or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press," thereby guarding in the same sentence and under the same words, the freedom of religion, of speech and of the press, insomuch, that whatever violates either, throws down the sanctuary which covers the others, and that libels, falsehoods, and defamation, equally with heresy and false religion, are withheld from the cognizance of Federal tribunals. * * * Therefore, the act of Congress of the United States passed on the 14th day of July, 1798, intitulated "An Act in addition to the act intitulated 'An Act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States'," which does abridge the freedom of the press, is not law, but is altogether void, and of no force."***"If these acts (the Alien and Sedition acts) should stand, these conclusions would flow from them: That the General Government may place any act that they think proper on the list of crimes and punish it themselves whether enumerated or not enumerated by the Constitution as cognizable to the President, or any other person, who may himself be the accuser, counsel, judge, and jury, whose suspicion may be the evidence, his order the sentence, his officer the executioner, and his breast the sole record of the transaction: that a very numerous and exact description of the inhabitants of these States being by his precedent reduced to outlaws, to the absolute dominion of one man, and the barrier of the Constitution thus swept away

from us all, no rampart now remains against the passions and the powers of the majority in Congress to protect from a like exportation, or other more grievous punishment, the minority of the same body, the legislatures, judges, governors, and councellors of the States, nor their other peaceable inhabitants, who may venture to reclaim the constitutional rights and liberties of the States and people, or who for other causes, good or bad, may be obnoxious to the views, or marked by the suspicions of the President, or to be thought dangerous to his or their election, or other interests, public or personal: that the friendless alien has indeed been selected as the safest subject of a first experiment but the citizen will soon follow or rather, has already followed, for already has a Sedition Act marked him as his prey: that these and successive acts of the same character, unless arrested at the threshold, necessarily drive these States into revolution and blood, and will furnish new calumnies against republican government, and new pretexts for those who wish it to be believed that man cannot be governed but by a rod of iron.'

The Virginia Resolutions, drawn by Mr. Madison and approved by Mr. Jefferson, condemned the Alien and Sedition laws, and, with reference to the attack on the freedom of the press, employed these words: "exercises in like manner, a power not delegated by the Constitution, but, on the contrary, expressly and positively forbidden by one of the

VOL. XVIII-B

amendments thereto a power which, more than any other, ought to produce universal alarm, because it is levelled against the right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon, which has ever been justly deemed the only effectual guardian of every other right."

Jefferson, seeing the coming of the Sedition law before it was enacted, was gathering ammunition with which to attack it before it was on the statute books. Writing to Mr. Madison April 26th, 1798, he prophesied thus: "One of the war party, in a fit of passion, declared sometime ago they would pass a citizen bill, an alien bill, and a sedition bill; accordingly, some days ago, Coit laid a motion on the table of the House of Representatives for modifying the citizen law. Their threats point at Gallatin, and it is believed they will endeavor to reach him by this bill. Yesterday Mr. Hillhouse laid on the table of the Senate a motion for giving power to send away suspected aliens. This is understood to be meant for Volney and Collot. But it will not stop there when it gets in a course for execution. There is now only wanting, to accomplish the whole declaration before mentioned, a sedition bill, which we shall certainly soon see proposed." In November of the same year he wrote to John Taylor: "For the present, I should be for resolving the Alien and Sedition laws to be against the Constitution and merely void, and for addressing the other States

to obtain similar declarations: and I would not do anything at this moment which should commit us further, but reserve ourselves to shape our future measures, or no measures, by the events which may happen."

In the same year he wrote to Madison of the threat of an alien and sedition bill, and of the sedition bill said, "The object of that, is the suppression of the Whig presses, Bache's has been particularly named. That paper and also Carey's totter for want of subscriptions. We would really exert ourselves to procure them, for if these papers fail, republicanism will be entirely brow-beaten.”

In June, 1799, seeing the fulfillment of his prophecy he commenced the agitation for the repeal of the law that abridged the freedom of speech and wrote to Madison as follows: "They have brought into the lower House a sedition bill, which, among other enormities, undertakes to make printing certain matters criminal, though one of the amendments to the Constitution has so expressly taken religion, printing presses, etc., out of their coercion. Indeed this bill, and the alien bill are both so palpably in the teeth of the Constitution as to show they mean to pay no respect to it."

He followed closely every act and speech attending the passage of this objectionable law and all subsequent debates on it, and gave this pen-picture in a letter to Mr. Madison in February, 1799, of a scene in the House of Representatives: "Yesterday

witnessed a scandalous scene in the House of Representatives. It was the day for taking up the report of their committee against the Alien and Sedition laws, etc. They (the Federalists) held a caucus and determined that a word should not be spoken on their side, in answer to anything that should be said on the other. Gallatin took up the Alien, and Nicholas the Sedition law; but after a little while of common silence, they began to enter into loud conversations, laugh, cough, etc., so that the last hour of these gentlemen's speaking they must have had the lungs of a vendue master to have been heard. Livingston, however, attempted to speak. But after a few sentences, the Speaker called him to order, and told him what he was saying was not to the question. It was impossible to proceed. The question was carried in favor of the report, 52 to 48; the real strength of the two parties is 56 to 50.

Again, to Madison in the same year, he wrote, "Petitions and remonstrances against the Alien and Sedition laws are coming from different parts of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. * * * I am in hopes Virginia will stand so countenanced by those States as to repress the wishes of the government to coerce her, which they might venture on if they supposed she would be left alone. Firmness on our part, but a passive firmness, is the true course. Anything rash or threatening might check the favorable dispositions of these Middle States,