The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1835-09-29 00:00:00

SLPT nIEIIII 29, MIS.

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!inns From the southern moits,.oriiy by n.:todlit of legal rawer ;
and were situated as you are, I would do as you hove,

Postmasters may lawfully know, in all cases, the contents of
zeuspapers, because the law expressly provides that they shall
be so put up that they may be readily examined; and if they
know those contents to be calculated and designed to produce, and
delivered will certainly produce, the commission of' the most
aggravated crimes upon the property and persons of their fellow
citizens, it eannot be doubted that, it is their duty to detain them, if
not even to hand them over to the civil authorities. The post-
master-general has no legal power to prescribe auy rule for
the government of postmasters in such cases, ,nor has he ever
attempted to do so. They act in each case upon their own re-
sponsibility, and if they improperly detain or use papers sent to
their office for transmission ortelivery, it is at their peril, and
on their heads falls the puntihirtent.

If it. he justifiable to detain papers passing through the mail,
\ for the purpose of preventing or punishing isolated crimes
against. individuals, how much more important it is that this re-
iponsibility should be assumed to prevent insurrections and
save communities! If, in time of war, a postmaster shoirldde-
tect the letter of an enemy or spy passing through the mail,
whicheif it reached its destination, would expose his country to
invasion, and her armies to destruction, ought he not to arrest
it? Yet, where is his legal power to du so ?
From the specimens I have seen'of•anti-slaver} publications,
and the concurrent testimony of every class of citizens, except
the abolitionists, they tend directly to produee in the south evils
and horrors surpassing those usually resulting from foreign in-
vasion• or ordinary insurrection. From their revolting pictures
,and fervid appeals, addressed to the senses and passions of the
'blacks., they are calculated to fill every family with assassins,
and produce, at no very distant day,'an exterminating servile
war. So aggravated is the character of those papers, that the
aleople of the southern states, with an unanimity never witnessed
except in cases of extreme danger, have evinced, in public
meetings and by other demonstrations, a determination to seek
defence and safety in putting an end to their circulation b' any
peens and at any hazard. Lawless power is to be resisted; but
power which is exerted in palpable self-defence is not lawless.
• That such is the power whose elements are not agitating the
south, the united people of that section religiously believe ; and
eso long as that Shell be their impression, it will require the array
Of armies to carry the mails in safety through their territorieS,
it they continue to be used as the instrument of those who are
disposed to seek their destruction.
. As a measure of great publiC necessity, therefore, you and
the other postmasters wto have assumed the responsibility of
stepping these inflammatory papers, will, I have no doubt, stand
-justified in that step before yiur country and all mankind.
But perhaps the legal right of the abolitionists to make use
of the public mails in distributing their insurrectionary papers
throughout the southern states is not so clear as they seem
to imagine. When those states became independent they am-
.quired a right to prohibit the circulation of such papers
within their territories; and their power over the subject of
slavery and all its incidents was in no degree diminished by
the adoption of the federal constitution. It. is still as un-
divided and sovereign as it was when they were first eman-.
tipated. from the dominion of the King and parliament Of'
Great Britain. In the exercise of that power, some of those
states have made the circulation of such papers a capital
crime; others have made it a felony punishable by confinement
in the penitentiary; and perhaps there is not one among them
'which has not forbidden it under heavy.peualties. If the aboli-
tionists or their agents were caught in distributing their tracts
in Louisiana, they would legally be punishable with death ; if
they were apprehended in Georgia, they might legally be sent
to the Penitentiary ; and in each of the slavcholding states they
would suffer the penalties of their respective laws.
Now, have these people a legal right to do by the mail-cars
rieis and postmasters of the United States, acts-, which ,if done
by themselves or their agents, would lawfully subject them to
the punishment due to felons of the deepest dye ? Are the offi-
cers of the United States compelled by the constitution and laws
• to become the instruments and accomplices of those who design
to baffle and make nugatory the constitutional laws of the states
—fo fill them ivith sedition, murder, amid insurrection—to over-
throw those institutions which are recognized and guaranteed
by the constitution itself ?"
_ •.

