f a free people, that the peerage should
be abolished, and a legislature of two chambers established, with a
constituency of at least a million and a half of electors; the senate to
be chosen by the general vote, as the representative of the entire nation,
and the members of the other house to be chosen by districts, as the
representatives of the local interests. To the middle ground of politics
so ostentatiously occupied by Louis Philippe at the beginning of his
reign, he predicted a brief duration, believing that it would speedily be
merged in despotism, or supplanted by the popular rule. His prophecy has
been fulfilled more amply than he could have imagined--fulfilled in both
its alternatives.

In one of the controversies of that time, Cooper bore a distinguished
part. The _Revue Britannique_, a periodical published in Paris, boldly
affirmed the government of the United States to be one of the most
expensive in the world, and its people among the most heavily taxed of
mankind. This assertion was supported with a certain show of proof, and
the writer affected to have established the conclusion that a republic
must necessarily be more expensive than a monarchy. The partisans of the
court were delighted with the reasoning of the article, and claimed a
triumph over our ancient friend La Fayette, who, during forty years, had
not ceased to hold up the government of the United States as the cheapest
in the world. At the suggestion of La Fayette, Cooper replied to this
attack upon his country in a letter which was translated into French, and,
together with, another from General Bertrand, for many years a resident in
America, was laid before the people of France.

These, two letters provoked a shower of rejoinders, in which, according to
Cooper, misstatements were mingled with scurrility. He commenced a series
of letters on the question in dispute, which were published in the
_National_, a daily sheet, and gave the first evidence of that
extraordinary acuteness in controversy which was no less characteristic of
his mind than the vigor of his imagination. The enemies of La Fayette
pressed into their service Mr. Leavitt Harris, of New Jersey, afterwards
our _charge d'affaires_ at the court of France, but Cooper replied to Mr.
Harris in the _National_ of May 2d, 1832, closing a discussion in which he
had effectually silenced those who objected to our institutions on the
score of economy. Of these letters, which would form an imp