spirit, that they are freely left to the ultimate, impartial consideration of mankind. You have now the fate of this lunatic in your hands. To him as to me, so far as we can judge, it is comparatively indifferent what be the issue. For aught that we can judge, the prisoner is unconscious of danger, and would be insensible to suffering, let it come when it might. A verdict can only hasten or retard, by a few months or years, the time when his bruised, diseased, wandering and benighted spirit shall return to Him who sent it forth on its sad and dreary pilgrimage.

The circumstances under which this trial closes are peculiar. I have seen capital cases where the parents, brothers, sisters, friends of the accused, surrounded him, eagerly hanging upon the lips of his advocate, and watching, in the countenances of the Court and jury, every smile and frown which might seem to indicate his fate. But there is no such scene here. The prisoner, though in the greenness of youth, is withered, decayed, senseless, almost lifeless. He has no father here. The descendant of slaves, that father died a victim to the vices of a superior race. There is no mother here, for her child is stained and polluted with the blood of mothers and of a sleeping infant; and he "looks and laughs so that she cannot bear to look upon him." There is no brother, or sister, or friend here. Popular rage against the accused has driven them hence, and scattered his kindred and people. On the other side I notice the aged and venerable parents of Van Nest and his surviving children, and all around are mourning and sympathising friends. I know not at whose instance they have come. I dare not say they ought not to be here. But I must say to you that we live in a Christian and not in a savage state, and that the affliction which has fallen upon these mourners and us, was sent to teach them and us mercy and not retaliation; that although we may send this maniac to the scaffold, it will not recall to life the manly form of Van Nest, nor reanimate the exhausted frame of that aged matron, nor restore to life, and grace, and beauty, the murdered mother, nor call back the infant boy from the arms of his Saviour. Such a verdict can do no good to the living, and carry no joy to the dead. If your judgment shall be swayed at all by sympathies so wrong, although so natural, you will find the saddest hour of your life to be that in which you will look down upon the grave of your victim, and "mourn with compunctious sorrow"

that you should have done so great injustice to the "poor handful of earth that will lie mouldering before you."

I have been long and tedious. I remember that it is the harvest moon, and that every hour is precious while you are detained from your yellow fields. But if you shall have bestowed patient attention throughout this deeply interesting investigation, and shall in the end have discharged your duties in the fear of God and in the love of truth, justly and independently, you will have laid up a store of blessed recollections for all your future days, imperishable and inexhaustible.

EXTRACT FROM THE PROCEEDINGS IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, ON THE EXTENSION OF PATENT CASE.

JAMES G. WILSON

versus

LEWIS ROUSSEAU AND CHARLES EASTON.

OPENING ARGUMENT FOR THE PLAINTIFF BY
WILLIAM H. SEWARD.

Where there is no assignment or testamentary direction, choses in action, whether legal or equitable, and whether absolute or contingent, always pass by mere operation of law to the personal representative of a deceased owner, without any words of perpetuity. An administrator, although not "nominated" in the obligation, may sue on a bond executed to his intestate, whether the bond be for the payment of money, or for the performance of a condition. So any personal right, whether arising by express agreement or by mere implication of law, whether absolute or conditional, or contingent, may be asserted with the same effect by an executor as by the party to whom in life the right belonged. No property becomes extinct by operation of law on the death of the owner; nor does the State seize any property, or transfer it to others than those to whom the owner expressly or impliedly devotes it. The administrator's right of succession to personal property is as absolute and universal as the right of succession of heirs to real estate. These rights are essentially the same in principle. Heirs at law succeed directly to the inheritance of real estate. They succeed by the intervention of the adminis

trator to the enjoyment of personal property. And this transmissibility of all property and rights is so universal that it has only one limitation. The law limits to a party himself the right to redress for mere injuries to his person or character. That right ceases on the death of either the wrong doer or the sufferer, but all other rights survive. The entire policy of civilized communities, and even of despotic States, is opposed to seizure or confiscation of the property of the citizen at his death. On the other hand, all property, whether real or personal, is permitted to pass, in compliance with what seems to be a dictate of natural justice, to those whom the owner shall have elected as his successors or representatives. And if he make no such election, the law nevertheless, reads and regards his unexpressed affection, and transfers his estate to those who, by reason of their consanguinity, are presumed to be nearest in his love.

Man, in a civilized state, cannot altogether die. Administration is the execution of the last will and testament, which the law infers every citizen would have made had time and circumstances favoured. It is not an ordinance of human society, but a decree of the Creator, which provides that, as we bring nothing into the world, so we can take nothing out of it. Society attempts to mitigate the hardship of this law by giving to every member of the state a legal continuance here after death; and recognizes him in his children, his heirs, or his creditors. And this is in harmony with all the motives and affections of our race. It is not for ourselves, chiefly, that we live or labour, but for those whom Providence has committed to our care and who are destined to survive us.

