"Fenimore now took up the Fonda libel suit, and fought the whole battle over again, from beginning to end. Now we had scarcely touched on this, supposing that, since we did not justify, we could only refer to the statements contained in the publications put in issue between us, and that the Judge would check us, if we went beyond these. Fenimore, however, had no trouble; said whatever he pleased-much of which would have been very pertinent if he, instead of we, had been on trial-showed that he did not believe anything of Mr. Weed's family being sick at the time of the Fonda Trials, why he did not, &c., &c. We thought he might have reserved all this till we got down to dinner, which everybody was now hungry for, and where it would have been more in place than addressed to the Jury.

"Knowing what we positively did and do of the severe illness of the wife of Mr. Weed, and the dangerous state of his eldest daughter at the time of the Fonda Trials in question-regarding them as we do-the jokes attempted to be cut by Fenimore over their condition-his talk of the story growing up from one girl to the mother and three or four daughters -his fun about their probably having the Asiatic cholera among them or some other contagious disease, &c., &c., however it may have sounded to others, did seem to us rather inhu- Hallo there! we had like to have put our foot right into it again, after all our tuition. We mean to say, considering that, just the day before, Mr. Weed had been choked by his counsel into surrendering at discretion to Fenimore, being assured (correctly) by said counsel that, as the law is now expounded and administered by the Supreme Court, he had no earthly choice but to bow his neck to the yoke, pay all that might be claimed of him and publish whatever humiliations should be required, or else prepare to be immediately ruined by the suits which Fenimore and Richard had already commenced or were getting ready for him—considering all this, and how much Mr. Weed has paid and must pay towards his subsistence-how keenly W. has had to smart for speaking his mind of him-we did not think that Fenimore's talk at this time and place of Weed's family, and of Weed himself as a man so paltry that he would pretend sickness in his family as an excuse to keep away from Court, and resort to trick after trick to put off his case for a day or two-it seemed to us, considering the present relation of the parties, most ungen-There we go again! We mean to say that the whole of this part of Mr. Cooper's speech grated upon our feelings rather harshly. We believe that isn't a libel. (This talking with a gag in the mouth is rather awkward at first, but we'll get the hang of it in time. Have patience with us, Fenimore on one side and the Public on the other, till we nick it.)

*

Personally, Fenimore treated us pretty well on this trial-let us thank him for that--and so much the more that he did it quite at the expense of his consistency and his logic. For, after stating plumply that he con. sidered us the best of the whole Press-gang he had been fighting with, he yet went on to argue that all we had done and attempted with the intent of rendering him strict justice, had been in aggravation of our original

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trespass! Yes, there he stood, saying one moment that we were, on the whole, rather a clever fellow, and every other arguing that we had done nothing but to injure him wantonly and maliciously at first, and then all in our power to aggravate that injury! (What a set the rest of us must be!)

And here is where he hit us hard for the first time. He had talked over an hour without gaining, as we could perceive, an inch of ground. When his compliment was put in, we supposed he was going on to say he was satisfied with our explanation of the matter and our intentions to do him justice, and would now throw up the case. But instead of this he took a sheer the other way, and came down upon us with the assertion that our publishing his statement of the Fonda business with our comments, was an aggravation of our original offence-was in effect adding insult to injury!

"There was a little point made by the prosecution which seemed to us too little. Our Fonda letter had averred that Cooper had three libel-suits coming off there at that Circuit-two against Webb, one against Weed. Richard and Fenimore argued that this was a lie-the one against Weed was all. The nicety of the distinction here taken will be appreciated when we explain that the suits against Webb were indictments for libels on J. Fenimore Cooper!

"We supposed that Fenimore would pile up the law against us, but were dissappointed. He merely cited the last case decided against an Editor by the Supreme Court of this State. Of course, it was very fierce against Editors and their libels, but did not strike us as at all meeting the issue we had raised, or covering the grounds on which this case ought to have been decided.

