CHAPTER Xu. CHAPTER XII. FEDERALISM IN VIRGINIA. YRUJO, M'KEAN AND COBBETT. DEFENSE. ALIEN AND SEDITION LAWS. FOURTH CON THAT vehement and virulent party spirit, and close drawing of party lines, which had of late displayed itself 1797. in Congress, rapidly spreading throughout the whole country, had made itself conspicuously felt in the elections which succeeded the adjournment of the called session. The opposition had greater hopes of Vermont than of any other New England State. Chittenden, so long the governor, had leaned to their side. But on his declining a re-election, the Federalists succeeded, by a very close vote, in choosing Isaac Tichenor. The opposition, however, obtained a majority in the lower house of the Legislature, and it was only by one vote that Nathaniel Chittenden, the Federal candidate, was chosen to supply Tichenor's place in the United States Senate. Sept. Oct. Jan. In Maryland, in the choice of John Henry, late a senator in Congress, to be governor of that state, the oppo sition had triumphed; but James Lloyd, the Federal candidate, had been chosen senator in Henry's place by a majority of one vote. In all the states south of the Potomac, South Carolina included, the opposition was predominant. Yet even in Virginia some signs of the existence of a Federal party begun to show themselves. A grand jury of the FEDERALISM IN VIRGINIA. 161 XII. 1797. May Federal Circuit Court held at Richmond, after a pretty CHAPTER warm charge from Judge Iredell, in which something of politics had been mingled, presented as "a real evil the circular letters of several members of the late Congress, and particularly letters with the signature of Samuel J. Cabell," "endeavoring, at a time of real public danger, to disseminate unfounded calumnies against the happy government of the United States, and thereby to separate the people therefrom, and to increase or produce a foreign influence ruinous to the peace, happiness, and independence of the United States." Cabell made a very warm retort to this presentment, accusing the grand jury of going out of their province. But the political leaders of Virginia were not disposed to let the matter rest there. This incipient germ of Federalism was to be repressed with a strong hand. It was proposed to bring the matter before the House of Representatives as a breach of privileges; but, unluckily, the opposition majority in that body, if, in fact, there was any, was too uncertain to be depended upon. In this emergency, Jef ferson pressed upon Monroe to have the matter brought Sept. 7. before the State Legislature. Monroe had his doubts whether it came within the province of state jurisdiction. Jefferson, strict constructionist as he was in all that related to the powers of the Federal government, made up for it by a very liberal construction of the powers of the states. Free correspondence between citizen and citizen, on their joint interests, whether public or private, was, according to his statement to Monroe, a natural right, and as no jurisdiction over that right had been given to the Federal judiciary, either by the Constitution or by any law of Congress, it therefore remained under the protection of the state courts. Jefferson's project seems to have been to bring the subject of the present XII. CHAPTER ment before the General Assembly, and ultimately, by some legal process, whether against Iredell or the grand 1797. jurymen does not appear, before the state tribunals. The reasons for this course which he urged upon Monroe will contribute to explain his connection with certain other proceedings of state Legislatures, to which our attention will presently be called. "Were the question even doubtful," so he wrote, "that is no reason for abandoning it. The system of the general government is to seize all doubtful ground. We must join in the scramble, or-get nothing. Where first occupancy is to give right, he who lies still loses all." As happens too often with champions of natural rights, in his eagerness to protect Cabell and the opposition representatives Jefferson seems quite to have forgotten the rights of every body else. The presentment of the grand jury, which had so excited his indignation, was either an official act within their province, or it was extra-official; in other words, a joint expression of opinion by so many individuals. If a proper official act, then it could not be questioned either in the Virginia General Assembly or in any state court. Suppose, on the other hand, that it was extra-official, yet surely the gentlemen composing the grand jury had as good a natural right to correspond with their fellow-citizens on their joint interests as Mr. Cabell or any other opposition representative. Another proposition, still more extraordinary, was contained in the same letter. "It is of immense import ance that the states retain as complete authority as possible over their own citizens. The withdrawing themselves under the shelter of a foreign jurisdiction"-mean ing thereby the jurisdiction of the Federal courts—“ is so subversive of order and so pregnant of abuse, that it may not be amiss to consider how far a law of premu SUGGESTIONS OF JEFFERSON. 163 XII. nire should be revived and modified, against all citizens CHAPTER who attempt to carry their causes before any other than the state courts in cases where those other courts have 1797. no right to their cognizance. A plea to the jurisdiction of the courts of their state, or the reclamation of a foreign jurisdiction, if adjudged valid, would be safe, but if adjudged invalid, should be followed by the punishment of premunire for the attempt." A premunire, by the English law, was a contempt of the king's authority by the introduction of a foreign power into the land, a crime invented for the restraint of the papal authority attempted to be exercised in England; and the punishments of it were, banishment, forfeiture of lands and goods, and pain of life or member. This offense and these punishments, or some modification of them, Jefferson proposed to revive as a safeguard against Federal usurpations, to be exercised by the state courts against every person who, in their judgment, should dispute their authority without cause; thus sacrificing to the maintenance of state rights the individual right of every suitor to test the authority of the tribunal before which he appears; a procedure well enough suited to such a republic as France, and to such ministers as Danton and Merlin, but a little odd in such an American friend of the people and of the Federal Constitution as Jefferson professed to be, holding, as he did, also, at the same time, the office of vice-president of the United States. Shortly after the date of the above quoted letter, there occurred in Pennsylvania another noticeable attack upon the "natural right of free correspondence between citizen and citizen," proper to be noticed here, as having a direct bearing upon a celebrated act of the ensuing session of Congress on the subject of seditious libels. Yrujo, XII. CHAPTER the Spanish minister, following in the French wake, had warmly remonstrated against the British treaty as unfair 1797. toward Spain, and inconsistent with the late Spanish treaty. Among other comments on this remonstrance, Cobbett's Gazette had dwelt on the subserviency in which Spain had been held by France ever since the Bourbon occupation of the Spanish throne, and had reprobated in severe terms the conduct of Charles IV., king of Spain, in making an ignoble peace with the murderers of his kinsman, Louis XVI., and so becoming "the supple tool of their most nefarious politics." "As the sovereign is at home," Cobbett continued, "so is the minister abroad; the one is governed like a dependent by the nod of the five despots at Paris, the other by the directions of the French agents in America. Because their infidel tyrants thought proper to rob and insult this country and its government, and we have thought proper, I am sorry to add, to submit to it, the obsequious imitative Don must attempt the same, in order to participate in the guilt and lessen the infamy of his masters." To this and to two or three other similar articles, one of which spoke of Yrujo as "half Don, half sans culotte," it is probable that Talleyrand had alluded when he complained, as we have seen, of the newspaper attacks upon France and "her allies" which the government of the United States suffered to be made without any attempt to suppress them. Yrujo himself also complained, and the government so far listened to him as to direct the attorney general to lay the matter before the grand jury of the Federal Circuit August Court; and Cobbett, in consequence, was bound over by the district judge of Pennsylvania to appear at the ensuing term. But the Spanish minister much preferred to bring the matter before the state courts of Pennsylva nia, not only as a speedier process, but because he relied |