XII.

other respects, the newspapers of the day had one re- CHAPTER deeming feature in able essays communicated to their columns by such men as Hamilton, Madison, Ames, 1798. Cabot, and many others, who took that method of operating on the public mind. In the half century from 1765 to 1815, the peculiar literature of America is to be sought and found in these series of newspaper essays, some of them of distinguished ability, and as characteristic of that period as the Spanish ballads are of the time and country in which they were written. Rich jewels now and then glittered on the dung-heap, but the editorial portion of the papers, and no small part of the communications also, consisted, too often, of declamatory calumnies, expressed in a style of vulgar ferocity. The epithets of rogue, liar, scoundrel, and villain were bandied about between the editors without the least ceremony. For a graphic character of the American press at that time, reference may be had to the already quoted charge of that distinguished Republican, Chief-justice M'Kean; to which may be added, what he does not mention, that the government and officers of the United States had been for years the objects of full seven-eighths of the outrageous ribaldry of which he complained.

Yet the newspapers of that day exercised an individual influence over the minds of their readers very far beyond that of the so much abler journals of our times. The power and influence of the press as a whole, and its importance as a political agent, has very greatly increased, but the effect which any individual journal can produce has in an equal degree diminished. In those days the Aurora, for instance, penetrated to many localities in which no other printed sheet ever made its appearance. There were many who never saw any other newspaper; and its falsehoods and calumnies produced

CHAPTER all the effect natural to an uncontradicted statement of

XII. fact. At present the mischief that can be done by false 1798. hood and misrepresentation is comparatively limited, de tection and exposure following too close.

Another circumstance, also, should be taken into consideration before deciding too peremptorily upon the

That act was not supposed, create any new offenses, or

policy of the Sedition Law.
by those who enacted it, to
to impose any new punishments. Though the point had
not yet come before the full bench of the Supreme Court,
and though at a subsequent period, and after a complete
change of judges, it was decided the other way, the opin-
ion had been expressed on circuit, and was understood
to be held by all the judges, Chase only excepted, that,
independently of any authority expressly conferred by
statute, the Federal courts possessed a common law juris-
diction over offences against the United States, corre-
sponding to the common law jurisdiction exercised by
the state courts. The criminal jurisdiction of the state
courts embraced two distinct classes of crimes-statute
offenses, the nature and punishment of which were ex-
pressly defined by some statute, and common law
offenses, as to which no statute provision existed, but
which the courts, notwithstanding, had been accustomed
to punish from time immemorial by fine and imprison-
ment. Now among these common law offenses, punish-
able as such in all the states, were libel and sedition;
and what the common law as to libel was will be found
stated in M'Kean's charge above referred to. The same
common law jurisdiction had been claimed for the Fed-
eral courts. Upon this claim had been founded the late
attempt to indict Cobbett for a libel on the Spanish min-
ister; and under the same supposed authority proceed-
ings had been lately commenced against Bache himself

XII.

Had this doctrine been well founded-nor was any ex- CHAPTER press decision made to the contrary till fourteen years afterward-the Sedition Act was remedial and allevi- 1798 ative of the rigor of the existing law, since it not only limited the amount of fine and imprisonment, which by the common law were discretionary with the court, but in the case of seditious libels allowed also the advantage of giving the truth in evidence-a thing not permitted by the common law, and hitherto introduced only in the states of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Vermont, and that by special constitutional provision.

Even in that very objectionable shape in which the bill came down from the Senate, it did but clothe with the form of law what had been the universal practice of the Committees of Safety at the commencement of the Revolution. There had been at that moment no hestitation in suppressing, by means as prompt as severe, any opposition, whether by writing or speaking, to the new revolutionary governments; and among the earliest enactments after the declaration of independence, had been laws for that purpose-a species of legislation in which Virginia had taken the lead, one of her acts of 1776 having served in part as a model for the Sedition Law. If these state acts were to be excused on the ground of necessity, and of the impossibility of allowing free discussion at a moment when the existence of the nation was itself at stake-an excuse very promptly admitted by the most ultra of the opposition for the severe measures of the French Directory in the suppression of anti-Republican journals-the friends and supporters of the Federal administration, by whose votes the Sedition Law was passed, might claim the benefit of a similar apology. Party spirit was fast rising to the pitch of civil war. To the excited minds of the Federalists the conduct of the

XII.

Com

CHAPTER Opposition began to appear even more reprehensible than that of the Tories at the commencement of the Revolu 1798. tion. The Tory opposition of that time did but seek to maintain a colonial dependence which had long existed, while the exactions to which they urged submission had at least some color of constitutional right. The French Tories, for so the opposition began now to be designated, seemed bent upon reducing the United States into a dependence on France as new as it was degrading; and by their apparent willingness to submit to unrestrained depredations and to forced loans, they seemed ready to surrender in substance that very point of exterior taxation which had caused the revolt from British rule. pared with the piratical depredations now made under French authority, what had been the old restrictions of Great Britain on the commerce of the colonies? What was a tax on tea, glass, and paints, compared with req uisitions at the pleasure of the Directory? To the Federalists it seemed lamentable indeed that the terrible struggle of the Revolution should terminate at last, not in actual independence, but in the mere substitution of France as the mother country in place of Great Britain. On the other hand the opposition, not less excited, vehemently retorted the charge of Toryism by accusing the government of an intention to restore the country to a state of at least semi-colonial dependence on Great Britain.

The extent to which the opposition leaders were disposed to push matters, may be judged of by a letter written by John Taylor, of Caroline, late one of the Virginia senators, and since his resignation of that post, the leader of the dominant majority in the Virginia House of Delegates. It was time, so Taylor thought, "to estimate the separate mass of Virginia and North Carolina with

XII.

1798.

June 1

a view to their separate existence." Jefferson, to whom CHAPTER this letter had been shown, suggested to Taylor some reasons why the idea should not be pushed. "It is true," so he wrote, "that we are completely under the saddle of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and that they ride us very hard, cruelly insulting our feelings as well as exhausting our strength and our substance. Their nat ural friends, the three other Eastern states, join them from a sort of family pride, and they have the art to divide certain other parts of the Union, so as to make use of them to govern the whole. This is not new; it is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order; and those who have once got an ascendency, and possessed themselves of all the resources of the nation, their revenues and offices, have immense means for retaining their advantage. But our present situation is not a natural one. The Republicans through every part of the Union say that it was the irresistible influence and popularity of General Washington, played off by the cunning of Hamilton, which turned the government over to anti-Republican hands, or turned the Republicans chosen by the people into anti-Republicans. He delivered it over to his successor in this state, and very untoward events since, improved with great artifice, have produced on the public mind the impressions But still, I repeat, this is not the natural state. Time alone would bring round an order more correspondent to the sentiments of our constituents. But are there nr events impending which will do it within a few months the crisis with England, the public and authentic avowal of sentiments hostile to the leading principles of our Constitution, the prospect of a war in which we shall stand alone, land tax, stamp tax, increase of public debt, &c.? Be this as it may, in every free and

we see.