cause was entrusted to Emmet, Ogden, and others.  We believe that Aaron Burr was consulted on the part of Mr. Astor, though he did not appear in the trial.  The efforts of the array of counsel employed by the State were exerted in vain to find a flaw in the paper upon which Astor’s claim mainly rested.  Mr. Webster’s speech on this occasion betrays, even to the unprofessional reader, both that he had no case and that he knew he had not, for he indulged in a strain of remark that could only have been designed to prejudice, not convince, the jury.

“It is a claim for lands,” said he,

“not in their wild and forest state, but for lands the intrinsic value of which is mingled with the labor expended upon them.  It is no every-day purchase, for it extends over towns and counties, and almost takes in a degree of latitude.  It is a stupendous speculation.  The individual who now claims it has not succeeded to it by inheritance; he has not attained it, as he did that vast wealth which no one less envies him than I do, by fair and honest exertions in commercial enterprise, but by speculation, by purchasing the forlorn hope of the heirs of a family driven from their country by a bill of attainder.  By the defendants, on the contrary, the lands in question are held as a patrimony.  They have labored for years to improve them.  The rugged hills had grown green under their cultivation before a question was raised as to the integrity of their titles.”

A line of remark like this would appeal powerfully to a jury of farmers.  Its effect, however, was destroyed by the simple observation of one of the opposing counsel:—­

“Mr. Astor bought this property confiding in the justice of the State of New York, firmly believing that in the litigation of his claim his rights would be maintained.”

It is creditable to the administration of justice in New York, and creditable to the very institution of trial by jury, that Mr. Astor’s most unpopular and even odious cause was triumphant.  Warned by this verdict, the Legislature consented to compromise on Mr. Astor’s own terms.  The requisite amount of “Astor stock,” as it was called, was created.  Mr. Astor received about half a million of dollars, and the titles of the lands were secured to their rightful owners.

The crowning glory of Mr. Astor’s mercantile career was that vast and brilliant enterprise which Washington Irving has commemorated in “Astoria.”  No other single individual has ever set on foot a scheme so extensive, so difficult, and so costly as this; nor has any such enterprise been carried out with such sustained energy and perseverance.  To establish a line of trading-posts from St. Louis to the Pacific, a four-months’ journey in a land of wilderness, prairie, mountain, and desert, inhabited by treacherous or hostile savages; to found a permanent settlement on the Pacific coast as the grand depot of furs and supplies; to arrange a plan by which the furs