285. ALIEN AND SEDITION LAWS, Suits under.—[continued].
With respect to the dismission
of the prosecutions for sedition in
Connecticut, it is well known to have been
a tenet of the republican portion of our fellow
citizens, that the Sedition law was contrary
to the Constitution and, therefore, void. On
this ground I considered it as a nullity whenever
I met it in the course of my duties; and
on this ground I directed nolle prosequis in
all the prosecutions which had been instituted
under it; and, as far as the public sentiment
can be inferred from the occurrences of
the day, we must say that this opinion had
the sanction of the nation. The prosecutions,
therefore, which were afterwards instituted
in Connecticut, of which two were against
printers, two against preachers, and one
against a judge, were too inconsistent with
this principle to be permitted to go on. We
were bound to administer to others the same
measure of law, not which they had meted
to us, but we to ourselves, and to extend to
all equally the protection of the same constitutional
principles. These prosecutions, too,
were chiefly for charges against myself, and
I had from the beginning laid it down as a
rule to notice nothing of the kind. I believed
that the long course of services in which I
had acted on the public stage, and under the
eye of my fellow citizens, furnished better
evidence to them of my character and principles,
than the angry invectives of adverse
partisans in whose eyes the very acts most
approved by the majority were subjects of
the greatest demerit and censure. These
prosecutions against them, therefore, were to
be dismissed as a matter of duty—
To Gideon Granger. Washington ed. vi, 332.
Ford ed., ix, 456.
(M.
1814)