Is national injustice to the dead less censurable than to the living? Is living genius discouraged less by neglect of the children and the memory of public benefactors, than by neglect of such benefactors themselves? Is the Inventor stimulated less than other men by rewards of his labour proffered to his children? Far otherwise. There is eminent justice in securing to the children of authors and inventors the fruits of their genius, for it is property acquired exclusively by their own efforts. It confers distinction, and often, enduring renown, while certainly no children in the commonwealth more deserve to be secured in their paternal possessions than those of parents whose intellectual labours were devoted to the improvement and happiness of their countrymen and of mankind. Indifference to wealth, and ill regulated economy,

are very common traits of men distinguished for genius and invention; and it would be a mockery of national magnanimity and justice to offer the extension of a patent to the unrewarded inventor while in life and yet plead his death in abatement of an application for an extension on behalf of his children. The construction insisted upon by our adversaries does violence to our sentiments of justice. The commonwealth has received the consideration, a beneficial consideration, by the discovery. It pays an equivalent to the inventor. Would it not be absurd, would it not be capricious, to say that the equivalent shall be conferred on the inventor if he live fourteen years, but shall be denied him if he die before that time? This construction does violence to the common sentiments of humanity. In all ages mankind have been prone to continue their gratitude to the descendants of their benefactors. Hence, reversals of attainder, restorations of confiscated estates to the children of persons unjustly convicted, hereditary titles and domains, and all the splendid structures of monarchies and aristocracies. constitution and laws have guarded against all such abuses and dangerous institutions, but it has not been thought necessary to select the children of the great and the good and set them apart for peculiar and distinguished injustice.

Our

The American continent seems to be rapidly falling under the political sway of our confederacy. The habitations of an hundred millions of people are to be erected by our artisans. Woodworth's machine reduces, in the proportion of seven tenths, the labour and expense of a necessary part of every structure, whether for use or ornament. If this argu

ment seem to have been prolonged to a great length, I hope the offence may find an apology in the importance of securing to the children of the inventor the reward allotted by a grateful country for so distinguished a benefaction.

EXTRACT FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO THE NATURAL HISTORY OF NEW YORK.

BY THE HONOURABLE WM. H. SEWARD.

"There is scarcely more resemblance between the press as it now exists, and that institution as it was at the close of the Revolution, than between the present aspect of our inland regions and the forest garb they wore while inhabited only

by the Iroquois. Then the ART, employed chiefly in printing the colonial statutes, almanacks, occasional sermons, and volumes of devotional psalmody, and publishing a semiweekly record of events, was only auxiliary, in the hands of its managers, to the more important object of selling books, pamphlets, stationery, and sometimes other merchandise: now, labour saving machines, with mechanical and brute power, are substituted for the arm of the pressman, and with the aid of stereotype foundries, the press has departments, distinctly separated, and as numerous as the divisions, and sub-divisions, classes, combinations, interests, occupations, studies and tastes of society. The book press seizes with avidity all new publications, whether designed to instruct or only to amuse, whether foreign or domestic, and prints and re-prints, and scatters them over the continent with inconceivable rapidity. Works of fiction most adapted to the popular taste are now printed and sold, at prices less than, fifty years ago, were charged to subscribers for the perusal of such volumes by circulating libraries. The commercial press, morning and evening, records with accuracy every Occurrence and every indication which affect trade; and the advertising columns are indispensable auxiliaries in every operation of commerce or finance. The political press, divided between contending parties, and again sub-divided with nice adaptation to the tempers and the tastes, the passions and the prejudices of the community, conducts party warfare with energy, zeal and unsparing severity; and the combatants, faithful through all changes, abide the trials and share the fortunes of their respective parties. The religious press furnishes to Jew and Christian, Protestant and Catholic, and to each of the sects and denominations of those grand divisions of the Church, a devoted organ more effective than an army of Missionaries. The moral, the scientific, the literary, the legal, the medical, the agricultural, the military, the abolition, the temperance, the colonization and the association newspapers each represent a portion of society desirous to inculcate peculiar views of truth, and promote reforms which it deems essential to the general welfare. The emigrants from every foreign country communicate with each other through organs furnished by the press, and preserve mutual sympathies and endearing recollections of their father lands. The press was dependent on European facts, sentiments, opinions, tastes and customs: now it is in all things independent and purely American. It was metro