350 VOTING THANKS TO [CHAP. XXXIX. 



affairs in New York, it is the fact that the insurgents 

 would probably have succumbed ere this, had they not 

 been buoyed up by hopes of legislative interference 

 in their favour, held out to them by popularity- 

 hunting candidates for the governorship, and other 

 official places. 



In the newspapers of the day, a scene described as 

 having occurred at the close of the Legislative Ses 

 sion in Albany excited my curiosity. One of the 

 members of the House of Representatives moved 

 a vote of thanks &quot; to the gentlemen of the third 

 house for the regularity of their attendance and the 

 courtesy with which they had conducted themselves.&quot; 

 The motion was seconded, read from the chair amidst 

 great laughter, and then allowed to drop. I inquired 

 what might be the meaning of this joke, and was 

 asked in reply whether I had read the letters of Jesse 

 Hoyt and others, edited by Mackenzie ? I had, in 

 deed, purchased the pamphlet alluded to, containing 

 a selection from an immense mass (said to amount to 

 twenty-five volumes) of the private and confidential 

 correspondence of official men, left accidentally by 

 them, on a change of administration, in the custom 

 house of New York. All these had been printed for 

 the benefit of the public by their successors. The 

 authenticity of the documents made known by this 

 gentlemanlike stroke of party tactics, purporting to 

 be penned by men who had filled high places in the 

 State and Federal Governments, had been placed 

 beyond a doubt ; for the writers had attempted to 

 obtain an injunction in the law courts to stop the 

 publication, claiming the copyright of letters which 



