Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/988

952 952 HARVARD LAW REVIEW The revival of those doctrines is a sure symptom of an attack upon the hberty of the press. Only once in our history prior to 191 7 has an attempt been made to apply those doctrines. In 1798 the impending war with France, the spread of revolutionary doctrines by foreigners in our midst, and the spectacle of the disastrous operation of those doctrines abroad,^* — facts that have a familiar sound to-day — led to the en- actment of the Alien and Sedition Laws.^^ The Alien Law allowed the President to compel the departure of aliens whom he judged dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States, or sus- pected, on reasonable grounds, of treasonable or secret machina- tions against our government. The Sedition Law punished false, scandalous, and malicious writings against the government, either House of Congress, or the President, if published with intent to defame any of them, or to excite against them the hatred of the people, or to stir up sedition or to excite resistance of law, or to aid any hostile designs of any foreign nation against the United States. The maximum penalty was a fine of two thousand dollars and two years' imprisonment. Truth was a defense, and the jury had power to determine criminality as under Fox's Libel Act. Despite the inclusion of the two legal rules for which reformers had contended, and the requirement of an actual intention to cause overt injury, the Sedition Act was bitterly resented as invading the Uberty of the press. Its constitutionality was assailed on that ground by Jefferson, who pardoned all prisoners when he became President,** and popular indignation at the Act and the prosecutions wrecked the Federahst party. In those prosecutions words were once more cles serait de nature d porter atteinte d la paix publique." — In the same way the New York post-office objected to the general tenor and animus of the Masses as seditious without specifying any particular portion as objectionable, although the periodical offered to excerpt any matter so pointed out. Masses Pub. Co. v. Patten, 244 Fed. 535, 536, 543 (1917)- •* Events leading up to these statutes are narrated in the standard histories and also in Francis Wharton, State Trials of the United States, 23. " Act of June 25, 1798, i Stat, at L., 570; Act of July 14, 1798, i Stat, at L., 596. Leicester Ford, VII, 245: "The object of that, [the bill] is the suppression of the whig presses; VII, 246; VII, 266, on imconstitutionality; VTI, 283, "The alien and sedition laws are working hard;" VII, 289, 311, 336, 350, 354, 355, 356, on p>opular opposition to the acts; VTI, 367, 371, 483, on continuation of Sedition Law by Congress; VIII, 54, 56 ff., 308 ff., on unconstitutionality and pardons; IX, 456, on dismissal of prosecutions.
 * For references to the Sedition Act in Jefferson's letters, see the edition of Paul