In one of the controversies of that time, Cooper bore a distinguished part.  The Revue Britannique, a periodical published in Paris, boldly affirmed the government of the United States to be one of the most expensive in the world, and its people among the most heavily taxed of mankind.  This assertion was supported with a certain show of proof, and the writer affected to have established the conclusion that a republic must necessarily be more expensive than a monarchy.  The partisans of the court were delighted with the reasoning of the article, and claimed a triumph over our ancient friend La Fayette, who, during forty years, had not ceased to hold up the government of the United States as the cheapest in the world.  At the suggestion of La Fayette, Cooper replied to this attack upon his country in a letter which was translated into French, and, together with, another from General Bertrand, for many years a resident in America, was laid before the people of France.

These, two letters provoked a shower of rejoinders, in which, according to Cooper, misstatements were mingled with scurrility.  He commenced a series of letters on the question in dispute, which were published in the National, a daily sheet, and gave the first evidence of that extraordinary acuteness in controversy which was no less characteristic of his mind than the vigor of his imagination.  The enemies of La Fayette pressed into their service Mr. Leavitt Harris, of New Jersey, afterwards our charge d’affaires at the court of France, but Cooper replied to Mr. Harris in the National of May 2d, 1832, closing a discussion in which he had effectually silenced those who objected to our institutions on the score of economy.  Of these letters, which would form an important chapter in political science, no entire copy, I have been told, is to be found in this country.

One of the consequences of earnest controversy is almost invariably personal ill-will.  Cooper was told by one who held an official station under the French government, that the part he had taken in this dispute concerning taxation would neither be forgotten nor forgiven.  The dislike he had incurred in that quarter was strengthened by his novel of the Bravo, published in the year 1831, while he was in the midst of his quarrel with the aristocratic party.  In that work, of which he has himself justly said that it was thoroughly American in all that belonged to it, his object was to show how institutions, professedly created to prevent violence and wrong, become, when perverted from their natural destination, the instruments of injustice; and how, in every system which makes power the exclusive property of the strong, the weak are sure to be oppressed.  The work is written with all the vigor and spirit of his best novels; the magnificent city of Venice, in which the scene of the story is laid, stands continually before the imagination; and from time to time the gorgeous ceremonies of the Venetian republic pass under our eyes, such as the marriage of the Doge with the Adriatic, and the, contest of the gondolas for the prize of speed.  The Bravo himself and several of the other characters are strongly conceived and distinguished, but the most remarkable of them all is the spirited and generous-hearted daughter of the jailer.