language wholly unjustifiable. But in extenuation it is to be recollected that no writer connected with the press, was so unfairly and indeed indecently attacked as he was during the time when he had charge of the Evening Post. It must not be forgotten, that he was abused and calumniated in a manner almost unprecedented, even in the annals of the American press, and that his errors in this matter, were, to a great extent, errors of retaliation.

Nothing could form a greater contrast with the vehemence of his writings, than the mildness and courtesy of his social life. I have repeatedly witnessed the surprise of those who knew him only through the columns of his paper, when accident brought them personally in contact with him. No one more enjoyed the pleasures of society-no one allowed less of the bitterness of political controversy to infuse itself into his social relations. His naval education, and "the grave and wrinkled purposes of his life," gave dignity to his manners, and he had a softness and delicacy in his character which the acrimony of political strife had no effect to diminish.

His style is often diffuse, and it may occasionally be charged with rhetorical extravagance, but to this a sufficient answer is perhaps to be found in the fact that these writings are newspaper articles; written under the spur and excitement of the hour, and often with the intention and under the necessity of appealing quite as much to the passions as the judgment. It is an unhappy obligation, but one apparently imposed upon the conductors of the press, that they are compelled to arouse the public mind and stimulate it to action; and this is often to be done solely by infusing into the

system, not the wholesome mental food of truth, but the powerful and dangerous excitants of invective and declamation.

Another and one of the highest attributes of the author of these works, was boldness-courage. He had no conception of what fear was; physically, morally and intellectually, he had no idea of the meaning of the term. No personal danger could appal him; no theory did he ever hesitate to adopt because it was scouted by the prevailing opinion, and no cause did he ever fail to espouse because it was destitute of friends. When the mobs first attacked the abolitionists in the city of New-York, he had not made the subject of slavery one of very particular consideration, but he was the earliest to denounce the popular violence, and to call upon the municipal government to suppress it by the most vigorous and effective weapons. The same course he pursued in regard to the Bank. The vehemence of his attacks upon that institution brought him into direct and frequent collision with members of the mercantile classes, but never was he deterred from this path by any apprehension of injury to his interests. The course pursued by the paper (the Evening Post,) during the crisis of 1833 and 1834, was extremely injurious to the pecuniary affairs of that journal which had previously, by its opposition to the tariff, made itself to some extent a favourite of the commercial community.

This same courage taking what is perhaps the higher shape of fortitude, showed itself in a manner equally remarkable in his private life. Amid the reverses of fortune, when harrassed by pecuniary embarrassments during the tortures of a disease which

E

tore away his life piece-meal, he ever maintained the same manly and unaltered front-the same cheerfulness of disposition-the same dignity of conduct. No humiliating solicitation-no weak complaint for a moment escaped him.

But the intellectual character of Mr. Leggett, marked as it was, was far inferior in excellence to his moral attributes. It is to these he owes the respect and affection in which his memory is held-it is to these that the influence his pen acquired during his life is chiefly attributable.

At the same time it should be said that it is difficult to distinguish between his intellect and his character. They both derived force and support from each other, and it is not easy to draw any dividing line. There is nothing of that incongruity which history exhibits in some of the greatest men upon her page, where extraordinary mental power has been unsupported by moral energy.

But

His great desire on all the questions which agitated the country appeared to be the attainment and establishment of truth. The vehemence of his temperament and the force of his original impressions often had an obscuring tendency upon his mind. against these he was forever striving. No one familiar with him but must have perceived the progress 'his mind was continually making, and the manly independence with which, when once convinced of an error, he denounced and cast it off.

Truth was his first love and his last-the affection of his life. His most favourite work was, I think, Milton's Areopagitica, and the magnificent description of Truth which it contains was constantly on his lips.

Equally remarkable with this, was his superiority to all selfish considerations. He was doubtless sometimes misled by his passions and his prejudices-never by his interest. No personal considerations could weigh with him a moment, when set in opposition to what his deliberate judgment convinced him was the cause of truth. Nothing can more satisfactorily prove this than his conduct on the abolition question. The first time that this matter distinctly presented itself, was in the summer of the year 1835. The administration was then in its palmiest days. The contested elections of 1834 had terminated successfully. The attack of the President upon the Bank, had been sustained by the state of New-York, and to

appearance the government had established itself in an impregnable position. At this time Mr. Leggett was the sole conductor of the Evening Post, the leading, if not the only administration organ in the city of New-York. He had edited that journal during the warmest part of the conflict, and on every ground he had a right to demand and expect the support of the party in power.

At that moment Mr. Kendall, one of the most prominent members of the government, issued his wellknown letters to the postmasters at Charleston and New-York, in which he justified, to a certain extent, the conduct of those officers who had stopped the mails containing what he termed, the "incendiary, inflammatory and insurrectionary" manifestoes of the abolitionists.

That party at this time, was a small and unpopular sect. It is always painful to utter a syllable detracting from the merit of persons unques

tionably animated by the impulse of a high moral principle-more especially of men combating with the baleful institution of slavery. But the truth should at all times have precedence. Wisdom of conduct is as necessary as integrity of purpose. The unpopularity of the abolitionists was not wholly without cause. They had done injury to the progressive cause of freedom, by a violence of denunciation which the good sense of the country pronounced unjust and dangerous. Their proposed measures were not sufficiently distinct to be intelligible to the people; and their leading organs had not manifested a proper cient deference either for the great charter of the union or for that spirit of concession and harmony upon which our political existence depends, and which forms the corner-stone of the Constitution itself. It is however with the fact that we are here principally concerned. But a few months before, they had been the victims of mob-law in New-York, and they were preeminently unpopular with the commercial classes of the north, whose interests had taken the alarm, and who had enrolled under the dark banner of the detestable institution. Thus disliked by their immediate neighbours, they were absolutely abhorrent to the people of the South. They in fact stood alone, a small and uninfluential sect, professing ultra and impracticable doctrines, without power or support. In this matter of the post-office law, they stood unsustained, except by justice and freedom.

But this was enough for Mr. Leggett-that an unjust and unconstitutional power was attempted to be exerted against them was enough for him. Contrary to the urgent solicitations of many of his personal VOL. I-2