,

"the

is as a Chesterfield to a Cobbett !" The argument is become natural to large classes in America. You have it used on every occasion. Charge them with dishonesty in their dealings, and they offer to find you dealers quite as dishonest; charge them with national degradation or dishonor, and they look round for a nation in a like predicament. To reform their dealings, or to strive to amend their nation, is the last thing thought of. But passing this, we come to the Chesterfield language, wherewith the "Courier and Enquirer" would

As these sheets are passing through the press, we observe almost the precise argument of the text put by the "Spectator" (March 25th), in remarks upon a statement of the "New York American."

done it. We have pilloried him here in
England. He tries to escape, and it is the
fixes upon his name more deeply and irrevo-
dreary impotence of this very effort which
cably "the folly, the obscenity, the reck-
dismal efforts to be facetious ;-talks with
lessness, and the vulgarity." He makes
frantic outrage of the writer who is sup-
posed to have placed him in his pillory, as
one "who for more than half his life has
lived in the stews of London and eaten his
from the refuge garbage of hotels and the ta-
daily bread at cold wittal' shops supplied
bles of gentlemen ;"-and in fancy hears
the more loudly greeted with
himself, across all that wide Atlantic, only

The dismal, universal hiss, the sound
Of public scorn.

How we should feel for the "Westminster
Review" with such a creature as this to
defend! How yet more deeply should we
sympathize with such a man as the intelli-
gent "New York Merchant," who is oblig-
ed to think the "Courier and Enquirer"
decidedly one of the best papers published
in New York, although that does not say
much, he mournfully "confesses."

But we are to believe-no other sentiment than unmitigated disgust is entertain

ed in America for the "Courier's" asso- | Out of pure pity, he says, as he had acted ciate, convicted like himself and like him-to many other scoundrels" (the phrase self under punishment, the "New York happily expresses the only class which such Herald ?" It is unmitigated disgust which a man ever pities or employs,) he had taken has given the "Herald" upwards of thirty him into his service. "I soon found, howthousand subscribers! It is unmitigated ever, that he was of little use as a reporter, disgust which so strengthens it that it rears its impudent head above the law, and runs its career of reckless villainy, unbridled and triumphant! It is unmitigated disgust on the part of the American people, that renders it worth the while of the Chief Magistrate who hopes for his re-election at the hands of that people, to incur the active hatred of a majority in the Senate, and the contempt and distrust of (let us hope) large classes of educated men, by openly connecting his government with this "New York Herald," by taking under his protection the wretched slanderers in its pay, and by rewarding their zeal for himself by "secret agencies" in the service of the state! Will even the Westminster Reviewer be able to believe that?

and too lazy for any purpose, except loafing at taverns, or playing billiards with jack-asses. I continued him, but found him totally useless, deceptive, impudent, presuming and extravagant. Hence his drafts for money. I refused to fork over more money, after his numerous deceptions practised both on President Tyler and myself. I then dismissed him, and am sorry to find that the President STILL continues to employ him in the Treasury department. If the President has any regard for his reputation, he ought to dismiss him instantly." Little may be added to this graceful picture, but if it could receive another effective touch, it has it in the following letter. It is a part of the private correspondence of Mr. Parmelee with his friend, the editor of the 'New York Herald."

but the two united would break down the angel the Herald, would kill any man with the senate: Gabriel. Yours, T. H. PARMELEE.”

The first part of this description of an influence so horrible, we proved in our former review; the last we shall now proceed have just returned from the White House. [The "Washington, Friday evening.-Dear Sir,-I to prove. When rogues (we grieve to have White House is the mansion of the President of to draw so many illustrations from this the United States.] As for myself, I cannot have special walk of life, but the subject will be an office worth taking, for the senate would not our excuse) when rogues, we say, fall out, confirm me under any circumstances. The Clay honest men are apt to get their own. A senators all hate me more than any man in the month or two since, this happened with two country, except the President and yourself. of the most notorious rogues of the "Her-Friendship for the President, or connexion with ald;" the "chief devil" himself, and the fiendish representative (a person of the name of Parmelee) he had stationed at Washington. The difference, which dates The difficulty seems to have been solved within the last month or six weeks, first ap- at last by appointment "to a secret agency peared in an attack upon the rogue in chief, on the frontier," in happy defiance of those in one of the "Herald's rivals. This was Clay senators, whose hatred to the "Herclearly from the pen of Mr. Parmelee, who ald," since it implied no hatred to the having just been displaced from his honora-"Courier and Enquirer," we must be excusble post at Washington, took occasion to ed if we decline to attribute to any excludescribe his successor as "Attre, the notori sively lofty feeling. ous vagabond." "It is very curious," he It will not do, after this, to speak of the proceeded, "to notice how very differently" Herald" but as the most popular and the Herald' is looked upon since Parmelee largely circulated journal in America. It left it. It was, before, a sort of semi-official is popular in the proportion of its infamy organ of the President. It was owing to this that the paper gained such a circulation over the United States. An attempt of the Scotch vagabond who owns the Herald' to cheat him of several hundred dollars, led to a separation." In answer to this, the editor of the "Herald" undertakes to prove Mr. Parmelee " a self-convicted liar ;" and it may be said, he quite succeeds. He prints a number of his letters, professing eternal gratitude and friendship, and thus delineates Mr. P.'s general literary career.

