convictions for the sake of their influence on the character and the life.
This work was published in 1824, about the time that he resigned his
Professorship.

It was in 1824, that, on a visit to New York, I first became acquainted
with Verplanck. On the appearance of a small volume of poems of mine,
containing one or two which have been the most favorably received, he
wrote, in 1822, some account of them for the New York American, a daily
paper which not long before had been established by his cousin, Johnson
Verplanck, in conjunction with the late Dr. Charles King. He spoke of them
at considerable length and in the kindest manner. As I was then an unknown
literary adventurer, I could not but be grateful to the hand that was so
cordially held out to welcome me, and when I came to live in New York, in
1825, an intimacy began in which I suspect the advantage was all on my
side.

It was in 1825 that he published his Essay on the Doctrine of Contracts,
in which he maintained that the transaction between the buyer and seller
of a commodity should be one of perfect frankness and an entire absence of
concealment; that the seller should be held to disclose everything within
his knowledge which would affect the price of what he offered for sale,
and that the maxim which is compressed into the two Latin words, _caveat
emptor_--the maxim that the buyer takes the risk of a bad bargain--is not
only a selfish but a knavish and immoral rule of conduct, and should not
be recognized by the tribunals. The question is ably argued on the grounds
of an elevated morality--but I have heard jurists object to the doctrine
of this essay, that if it were to prevail it would greatly multiply the
number of lawsuits.

In 1825, Mr Verplanck was elected one of the three Representatives in