great care and with admitted ability. His view was, that there should be a uniform rate of postage not exceeding five cents.

Among the matters originated by Mr. Maclay while in Congress, or to which his attention has been particularly directed, we notice the bill for the relief of the officers and crew of the steamer Missouri, which was destroyed by fire at Gibraltar; the bill for the relief of the forward officers of the late Exploring Expedition; the bill providing for experiments on Earl's cordage; the bill to test Seth Lamb's improved wheels for ocean steamers, and the bill for the relief of the heirs of John Paul Jones. The latter is accompanied by a report in favor of the claim, which examines and discusses minutely the merits of a case long, and sometimes angrily, discussed by Congress. We give a brief statement of it:

The claim of the heirs of Commodore John Paul Jones, as well as of his brave officers, seamen, and marines, who swept the English Channel in an old Indiaman christened the Bon Homme Richard, and crowned with the value of prizes nobly captured, but given up to the enemy by a neutral power, had been presented five times to different Congresses between the years 1806 and 1843; but, owing to the absence of important papers, the neglect of those to whose care it was confided, or other causes, it had been suffered to sleep, at the expense of Commodore Jones's reputation, until Mr. Maclay, as one of the Committee of Naval Affairs, to which it had been referred, with a patient diligence, of which the report itself is the best proof, examined into and proclaimed its merits.

The archives of the government were searched; documents of great value and of deep interest, long forgotten, owing to the exciting scenes of the Revolutionary period, were brought forth from their dusty alcoves, and the claims of the widow and the orphan were sustained. History was purged of popular falsehoods, and made, in the case of the renowned Paul Jones, to speak in the language of truth and soberness. The historian and the patriot, the friends of the navy and of gallant actions throughout the broad land, will thank the spirit that worked out, amid the dry details of a committee room, the righteousness of a claim that showed the "Scotch pirate" of Sir James Vorke to have been the Nelson of the American navy, who, in the most terrible naval engagements ever fought, has left an imper

ishable name upon the cliffs of England and upon the annals of the world.

The niece of Paul Jones arrived, nearly twenty years ago, with the view of prosecuting this claim. After petitioning successive Congresses, and complaining that her detention so long from her country and friends was a novel mode of raising a monument to the memory of a benefactor, she died without realizing the object of her wishes. To her succeeded George L. Loudon, the grand nephew of Paul Jones, whose amiable character and general intelligence endeared him to all who enjoyed the advantage of his acquaintance. He, too, had the cup raised to his lips only to be dashed to the ground.

The justice of the claim which he was engaged in prosecuting, and in reference to which Mr. Maclay was the first to make a favorable report, was at length admitted. Both the Senate and the House of Representatives passed a bill, which was finally called up on the last night of the twenty-ninth Congress. The next morning Mr. Maclay was in the principal clerk's room of the House of Representatives, looking over the list of bills which had been passed, and missed from among them that of Paul Jones. Upon further inquiry, the bill was found upon the floor of the Senate. It had never been taken to or signed by the President. It was now taken to him, the accident explained, but he contended that he could not sign a bill after the adjournment of Congress. The heirs of Paul Jones were again thrown over to the mercies of another Congress. But, before another Congress had assembled, Mr. Loudon also died, the grief and mortification he had experienced in his disappointment being too great for a frame already enfeebled, and his constitution gave way to an attack of sickness, which resulted in his death at Jones's Hotel, Philadelphia, about four weeks after this event. The claim was allowed by the existing Congress.

Mr. Maclay adopted the same view of it as that taken by Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, in his Life of Paul Jones, and contended that it was especially incumbent upon a free government to satisfy the claims of the humblest of its citizens, either upon its justice or its generosity, but that this was pre-eminently the case when a public benefactor sought either at its hands. In the interesting documents accompanying the report of Mr. Maclay, Paul Jones appears in this light. He was, indeed, no ordinary

man who enjoyed the friendship of Franklin, Adams, Morris, Jefferson, and Lafayette; who, by the originality of his genius, was enabled to make suggestions in relation to the organization of our infant navy far in advance of the knowledge of his time; who, with his own hand, hoisted the flag of the American Republic the first time its folds were given to the breeze, and to whom Congress repeatedly tendered its thanks, and expressed the high sense entertained of his bravery and good conduct, ordering, upon one occasion, a gold medal, with suitable devices, to be struck and presented to him, and, upon another, conferring upon him the only line-of-battle ship then possessed by our country. As we have receded from the Revolutionary era, the impression of the services rendered by Jones to our infant liberty seems to have become less vivid, and, for nearly half a century, the claims of his heirs have been overlooked, and even, occasionally, derided as "obsolete." But these should long ago have been satisfied by Congress; for, if Jones had rendered no other service to his adopted country, his humane exertions in behalf of imprisoned American seamen, and his deliverance of them from Algerine bondage, should have commended his descendants to the gratitude of the nation, and the pecuniary claims of his ancestors to the most speedy adjustment consistent with their examination.

