above mentioned at once overcame his reluctance to engage in the controversy. Accordingly in December, 1831, appeared a "Letter to General Lafayette," preceded by a letter from Lafayette to himself, dated the 22d of November. This was a pamphlet of fifty pages, in which he went into the subject of the cost of the United States government. It produced an immediate reply from M. Saulnier, who went over the ground again, and with a fine air of candor affected to revise his previous statements. As a result he made the cost of the American government a little larger than he had done before. To this Cooper replied in a series of letters published in the "National." The controversy would (p. 113) have ended sooner than it did, had it not been for the appearance of a fresh actor on the scene. This was a certain Mr. Leavitt Harris. He nominally belonged to New Jersey, but a large share of his life had been spent in Russia, and his political notions had apparently become acclimated to that region. He wrote an article on the subject in the shape of a letter to M. Francois Delassert, the vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies. In it he took ground opposite to that taken by Cooper, controverted his facts, and denied his inferences. So great weight was attached to it by the French government party that it was published as a supplementary number of the "Revue Britannique." Mr. Harris had once been left as _charge d'affaires_ at St. Petersburg during the absence of John Adams at the peace negotiations at Ghent. His letter was accordingly dwelt upon as the production of an American who had been intrusted by his government with high diplomatic position. We who know out of what stuff our foreign agents are sometimes made, would not be likely to attach much weight to the mere fact. But to a foreign nation the opinion of an official seemed naturally more trustworthy than that of a private citizen.