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citizenship in Great Britain, in order to secure himself from the inconvenience attending the rigid execution of the alien act. We do not, for ourselves, comprehend how a person, who, according to his biographer, had examined the merits of the question between Great Britain and the Colonies, and who, from the result of that examination, had become a Whig as well by conviction as by feeling, should have advanced any such claim. Nor can we perceive, how his oath of allegiance to Great Britain, due as a citizen, could be reconciled to his having borne arms against her during five years of the Revolutionary war. What estimate are we to form of his motives, when we see him, very contentedly, returning to acknowledge the sovereign, whose tyrannical exercise of power, he had pretended, was so intolerable as to justify armed resistance? We leave this question for more profound casuists to settle, only remarking, that the effect of this movement was decisive upon Lord Hawkesbury, who not only pronounced the claim monstrous, but took immediate measures to remove the claimant from the kingdom. was only the absence of power to do evil, which could make such an individual perfectly harmless. Yet our biographer, in noticing this, perhaps the most barefaced act of his whole life, passes it off almost without any censure at all. He thinks the claim was "certainly unfounded, and injudiciously asserted, for it probably increased the suspicion and distrust entertained of him ; " that is, in other words, that Burr was more to blame for his folly in disclosing his knavery, than for the knavery itself. Surely Mr. Davis can have formed. only a very feeble conception of the distinction between right and wrong in political conduct, and can entertain no great veneration for the principles at the bottom of our Revolutionary struggle, if he is ready to designate so shameful and profligate a desertion of them in no more sufficient terms. A man, with whom patriotism did not weigh in the scale with a slight personal inconvenience from the British alien act, only needed the same temptations, into which Benedict Arnold fell, to do as he did, and fully merited the severe sentence, which Washington so early passed upon his integrity.

The dread of his extraordinary powers of intrigue seems to have been felt, alike by the British government, and by Napoleon, then Emperor of France. After a stay of a few

months in London, and a visit to Edinburgh, where he was received with great distinction, he, in his Diary, dated April 4th, 1809, makes the following record.

"Having a confused presentiment that something was wrong, packed up my papers and clothes with intent to go and seek other lodgings. At one o'clock came in, without knocking, four coarse looking men, who said they had a state warrant for seizing me and my papers; but refused to show the warrant. I was peremptory, and the warrant was produced, signed 'Liverpool '; but I was not permitted to read the whole. They took possession of my trunks, searched every part of the room for papers, threw all the loose articles into a sack, called a coach, and away we went to the Alien office," &c. - Private Journal, Vol. I. p. 189.

Now nobody in the world will suspect Burr of superstition. Therefore it is fair to infer, that a confused presentiment, which was so strong in him as to impel him to remove to new lodgings, and which carried its own verification so immediately as to prevent him from executing his intention, could not have been felt, without a corresponding sense of something previously done or conceived, which might give occasion to so unceremonious a visit. But what this something was, we are left as much in the dark about as usual. There is a break in the Journal from the preceding 19th of March, although, if the vacuum had been supplied, we should not probably have been the wiser. It is enough to add, that his liberation from confinement was upon the condition of his departure from the kingdom within forty-eight hours. He accepted the alternative, and sailed to Sweden, from whence he made his way to France. But he had already attracted the notice of the French police under Napoleon, who directed M. de Bourrienne, his minister at Hamburg, to watch him as a dangerous man. We are, at this day, entirely at a loss to know the reasons for this treatment. Even when he succeeded in reaching Paris, it was only to find himself in strict surveillance, without the power to move from the spot which he had chosen. We see that he became pennyless, and obliged to exercise his wits, in order to live from day to day, because all this is shown very fully in the Diary. But why it was, that he was regarded as so important a personage, when he seems to us to have lost all ability equally to injure and to aid, having become a mere cipher in society,

is not explained, and probably never will be exactly understood.