"Fenimore closed very effectively with an appeal for his character, and a picture of the sufferings of his wife and family-his grown-up daughters often suffused in tears by these attacks on their father. Some said this was mawkish, but we consider it good, and think it told. We have a dif ferent theory as to what the girls were crying for, but we won't state it lest another dose of Supreme Court law be administered to us. (Not any more at present, I thank ye.)

"Fenimore closed something before two o'clock, having spoken over an hour and a half. If he had not wasted so much time in promising to make but a short speech and to close directly, he could have got through consid erably sooner. Then he did wrong to Richard by continually recurring to and fulsome eulogiums on the argument of 'my learned kinsman. Richard had made a good speech and an effective one-no mistake about it-and Fenimore must mar it first by needless, provoking interruptions, and then by praises which, though deserved, were horribly out of place and out of taste. Fenimore, my friend, you and I had better abandon the Bar-we are not likely either of us to cut much of a figure there. Let us quit before we make ourselves ridiculous.

"His Honour Judge Willard occupied a brief half hour in charging the

Jury. We could not decently appear occupied in taking down this Charge, and no one else did it—so we must speak of it with great circumspection. That he would go dead against us on the Law of the case we knew right well, from his decisions and charges on similar trials before. Not having his Law points before us, we shall not venture to speak of them. Suffice it to say, that they were New York Supreme and Circuit Court Law-no better and no worse than he has measured off to several editorial culprits before us. They are the settled maxims of the Supreme Court of this State in regard to the law of libel as applied to Editors and Newspapers, and we must have been a goose to expect any better than had been served out to our betters. The Judge was hardly, if at all, at liberty to know or tolerate any other.

"But we have filled our paper, and must close. The Judge charged very hard against us on the facts of the case, as calling for a pretty sizable verdict our legal guilt had of course been settled long before in the Supreme Court.

"When the Charge commenced, we would not have given Fenimore the first red cent for his verdict; when it closed, we understood that we were booked to suffer some. If the Jury had returned a verdict in our favour, the Judge must have been constrained by his charge to set it aside, as contrary to law.

"The Jury retired about half-past two, and the rest of us went to dinner. The Jury were hungry too, and did not stay out long. On comparing notes, there were seven of them for a verdict of $100, two for $200, and three for $500. They added these sums up-total $2,600-divided by 12, and the dividend was a little over $200; so they called it $200 damages and six cents costs, which of course carries full costs against us. We went back from dinner, took the verdict in all meekness, took a sleigh, and struck a bee-line for New-York.

"Thus for The Tribune the rub-a-dub is over; the adze we trust laid aside; the staves all in their places; the hoops tightly driven; and the heading not particularly out of order. Nothing remains but to pay piper, or cooper, or whatever; and that shall be promptly attended to.

"Yes, Fenimore shall have his $200. To be sure, we don't exactly see how we came to owe him that sum; but he has won it, and shall be paid. 'The court awards it, and the law doth give it.' We should like to meet him and have a social chat over the whole business, now it is over. There has been a good deal of fun in it, come to look back; and if he has as little ill will toward us as we bear to him, there shall never be another hard thought between us. We don't blame him a bit for the whole matter; he thought we injured him, sued us, and got his pay. Since the Jury have cut down his little bill from $3,000 to $200, we won't higgle a bit about the balance, but pay it on sight. In fact, we rather like the idea of being so munificent a patron (for our means) of American Literature; and are glad to do anything for one of the most creditable (of old) of our authors, who are now generally reduced to any shift for a living by that grand National

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rascality and greater folly, the denial of International Copyright. ("My pensive public,' don't flatter yourself that we are to be rendered mealymouthed toward you by our buffeting. We shall put it to your iniquities just as straight as a loon's leg, calling a spade a spade, and not an oblong garden implement, until the judicial construction of the law of libel shall take another hitch, and its penalties be invoked to shield communities as well as individuals from censure for their transgressions. Till then, keep a bright look out!)

