SEDITION LAW. 225 XII. 1798. June 20 Lloyd of Maryland, pending the progress of these war- CHAPIER like measures, obtained leave in the Senate to bring in a bill to define more precisely the crime of treason, and to define and punish the crime of sedition. The first section of this bill, as originally introduced, declared the people of France 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 misprison of treason. The third section did not materially differ from the first section of the act as finally passed, of which an analysis will presently be given. By the fourth section of this bill of Lloyd's 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 gov ernment or any of its officers were influenced by motives hostile to the Constitution, or to the liberties or happiness of the people, might be punished by fine or imprisonment, the amount and time being left blank in the draft. 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 tirely. The others were modified, but without any very essential change CHAPTER When the bill came down to the House, Livingston attempted to cut the matter short by moving its rejec1798. tion. This led to a very warm and acrimonious deJuly 5. bate, in which the character of the press was freely disJuly 10. cussed, many extracts from the Aurora being cited by way of example. Livingston's motion was rejected, for ty-seven to thirty-six; but in Committee of the Whole, on motion of Harper, and 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, and this, too, was carried, as was also a limitation of the act to the end of the next Congress. 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, spoke 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 government 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 combination." The second section subjected to a fine not exceeding $2000, and imprisonment not exceeding two SEDITION LAW. 227 XII. years, the printing or publishing "any false, scandalous, CHAPTER and malicious writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress, or the 1798. 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 prosecu tions 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 he would certainly have been held responsible, under the first section, had it then been in force, for his share in stirring up that resistence to the excise law which had ended in producing the Whisky Insurrection. Yet against that part of the law no very weighty objec tions were urged. It was against the second sectionthat for punishing the publication of seditious libelsthat the arguments of the opposition were chiefly directed. The weight due to these 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 they cared nothing for the country except to use it as an instrument of the political passions which they had XII. CHAPTER brought with them from Europe-or, if emanating from natives, then from men whom devotion to France and 1798. 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 Advertis er. This, the ablest paper 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 such was especially the case with the opposition prints. Whatever might be their defects and deficiencies in AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS. 229 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 edi torial 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. 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. The 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 |