A remarkable characteristic of Burr, presented in his Diary, was his self-control. This was manifested by his suppression of all expressions of indignation against those persons who treated him ill, and of every sentiment of discontent or unhappiness, under circumstances of distress and privation, which have rarely been the lot, in so great a degree, of men so distinguished as he was in life. Mr. Davis says, truly, that not a discontented or fretful expression is to be found in his voluminous memoranda." "The Journal contains a protracted record of privations, sometimes threatening absolute and hopeless want, but endured throughout with undisturbed and characteristic fortitude and gayety." It may be added, that, when his application for a passport to return to the United States was answered by Mr. Russell, then diplomatic representative of the United States at Paris, in terms of refusal, which appear to us to have been needlessly harsh and insulting, the simple fact is recorded with little of comment. So, whenever he met with marks of the detestation in which he was held by most of his countrymen abroad, who would not bear letters or bundles home for him, if they knew them to be his, he notices them, in this most private communication of his feelings, with scarcely a sign of sensibility. Yet that Burr felt insult, his duel with Hamilton clearly proves. There are but two methods of explaining his conduct. He may have hardened himself to bear, without shrinking, what he saw must be his fate, until he really ceased to feel it; or his early-learned habits of dissimulation led him, as a matter of policy, to suppress all manifestation of sentiments, the indulgence of which might, at any time, inconveniently commit him. We leave it to those, who take sufficient interest in the subject, to select the motive which bears the highest analogy to his general character. No matter what it is, the effect is unquestionably agreeable. We can hardly help liking the man, who is cheerful and resigned. There is a natural sympathy with the patient under adversity, which defies reasoning. And, when we see this adversity increased by the wilful malice or cowardly fears of fellowcreatures, and no symptoms of relenting in pursuit of means to crush an enemy already fallen, whatever may have been our opinions of the sufferer, and however deserving we may

regard him of his fate, censure will give place to pity, and condemnation will not be unmingled with regret.

Burr returned to America, neither a wiser nor a better man than when he left it; but he came to lose all of the little compensation, which this life had yet to give him, and to linger on the scene, many years, an isolated wretch. Through all his European wanderings, one object appears to have remained bright to him, a polestar, by which to regulate his course. One daughter and her child then still existed, towards whom his affections seemed to yearn, with a degree of warmth increasing as they grew dead to every other being, and whose continuance in life was the only futurity, about which he was uniformly sanguine. But even they were to be taken from him before he was able to see them again, one of them by a natural death, and the other, when upon her way to him, by a melancholy fate, which has never been explained. And thus he became a being thoroughly deserted and desolate, yet to live for more than twenty years, as his biographer describes him," in a condition more mortifying and more prostrate, than any distinguished man has ever experienced in the United States."

The biographer tells us, that Mr. Burr entertained great contempt for history, and confided little in its details. These prejudices were strengthened, he adds, "by the consideration that justice, in his opinion, had not been done to himself." Mr. Davis seems more than half inclined to believe this complaint well founded, when he ascribes the result to what he deems a great error in Burr, whose practice was, when attacked by the newspapers, "to keep silence, leave his actions to speak for themselves, and let the world construe them as they pleased." This enabled his enemies to create upon the public mind an impression against him, by giving them the advantage of a one-sided story. We are not sure, that, in ordinary cases, we should not consider Mr. Burr's system more judicious, than that recommended by his biographer. A truly virtuous man will live down calumny more certainly in America, than in any other country where that instrument of attack is less boldly and unscrupulously used. There is a tendency in falsehood, when carried to a great extent, to defeat its own purpose. And many public men have derived quite as much benefit from the incredulity of the public about statements made of their errors, as they have inVOL. XLIX. No. 104.

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jury from the misrepresentation of their good conduct. Neither to affirm nor to deny what was asserted respecting him on indifferent authority, was good policy in Mr. Burr, who never exposed himself to be contradicted by any thing written under his own hand, and who would have been more likely to be injured than benefited by a clear exposition of his true motives of action. He acted in this, as in every other part of his life, upon calculation. And we are inclined to think in his case that calculation just. There might be more doubt, where there was less to conceal. With respect to the injustice, which he felt had been done to him, we are at a loss to know wherein it lies. The purpose of history is answered by recording results, and it cannot be expected unerringly to mark out the separate share which each individual had in producing them. Hence it cannot be a matter of surprise, if mistakes do occasionally arise from confounding the agency of one person in any event, with that of another. Possibly injustice may sometimes be done in this manner, and one man may gain credit, or incur censure, for the act of his neighbour. This is probably the kind of injustice which Burr complained of, but after all it is trifling. The life of any distinguished man is not judged of by one act more or less, nearly so much as by the general complexion of all. Even admitting that Mr. Burr was entitled to complain, that he had been robbed of his merited reward, in one or two instances, (although we know nothing to prove it,) yet we cannot infer from this any thing which should shake the estimate formed of his character. His actions from boyhood to advanced age do speak for themselves, as he said they would; and no effort to cover them with apologies or explanations, as Mr. Davis would have recommended, could have proved effectual. There are none of the leading public men of the Revolution, with the exception perhaps of Washington, who have not left materials behind them, in which a sharper outline of themselves will be perceptible, through all the coats of color and varnish which they may have attempted to lay on, than was traceable in their own age. Mr. Burr has proved nothing against the history he condemns. A friend has furnished to the world all the documents in his defence, which his own care supplied. He has even suppressed what bore hardest against him, and gone as far to palliate and to excuse as he dared. Yet where does Burr now