"And Richard, too, shall have his share of 'the spoils of victory.' He has earned them fairly, and, in the main, like a gentleman-making us no needless trouble, and we presume no needless expense. All was fair and above board, save some little specks in his opening of the case, which we noticed some hours ago, and have long since forgiven. For the rest, we rather like what we have seen of him; and if anybody has any law business in Otsego, or any libel suits to prosecute anywhere, we heartily recommend Richard to do the work, warranting the client to be handsomely taken in and done for, throughout. (There's a puff, now, a man may be proud of. We don't give such every day out of pure kindness. It was Fenimore, we believe, that said on the trial, that our word went a great way in this country.) Can we say a good word for you, gallant fɔeman? We'll praise any thing of yours we have read except the Monikins.

"But sadder thoughts rush in on us in closing. Our case is well enough, or of no moment; but we cannot resist the conviction that by the result of these Cooper libel-suits, and by the Judicial constructions which produce that result, the Liberty of the Press-its proper influence and respectability, its power to rebuke wrong and to exert a salutary influence upon the Public Morals is fearfully impaired. We do not see how any paper can exist, and speak and act worthily and usefully in this State, without subjecting itself daily to innumerable, unjust, and crushing prosecutions and indictments for libel. Even if Juries could have nerves of iron to say and do what they really think right between man and man, the costs of such prosecution would ruin any journal. But the Liberty of the Press has often been compelled to appeal from the bench to the people. It will do so now, and we will not doubt with success. Let not, then, the wrong-doer who is cunning enough to keep the blind side of the law, the swindling banker who has spirited away the means of the widow and orphan, the libertine who has dragged a fresh victim to his lair, imagine that they are permanently shielded, by this misapplication of the law of libel, from fearless exposure to public scrutiny and indignation by the eagle gaze of an unfettered Press. Clouds and darkness may for the moment rest upon it, but they cannot in the nature of things, endure. In the very gloom of its present humiliation we read the prediction of its speedy and certain restoration to its rights and its true dignity—to a sphere not of legal sufferance merely, but of admitted usefulness and

honour."

After the trial, Mr. Greeley proceeded immediately to NewYork and wrote the account of it from which the foregoing extracts have been made. He also wrote other matter for the same number of The Tribune. The report alone filled eleven columns of the paper, making more reading matter than is contained in any fifty pages of Bancroft's History of the United States. "I think," said Mr. Greeley in 1868, "that was the best single day's work I ever did." Mr. Cooper, who appears to have had a mania for libel suits, brought another action against Mr. Greeley for several alleged libels in his report, but the skill of his lawyers-William H. Seward aud A. B. Conger-and his own humourous articles drove the novelist out of court. The cause never came to trial. But Mr. Cooper never came to have any great respect for the public press. "Ubi dolor, ibi digitas, one must needs scratch where it itches," drolly says the author of "The Anatomy of Melancholy."

Mr. Greeley, in his Recollections, speaks of certain libel suits which Mr. Weed had brought against sundry editors for gross assaults upon him, which were finally dropped out of court as too ancient, and fishlike to receive attention; and remarks:

This was probably the best disposition for him that could have been made of them. If he had tried them, and recovered nominal verdicts, his enemies would have shouted over those verdicts as virtually establishing the truth of their charges; while, if he had been awarded exemplary damages, these would have been cited as measuring the damages to be given against him in each of the hundred libel-suits thereafter brought against him. This consideration was forcibly brought home to me when, years afterward, having been outrageously libelled with regard to a sum of $1,000, which it was broadly intimated that a railroad or canal company in Iowa had given me for services rendered, or to be rendered, I ordered suits commenced against two of the most reckless libellers. But, when time had been allowed for reflection, I perceived that I could afford neither to lose nor to win these suits; that such verdicts as I ought to recover would be cited as measuring the damages that I ought to pay in all future libel-suits brought against me; so I gladly accepted such retractions as my libellers saw fit to make, and discontinued my suits. Henceforth, that man must very badly want to be sued who provokes me to sue him for libel.?

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