The defects of his character were almost inseparable from a man who entered upon active life at the early age of twelve years, and who, from a profession to which he was devoted, was "Jealous in honor; sudden and quick in quarrel

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth."

There is something very touching in his death, which occurred at Paris, at the age of forty-five, in the month of July, 1792. His excessive fondness of titles and decorations is well known; but in his dying moments he desired to be described in his will simply as John Paul Jones, a citizen of the United States. The news of his appointment as commissioner to negotiate with the government of Algiers for the ransom of all the Americans held in captivity, and for the restoration of peace (a just tribute, on the part of government, to the humane solicitude which in this connection he had ever exhibited), did not. reach him in time to gladden his dying hour. Shortly after

signing his will, a few friends, who were with him, then bade him adieu, leaving him sitting in his arm-chair. No apprehension of his immediate decease seems to have been entertained. When his physician arrived, he was surprised to find him neither in the chair nor the parlor. Upon entering an adjoining bed-room, Jones was found lying with his face upon the bed and his feet upon the floor. In this posture his spirit had passed away. His remains were placed in a leaden coffin, in order that, if the country he had loved so well should desire to transport his remains, they might the more conveniently do so; and the National Convention of France decreed that twelve of its members should assist at the funeral rites of a man who had so well served the cause of liberty.

On the shores of the Solway, in Scotland, in view of all the craft that navigate the river, is the humble cottage in which Paul Jones was born. Situated near an aged forest, and covered with evergreens and flowering shrubs, there is nothing in the peaceful scenes it overlooks in harmony with the eventful life of him who has invested it with an abiding interest to the American traveler. Lieutenant A. B. Pinkham, of the United States navy, with a generous enthusiasm, for which he is entitled to the highest commendation, during a visit to Scotland, set apart a sum of money for the preservation and repair of this cottage, and has thus honorably linked his name with that of the brave man whose memory he has sought to perpetuate. But long after the navigator upon the Solway shall have ceased to look upon this landmark, the name of the renowned captain who first drew his breath within its walls shall be cherished with gratitude by the American citizen who revolves in his mind the achievements of those early patriots, native or adopted, who have contributed to the greatness and glory of his country.

We notice, among the addresses delivered by Mr. Maclay-to which the limits of this work allow only a passing allusionone, delivered in 1840, on the vexed question of the Sub-Treasury. It passed through several editions, and was very widely circulated.

On the 10th of February, 1847, a great national meeting was held in the city of Washington, the object of which was to devise a comprehensive system of relief for the famishing poor of Ireland.

The accounts of the extreme distress and suffering of the people of that country, with which the public journals were filled, excited universal sympathy, and gave to this meeting an intense degree of interest. The character and high standing of the gentlemen who composed its officers and managers were guarantees that the sentiments then and there promulgated would be unexceptionable, and the measures adopted wise and effectual.

The Vice-President of the United States acted as President. The report prepared for the occasion was read by the Reverend Orville Dewey, and addresses were delivered by some of the most prominent men of both parties in Congress. This meeting, which was among the first called, gave a great impetus to the sympathies of the people, and may, perhaps, be said to have organized this benevolence. Mr. Maclay appears to have taken an active share in the deliberations of the assemblage. The following is a brief extract from his speech on that occasion:

He said that," although laboring under great bodily indisposition, he had not felt at liberty to decline the request of the committee of arrangements to address a few words to the meeting. The very appropriate and' eloquent remarks of the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Webster], the report which had just been read by the Reverend Dr. Dewey, of New York, as well as the nature of the occasion itself, superseded the necessity of saying more. The evil which it was the object of the meeting to devise wise, and, he trusted, comprehensive measures to alleviate, had been fully stated in the report. Alas! no elaborate statement, no painful enumeration of details was needed to describe it. It was summed up in the fearful announcement, which had struck terror to many a heart in this country, that a civilized and Christian nation, eight months removed from the time of its harvest, was, at the very moment he was speaking, suffering the fearful pangs and horrors of famine. It was not for him to indulge in any idle speculation whether the evil was political or social, or in what it had its origin. It was enough for him, for them, for every right-minded man throughout the country to know that it existed. It was true, an ocean rolled its billows between us and the objects of this suffering; but, as not all its waters could wash away the obligation under which we rested to that un