and indecency. It is accounted clever, only because frightfully reckless of all moral restraints; a recklessness most effective in that condition of society. "Have no money dealings with my father, for dotard as he is, he will make an ass of you." What money gives to the miser, the utterly reckless man, no matter how imbecile and ignorant, is endowed with by the party passion of America. It gives him what stands in the stead of intellect, of honesty and virtue. The extraordinary influence of a great En

glish advocate used to be explained by the remark, that there were twelve Scarletts in the witness box. We cannot explain the hundred thousand readers of the "New York Herald," except on the supposition of a hundred thousand Bennetts in America.

these opposed and counteracting interests can assume, has its lurking principle of safety. Their most evil and most vicious element dashes itself against the general struc. ture of society in vain.

found in that part of the press which is published weekly; but the circulation is larger, and in one of these instances, is said to exceed thirty thousand. Thirty thousand pothouses ring all the more noisily for this one day in the week; things that should be reWe have never denied that we have an verenced and respected, are made the subinfamous press in England: we put that ject of vulgar abuse; there is violence, exfact forward in the very front of our first aggeration, and intemperance ;-all great exposure of the literary delinquencies of evils. But were they evils fifty times as America, and we do not desire that it should great, they act within a limited sphere, and be lost sight of. It marks, in a manner too cannot penetrate beyond. There they exstriking and salutary, the difference in the haust their fury and their mischief. In such moral and social condition of the countries. a country as ours, where every class, (exThat infamous press, we cannot too often cept, we grieve to say, the lowest laboring repeat, is limited to two newspapers, pub-class, to whose condition, God be thanked, lished weekly, and in circulation, as in men's minds are at last awakening,) are to every other respect, the lowest of their con- some certain extent protected against every temporaries. Position, they have none; other class, and have each, in a greater or influence, except with those of whose bad less degree, their special bulwark of shelconscience or cowardice they make a mar-ter from the gross or false pretensions of the ket, none. Any one who pretended to talk rest, even the very worst shape which of their political import, would be laughed at. The real English people have no concern with them, any more than with the gambling house or other scenes of vice in this most crowded metropolis of the world; or than with the so called fashionable men But what is the case in America? There who resort to them, and in whom these li- is a recent expression in much abuse, and bellous papers find their readers and their which promises to become fashionable for friends. It happened, not many week all kinds of purposes, the tyranny of the masince, that one of them, through its chief jority. For ourselves, we do not in the abconductor and proprietor, indiscreetly plac-stract discover any thing so very frightful ed itself within reach of the healthy classes in what it expresses. If there is to be a of our people in one of their places of pub- tyranny of any kind, this seems on the whole lic entertainment, when the man, though to put forth the greatest amount of just what he then proposed was harmless enough and might possibly have had some merit of its own, was ignominiously driven out of the public sight, with vehement contempt and execration. It was, on the very same evening, matter of sad and pompous complaint in the House of Lords, that the law could not effectively reach these libellers; when it thus fell to the good fortune of some hundreds, representing the good old hearty English feeling, to find at that instant one of them self-placed within their reach. We can punish him, at any rate, they said; and how they did it, is little likely ever to be forgotten in the annals of scandalous Eng. lish newspapers.

