ferent origin, religion and habits, are coerced
into submission as the consequence. Another nation burns towns, and
destroys their people in thousands, because their governors will not
consent to admit a poisonous drug into their territories: an offence
against the laws of trade that can only be expiated by the ruthless
march of the conqueror. Yet the ruling men of both these communities
affect a great sensibility when the long-slumbering young lion of the
West rouses himself in his lair, after twenty years of forbearance, and
stretches out a paw in resentment for outrages that no other nation,
conscious of his strength, would have endured for as many months,
because, forsooth, he _is_ the young lion of the West. Never mind: by
the time New Zealand and Tahiti are brought under the yoke, the
Californians may be admitted to an equal participation in the rights of
American citizens.

The governor was fully aware of the danger he ran of having claims, of
some sort or other, set up to his islands, if he revealed their
existence; and he took the greatest pains to conceal the fact. The
arrival of the Rancocus was mentioned in the papers, as a matter of
course; but it was in a way to induce the reader to suppose she had met
with her accident in the midst of a naked reef, and principally through
the loss of her men; and that, when a few of the last were regained, the
voyage was successfully resumed and terminated. In that day, the great
discovery had not been made that men were merely incidents of
newspapers; but the world had the folly to believe that newspapers were
incidents of society, and were subject to its rules and interests. Some
respect was paid to private rights, and the reign of gossip had not
commenced.[4]

[Footnote 4: We hold in our possession a curious document, the
publication of which might rebuke this spirit of gossip, and give a
salutary warning to certain managers of the press, who no sooner
hear a rumour than they think themselves justified in embalming it
among the other truths of their daily sheets. The occurrences of
life brought us in collision, legally, with an editor; and we
obtained a verdict against him. Dissatisfied with defeat, as is apt
to be the case, he applied for a new trial. Such an application was
to be sustained by affidavits, and he made his own, as usual. Now,
in this affidavit, our competitor swore distinctly and
unequivocally, to