7759. SEDITION LAW, Connecticut cases.—
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 wherever 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 may 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 out to us,
but we to ourselves, and to extend to all equally
the protection of the same constitutional principles.
Those 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)
See Libels.
