A thoroughly adverse popular will having thus been manifested, it was now determined to try the Senate, and here the chances for privilege were better.  With a population little greater than that of Pennsylvania, the New England States had six times the Senatorial representation.  With readers not a fifth as numerous as were those of Ohio, Carolina, Florida, and Georgia had thrice the number of Senators.  By combining these heterogeneous elements the will of the people—­so frequently and decidedly expressed—­might, it was thought, be set aside.  To that end, the Secretary of State, himself one of the plaintiffs, had negotiated the treaty then before the Senate, of the terms of which the defendants had been kept in utter ignorance, and by means of which the principle of taxation without representation was now to be established.

Such was the state of affairs at the date at which, in compliance with the request of a Pennsylvania Senator, the author of these letters put on paper the ideas he had already expressed to him in conversation.  By him and other Senators they were held to be conclusive, so conclusive that the plaintiffs were speedily brought to see that the path of safety, for the present at least, lay in the direction of abandoning the treaty and allowing it to be quietly laid in the grave in which it since has rested.  That such should have been their course was, at the time, much regretted by the defendants, as they would have greatly preferred an earnest and thorough discussion of the question before the court.  Had opportunity been afforded it would have been discussed by one, at least, of the master minds of the Senate;[1] and so discussed as to have satisfied the whole body of our people, authors and editors, perhaps, excepted, that their cause was that of truth and justice; and that if in the past there had been error it had been that of excess of liberality towards the plaintiffs in the suit.

   [Footnote 1:  Senator Clayton of Delaware.]

The issue that was then evaded is now again presented, eminent counsel having been employed, and the opening speech having just now been made.[2] Having read it carefully, we find in it, however, nothing beyond a labored effort at reducing the literary profession to a level with those of the grocer and the tallow-chandler.  It is an elaborate reproduction of Oliver Twist’s cry for “more! more!”—­a new edition of the “Beggar’s Petition,” perusal of which must, as we think, have affected with profound disgust many, if not even most, of the eminent persons therein referred to.  In it, we have presented for consideration the sad case of one distinguished writer and admirable man who, by means of his pen alone, had been enabled to pass through a long life of most remarkable enjoyment, although his money receipts had, by reason of the alleged injustice of the consumers of his products, but little exceeded $200,000; that of a lady writer who, by means of a sensational novel