pretension. The misery of it is, in the present state of the republic, that it is a tyranny altogether unexampled in former times and governments, because utterly without the least control. If we are asked whether we suppose it possible to check the further advances of the democratic tendency in the United States, we answer no, but that most possible and practicable would it be, by a very different course from that which is now pursued, to guide, to elevate, to redeem it, to conduct it to a noble and enduring destiny. As it is, every thing swells the forces of society in one direction, against which not a single effective stand is made

in any

one quarter. In this state of But the absence of mere personal scandal things the "New York Herald" made its apdoes not necessarily imply the good con-pearance some eight or nine years ago, and duct of a journal in other important re- found society thoroughly prepared for its spects? We admit this. It is our charge career of infamous success. In one imagainst a vast many American papers, that mense division, utter recklessness; in the have no specially libellous vocation. We other, where safety lay, utter indifference. must also admit, then, that England can this And what a lesson for some present resistway sin as well. As in the other case, how-ance against dangers still to come, is emboever, the instances are only two, and to be died in the past course and influence of this

terrible foe to decency and order! All common cause against the dishonest and inthose vices of the republic which should famous, the enemy of all. So-uninterferhave been gradually wearing away-the ed with--went on the "Herald," till it has prying, inquisitive, unwholesome growth, of reached its daily circulation of upwards of a young and prematurely forced society-thirty thousand; till it can boast of the fa have been pampered and bloated to increas- vors of the Chief Magistrate of the Repubed enormity. For as nothing breeds so ra- lic: till it forces its vagabond agents and pidly as vermin, the "Herald" brood, within tools into the public service: till, in a word, this brief space of years, has almost cover- it has become A Power in the state. It is ed the land. We are told, and we can well of as little use fuming about this, as to debelieve it, that the "Herald" has imitators ny, in the matter of slavery, the degradation and worthy disciples in very nearly every and depression of America below every othsmall village, town, or city in America. It er civilized country in the world. Let them seems at first incredible, that no strong ef- fume as they will, the thing is so, and until fort should have been made to resist all this, they do something better and more practi but a little reflection explains the cause. cal, so it will continue. The President of America is not a dolt or a madman, and would hardly place himself in such relations with the "New York Herald" without a sufficient reason. His present position has a tendency to sharpen the wits, and to show him where profit lies. We take his authority to be therefore, that in this paperthis wicked, cold-blooded representative, not so much of any special party, as of the reckless, outrageous, licentious, and abominable qualities, of which all party is now composed-he sees his best protection in the long run against the storms which threaten him.

The existing press of America had itself effectively brought the curse upon the land, of which the "foreign" adventurer (for Scotland voided him over the Atlantic) who started the "Herald" simply took advantage. This was the press which, before the birth of the "Herald," Governor Clinton had denounced in terms we quoted in our former Review, and of which, some years earlier, Jefferson expressed a strong conviction in his correspondence, that had its intemperance and calumnies been known in the time of Washington, they would have driven that great man from public life. This was the press of which, when Captain Hamilton was in America, that intelligent and acute observer made it his business to read specimens from all parts of the Union," and pronounced it as his opinion that they were so contemptible in talent, and in abuse so horribly outrageous, as to disgust him far more with the people who could endure them, than with the writers who had produced them. And, we repeat, by this press, when the "Herald" appeared, the republic was already afflicted with that Spirit of Party which is too nearly allied to the Spirit of Licentiousness to be able to check its career. Pari passu with the oth. er has it since continued, giving and taking nourishment from the same polluted source, till we see its hideous consummation in such a paper as the largely circulated and influential "Courier and Enquirer," and have to grieve over its deplorable excesses in even such able, respectable, and well conducted, though for that reason, not widely But we reserve any further remark till popular journals, as the "New York Ame- we have printed the extracts. Though we rican," the "Boston Daily Advertiser," the have abridged even those we quote (never "New York Evening Post," and some few to the omission of a syllable that looks in others. Here, therefore, was the safety of the remotest degree like answer or dethe "Herald." Even the honestest men of fence), and omitted some dozen times the the opposite parties were too hotly engaged number with which we might, if inclined to in tearing each other to pieces, to bethink so sorry a work, fill more than another them how far better it had been to make number of our "Review," they will yet, in

But we have promised in this Review to describe the "Answer" we have received, and it is time to introduce the flattering reception which was given to our article of October by the journal, whose character, as we hope, we have now thoroughly explained: the "New York Daily Herald." It is illustrative of much that we have offered to the reader's consideration, and may also very possibly lead him to suppose that beneath all the tone of reckless bullying it exhibits, beneath all its boasted self-glorification in disgrace and shame, there is illconcealed fear, trembling which will have way, pain which puts on sorry grimace, and the bitter sense that, libertine jack. pudding as it may still attempt to show it self, our Review has placed a noose around its neck, which it would only ask one spirited demonstration of the decency and intelligence of America, to tighten effectually, at once, and for ever.