The Post Master 'General sets out by declaring that
according to law the postmaster has no power vested in
him " to exclude from the mails any specieS of news-
papers, magazines, (*.pamphlets," and he further de-
clares that such a power, so vested would be "fear-
fell dangerous,!'• • But -having laid down the law in
clear terms the Post Master General' proceeds to advise
his subordinate officer to assume the dangerous power
which he condemns, and violate the law on the ground
of expediency. Helens the postmaster that be is justi-
. lied in opening and destroying.all papers having a ten-
. dandy to excite insubordination in the southern states,
'and all such papers which if circulated in certain states
would subject triCise
.-Who-diiseriiinate them to- the
:ties of law;. and upon this decision, or rather postoffice
opinion, the Deputy Post Masters in all the states have
resolved to. act.
Now let us see the effect of this law of expediency
upon the-rights and privileges of the people. In the first
PlaCe the Deputy' host Masters are at once constituted;
:the judges of what papers are inflammatory and what are
.innoxious—what are legal and what are illegal—what
favours abolition, or what stimulates slavery. A book-
seller in New York sends a magazine or pamphlet—
Blackwood, for instance, or the Penny Magazine—to a
friend in Charleston. The Postmaster at New York or
Charleston opens the publication and overhauls its con-
tents. American postmasters, we . know, are not the
-rnostlearned persons in the world. We have never heard.
that any of them are celebrated for critical acumen, or as
being very brilliant adept's in literature. On the con-
trary, we are assured that many of these persons have oc-
casionally some difficulty in deciphering the most legible
of plain hands, and are rarely guilty of reading any thing
else but the outside, or at the utmost, a two-fingered
.peep into the inside of a neighbour's letter.
. Suppose then that Blackwood; or the Penny Maga-
zine, in passing through the office of such critics, should
.contain an article on " human rights"—the " doctrine
'of equality"—the " expediency of corporal punish-
ments"—or, " the slave question calmly considered"—
'would not these learned deputy postmasters deem it their
duty to suppress the magazine, return it to whence it
came, or consign • it to the flames? -The Post-master
,General tells his subordinates, that although such con-
duct would be illegal in the eye of the law, yet if he were
in their situation, he would act as they have done and
turn the books; -This is strange doctrine- in a land of
libersysbut being acted upon it will hasten the crisis.
The argument of the Post-master General is founded
(Ton the assumption that the post-masters must neces-
sarily know the contents of every paper' and letter
that passes through their respective offices. He says,
that if a letter directed by an enemy or spy, in time of
war, were to be conveyed to some other enemy, by
Means of the state mail, it-might " expose the country to
invasion," and that consequently it would be the duty of
the rust-master to " arrest it." This is begging the
question altogether, and presupposes powers vested
in post masters which they never possessed, and
the possession of which he candidly admits would
be " fearfully dangerous." It presupposes much more
than this. It not only recognises illegal and arbi-
trary power on the part of the postmasters, but it makes
them the judges of the correspondence they are to ,"ar.
Test," and presumes that they open and read alt letters.
How can a postmaster know the contents of a letter
without opening it, or without committing a felony by
breaking its seal ? If the government of the United
States have the power of indethnifying the postmaster
againststhe consequences of such acts, what protection
has the correspondence of any merchant or trader in that
country ? It will not do to tell us that his search after
anti-slavery publications is to be confined to newspapers,
Pamphlets, and magazines. Circulars of that character
and tendency may be circulated in the form of an ordi-
nary letter, sealed in the usual manner, the postage paid,
:and directed to a man of undoubted respectability—nay,
to a slave-owner himself. In this case has the postmas-
ter of Charleston the power to break the seal of such a
letter? This demands an immediate and categorical
answer—aye or no. If the answer be in the negative,
then, we beg to ask, how is the circulation of obnoxious
circulars to be prevented ? If in the affirmative, then
We contend that the postoffice from that moment ceases
to be an efficient establishment—its officers become spies
--it is a system of police abhorrent to human nature,
which violates all the rules of justice by prying into
domestic concerns, the credit of individuals, the, secrets
9f trade, the bequests of the old, the settlements of the
Young, and the private and most delicate affairs of every
Than and woman in the republic. Such is the rule of
expediency as laid down by the Postmaster General !
But are the people of America prepared to tolerate
4-4oti an engine of espionage and oppression ? We shall