CHAPTER against his Catholic majesty, the King of Spain, and his minister Yrujo, accused of being tools of the French. XII. 1797. "At a time," he tells the jury, "when misunderstandings prevail between the republics of the United States and France, and when our general government have ap pointed public ministers to endeavor their removal and restore the former harmony, some of the journals or newspapers in the city of Philadelphia have teemed with the most irritating invectives, couched in the most vulgar and opprobrious language, not only against the French nation and their allies, but the very men in power with whom our ministers are sent to negotiate. These publications have an evident tendency not only to frustrate a reconciliation, but to create a rupture and provoke a war between the sister republics, and seem calculated to vilify, nay, to subvert, all republican government whatsoever." Remarkable tenderness for the characters of Barras and Merlin in a chief justice who had seen Washington, Jay, Hamilton, and Adams most shamefully abused without any public expression of feeling, if not, indeed, with a secret exultation! Remarkable anxiety lest Cobbett's publications should hazard the success of the negotiations then pending with France, in one who had seen with such perfect composure the efforts of the Aurora and kindred prints to defeat, not Jay's negotiation only, but the treaty itself after it had been made and ratified, and who had himself assisted in a proceeding on that occasion which had ended in burning the treaty before the British ambassador's door, not without great danger of a riot! We come now to not the least remarkable part of this charge, the direct attack upon Cobbett personally. "Impressed with the duties of my station, I have used some endeavors for checking these evils by binding over the 4 M'KEAN AND COBBETT. 171 XII. editor and printer of one of them, licentious and viru- CHAPTER lent beyond all former example, to his good behavior, but he still perseveres in his nefarious publications; he has 1797. ransacked our language for terms of reproach and insult, and for the basest accusations against every ruler and distinguished character in France and Spain with whom we chance to have any intercourse, which it is scarce in nature to forgive; in brief, he braves his recognizance and the laws. It is now with you, gentlemen of the jury, to animadvert on his conduct; without your aid it can not be corrected. The government that will not discountenance may be thought to adopt it, and be deemed justly chargeable with all the consequences. Every nation ought to avoid giving any real offense to another. Some medals and dull jests are mentioned and represented as a ground of quarrel between the English and Dutch in 1672, and likewise caused Louis XIV. to make an expedition into the United Provinces of the Netherlands in the same year, and nearly ruined that commonwealth." It is worthy of remark how, in this part of his charge, M'Kean anticipated the complaints of Talleyrand, if, indeed, it was not this very charge by which those complaints were suggested. "We are sorry to find," the learned judge concluded, "that our endeavors in this way have not been attended with all the good effects that were expected from them; however, we are determined to pursue the prevailing vice of the times with zeal and indignation, that crimes may no longer appear less odious for being fashionable, nor the more secure from punishment for being popular.” In a long life of political warfare with his pen, Cobbett, by facing, at his own proper risk and cost, Lynch law and law of other kinds, assaults, mobs, actions, and indictments, did as much as any other man who ever CHAPTER lived, to vindicate, on both sides the Atlantic, "the nat XII. ural right of free correspondence between citizen and cit. 1797. izen, on their joint interests, whether public or private;" and to such a man it is but a piece of justice to say that M'Kean's charge against him of being "licentious and virulent beyond all former example" was itself a false, if not a malicious libel. Between Cobbett and the Callen. ders, Baches, and other "scribblers," of whose productions for several years past the chief justice gave a description so disgusting, but, at the same time, so just, there was this remarkable difference-there was nothing about Cobbett of sneaking malice. He dealt in no damnable innuendoes, no base insinuations of charges which he did not dare to state openly, and which he himself knew to be false. Like all zealous men, he was often too precipitate in giving credit and circulation to injurious charges against those whom he hated; but he evidently relied on being able to substantiate the truth of all he published. His statements were made in clear and plain terms, with the names at length of all the parties concerned, so that if the charge were false, refutation was easy. If his language was frequently without any touch of politeness, and his allusions to private matters often impertinent, he did in all this but follow a fashion which Chief-justice M'Kean had allowed to establish itself in Philadelphia by a usage of several years; and in these very particulars Callender and Bache went as far beyond Cobbett as they fell short of him in vigor of understanding, keenness of sarcasm, loftiness of spirit, manly self-respect, and unflinching courage. And so the grand jury seems to have thought; for, in spite of M'Kean's charge, and his appearance before them as one of the witnesses, they returned ignoramus on the indictment laid before them-å fate presently shared by the in COBBETT, RUSH, AND THE YELLOW FEVER. 173 XII. dictments laid before the grand jury of the Circuit CHAPTER Court. It was not entirely to politics that Cobbett confined 1797 himself. Another subject which he handled with cutting severity was Dr. Rush's method of treating the yellow fever. That singular disorder, which had made such ravages in Philadelphia in 1793, had appeared the next year in New Haven. In 1795 it broke out in New York, Baltimore, and Norfolk. In 1796 it visited Boston, Newburyport, and Charleston, in South Carolina. After an interval of four years, it reappeared again the present season with great virulence, in Philadelphia. A warm dispute had arisen among the doctors as to its origin. One party supposed it to be infectious, and to be brought from the West Indies. Rush and his partisans maintained that it was of local origin, produced by the accumulation of filth in the water-side streets of maritime towns. The locality of its origin seems to be now pretty generally agreed upon among medical men, though what its precise cause may be remains as doubtful as ever. Rush's opinion as to its origin, maintained, also, by Webster in an elaborate treatise on the history of pestilential disorders, was not without good results in a greater attention to cleanliness and ventilation. The Boston system of underground drainage, which contributes so much to the comfort and wholesomeness of that city, dates from the visitation of the yellow fever, which also furnished the occasion of the first attempts to supply Philadelphia with water from the Schuylkill for washing and cleansing the streets as well as for domestic use -a kind of enterprise in which that city preceded all other Anglo-American towns. Rush's method of treating the disease was far more questionable than his theory of its origin. He recom CHAPTER mended and adopted what physicians call an heroic treatXII. ment-making very free use of calomel and the lancet. 1797. Political prejudice-for Rush was reckoned to be some what of a French Democrat, or, at least, a political trimmer-had undoubtedly something to do with the unsparing ridicule with which Cobbett and Fenno attacked this method of practice, and which led first to a brutal assault by one of Rush's sons upon an aged physician, falsely suspected as the author of some of the articles; secondly, to a not very creditable attempt on the part of Rush himself to get up a prosecution, under the Pennsylvania statute on the subject of dueling, against this medical brother, because, while declining to accept a challenge from Rush's son, he sent one instead to the father, whom he regarded as the instigator of the assault; and, finally, to a libel suit on the part of Dr. Rush for damages, the result of which, two years after, drove Cobbett from America. It would seem, indeed, that Rush's practice had suffered from these assaults or from some other causes, since, in addition to his professorship in the medical school, he solicited, obtained from Adams, and held for the rest of his life the semi-sinecure office of Treasurer of the Mint. The reappearance of the yellow fever produced quite a panic at Philadelphia. At one time the sickness was so great that the president proposed to exercise the power vested in him by an act passed shortly after the former visitation of the fever, of calling Congress together at Nov. 13. some other place. But with the first frosts, and before the time appointed for the commencement of the session, the disorder had ceased. Some time elapsed, however, before a quorum of members ventured to make their ap pearance. Several vacancies in both houses had been filled by new members, among whom were Andrew |