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Webb, and The Commercial Advertiser, edited by William L. Stone. Cooper promptly brought suit against them both. In his action against Colonel Webb, his suit was for criminal libel and the jury returned the verdict of not guilty. Cooper found that it was much harder to send a man to jail for libel than it was to collect monetary damage for a reputation. Cooper therefore had better success when he brought suit against Thurlow Weed, the editor of The Albany Evening Journal, who published several unfavorable notices about Cooper and his books. Weed at the time of the suit was unable to be present on account of sickness in his family and a verdict of four hundred dollars against him was given to Cooper. Weed sought in vain to have the case reopened. Finding himself unsuccessful, he proceeded to set forth his case in a letter to The New York Tribune published on November 17, 1841. For the publication of this letter Cooper brought suit against Greeley for libel. The jury, after several ballots, finally returned the verdict of two hundred dollars. Greeley having attended the trial in person proceeded to re- port the event for his own paper. The report came within three quarters of a column of filling the entire inside of The Tribune, which he headed "The Cooperage of The Tribune" Extracts were printed in more than two hundred papers and the novelist proceeded to bring suit for a new libel several of them, in fact. Greeley, now thoroughly aroused, prepared to take the suits more seriously and hired the Honorable William H. Seward as his attorney. The latter, by various hearings on demurrer and by numerous expensive interlocutory proceedings, pre- vented the case coming to trial.

PRESS RESTRICTIONS OF THE SENATE The Senate in 1841 attempted to exclude reporters from its Chamber on the ground that the regulations provided only for the admission of representatives from Washington newspapers. This attempt of exclusion was the last stand to favor the party organs of the Capital. For years these organs had been making enormous sums for printing the reports of Congress. Henry Clay asserted that $420,000 was thus paid to the three Washington organs, The Globe, run by Blair and Rieves, The National In-