A detailed account of the libel suits instituted by Cooper would form one of the most striking chapters in the history of the American press; and for some reasons it is to be regretted that the plan he had of writing a full account of them was never carried out. Here only a slight summary can be given. It is well to say at the outset that many assertions ordinarily made about them are utterly false. For certain of these prevalent misconceptions Greeley is responsible. He spoke of these trials with some fullness in commenting upon libel suits in his "Recollections of a Busy Life." But Greeley's life was too busy for him always to recollect accurately. While he had not the slightest intention to say anything untrue, what he said was in some instances of this character; though more often it was misleading rather than false. (p. 181) But outside of what Greeley has written, there are several erroneous assertions current. One of the most common of these is the statement that Cooper's success in them was mainly due to the application of the law maxim, that the greater the truth the greater the libel. There was never any ground for even an insinuation of this kind. Cooper, when his attention was called to it, treated it with contempt. "The pretense," he wrote in 1845, "that our courts have ever overruled that the truth is not a complete defense in a libel suit in the civil action, can only gain credit with the supremely ignorant." In criminal indictments the New York statute of 1805 had expressly declared that the truth might be pleaded in evidence by the defense. The Constitution of 1821 made this provision part of the fundamental law, and it was adopted from that into the Constitution of 1846. The assertion owed its origin wholly to the effort of beaten parties to explain their defeat on some other ground than that they had been found guilty of the offense with which they had been charged. A more preposterous statement even than this was that the question involved in these suits was the right of editors to criticise the productions of authors. In not one of these trials was the literary judgment passed by the reviewer mentioned as having the slightest bearing on the case. It ought not to be necessary to say that it was the attack upon the character of the man that alone came under the consideration of the courts, and not that upon the character of the book. The impudent pretense was, however, set up at the time that the press had a right to go behind the writer's work, and assail him himself. "Does an author," said "The New Yorker" in February, (p. 182) 1837, "subject himself to personal criticism by submitting a work to the public? If he makes his work the channel of disparagement upon masses of men, he does."