Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/205

Rh that this contention, revolutionary in law, was first made in this country by Andrew Hamilton at the trial of John Peter Zenger. But at the time that this amendment was put on the books of the United States Government, it was accepted in only two states, and it was not until after Alexander Hamilton's own great defense of Harry Croswell, as we shall see later, that, by enactment of the Legislature, such a defense was made possible in the State of New York.

The historian Schouler calls attention to the fact that the Alien and Sedition acts, "born in a single session," were not passed in the midst of fierce revolution nor while the country was in any great danger. The lawmakers were animated, unquestionably, by a spirit of revenge and a desire to suppress and intimidate those newspapers and writers who had in the past subjected them to forceful, vigorous criticism.

It is true that the press tended toward coarseness and sometimes indecency, but the Jefifersonian press had no monopoly of either. In fact, no one then writing could compare with Cobbett in either bitterness or vulgarity. There is no doubt that many of the leading editors had been exiled from foreign countries, and the scurrility with which they handled one another was such that at the seat of government "hardly a week passed without a scuffle in which one at least of the leading editors was concerned."

What particularly enraged the Republicans when the laws were passed, was the fact that the juries summoned by the marshal were all Federalists, and only Federalists were selected to try those who were indicted. Ten Republican editors and printers were tried and convicted