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XII.

To provide as well against internal as external foes, CHAPTER pending the progress of these warlike measures, Lloyd of Maryland obtained leave in the Senate to bring in a 1798. bill to define more precisely the crime of treason, and to June 26. define and punish the crime of sedition. As originally introduced, the first section of this bill declared the people of France to be the enemies of the United States, and adherence to them, giving them aid and comfort, to be treason, punishable with death. The second section, related to misprision of treason. The third section did not materially differ from the first section of the act as passed, and of which an analysis will presently be given. The fourth section provided for punishing, by fine and imprisonment, the sum and period being left blank, any person who, by writing, printing, publishing, or speaking, should attempt to justify the hostile conduct of the French, or to defame or weaken the government or laws of the United States by any seditious or inflammatory declarations or expressions, tending to induce a belief that the government or any of its officers were influenced by motives hostile to the Constitution, or to the liberties or happiness of the people.

Hamilton no sooner saw this bill in print than he wrote at once a letter of caution. It seemed to him exceedingly exceptionable, and such as, more than any thing else, might endanger civil war. "Let us not establish tyranny," so he continued: "energy is a very different thing from violence, If we make no false step we shall be essentially united, but if we push things to extremes we shall then give to faction body and solidity."

The bill did not pass the Senate, where it was carried by twelve votes to six, without undergoing considerable alterations. The two first sections were struck out en

XII.

CHAPTER tirely. The others were modified, but without any very essential change.

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When the bill came down to the House, Livingston July 5. attempted to eut the matter short by moving its rejection. This led to a very warm and acrimonious deJuly 10. bate, in which the character of the press was freely discussed, many extracts from the Aurora being cited by way of example. Livingston's motion was rejected, forty-seven to thirty-six; but in Committee of the Whole, on motion of Harper, by an amendment carried by the casting vote of the speaker, an entirely new section was substituted for the second (the fourth of the original draft), by which the character of the bill was essentially changed. Bayard then proposed a section allowing the truth to be given in evidence. This, too, was car ried, as was also a limitation of the act to the end of the next Congress. But these amendments did not prevent a very warm struggle on the third reading of the bill, Nicholas, who had now resumed his seat, Macon, Livingston, and Gallatin against it, Otis, Dana, and Harper for it. It was finally carried, forty-four to forty-one.

The first section of this act, presently so famous as the Sedition Law, made it a high misdemeanor, punishable by fine not exceeding $5000, imprisonment from six months to five years, and binding to good behavior at the discretion of the court, "for any persons unlawfully to combine and conspire together, with intent to oppose any measures of the government of the United States, directed by proper authority, or to impede the operation of any law of the United States, or to intimidate or prevent any person holding office under the gov ernment of the United States from executing his trust," or with like intent to commit, advise, or attempt to procure any insurrection, riot, unlawful assembly, or com

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bination." The second section subjected to a fine not CHAPTER exceeding $2000, and imprisonment not exceeding two years, the printing or publishing "any false, scandalous, 1798. and malicious writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress, or the president, with intent to defame them, or to bring them into contempt or disrepute, or to excite against them the hatred of the good people of the United States, or to stir up sedition, or with intent to excite any unlawful combination for opposing or resisting any law of the United States, or any lawful act of the president, or to excite generally to oppose or resist any such law or act, or to aid, abet, or encourage any hostile designs of any foreign nation against the United States." But in all prosecutions under this section, the truth of the matter stated might be given in evidence, as a good defense, the jury to be judges both of law and fact. The act was to continue in force till the fourth of March, 1801.

Gallatin's opposition to this law was natural enough, since, had it then been in force, he would certainly have been held responsible, under the first section, for his share in stirring up that resistance to the excise law which had ended in producing the Whisky Insurrection. Yet against that part of the law no very weighty objections were urged. Indeed, it was against the second section -that for punishing the publication of seditious libels -that the arguments of the opposition were chiefly directed. The weight due to those arguments will be considered in another place. It is sufficient to suggest here that the act was a temporary one, passed at a moment of threatened war, and while the government was assailed in print with a malice and ferocity scarcely paralleled before or since; publications principally made by foreign refugees, as to whom it was not wonderful if

CHAPTER they cared nothing for the country except to use it as XII. an instrument of the political passions which they had 1798 brought with them from Europe; or, if emanating from

natives, then from men whom devotion to France and rancorous party spirit had carried to a pitch of fanaticism careless of truth, decency, or reason, and of the respect due to those intrusted under the Constitution with the government of the country.

The press, and particularly the newspaper press, had rapidly attained a degree of influence such as hitherto had never been known. At the commencement of the Revolution there had been in the United States less than forty newspapers, and between that period and the adop tion of the Federal Constitution the number had rather diminished. The precise number when the Sedition Law was passed there is no means of ascertaining, but it exceeded a hundred. Philadelphia had eight daily papers, the first of which (Poulson's Daily Advertiser) had been established in 1784; New York had five or six dailies, Baltimore two or three. Boston, at this time, and for several years after, was content with semi-weeklies and weeklies, of which there were five or six; one attempt had been made to support a daily paper; but, after a short trial, it had been abandoned. It was a rare thing. that any of the papers, even in the cities, had an editor distinct from the printer and publisher. One of the first papers established on that plan was the Minerva of New York, a daily paper set up in 1794, of which the name had lately been changed to that of Commercial Advertiser. This paper, the ablest in the country on the Federal side, was edited with equal talent and moderation by Noah Webster, the afterward distinguished lexicographer. Out of New England, the publishers of newspapers were principally foreigners, and this was especially the case with the opposition prints.

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Whatever might be their defects and deficiencies in CHAPTER other respects, the newspapers of that day had one redeeming feature in the series of able essays communi- 1798. cated to their columns by such men as Hamilton, Madison, Ames, 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. These 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 even the importance of the press as a political agent, has indeed very greatly increased, but the effect which any individual journal can produce has very greatly 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

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