Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/206

180 under the Sedition act, and many others were tried but not convicted.

It is stated, and doubtless the statement is true, that " Mr. Adams' participation respective to the Alien and Sedition laws was confined to his official act of signature." But this in no way excuses him, for by his very signature he made the acts his own. Had his previous utterances been of a more democratic nature, it would not have been possible to have fastened on him the odium for this political mistake. Moreover, his active interest in prosecutions under the Alien and Sedition acts shows that he welcomed this unpopular legislation. It was to him that Pickering, the Secretary of State, gave a thoroughly Federalist description of Duane.

"The editor of the Aurora, William Duane," he wrote to the President, "pretends that he is an, saying that he was born in Vermont, but was, when a child, taken back with his parents to Ireland, where he was educated. But I understand the facts to be, that he went from America prior to our revolution, remaining in the British dominions till after the peace, went to the British East Indies, where he committed or was charged with some crime, and returned to Great Britain, from whence, within three or four years past, he came to this country to stir up sedition and work other mischief. I presume, therefore, that he is really a British subject, and, as an alien, liable to be banished from the United States. He has lately set himself up to be the captain of a company of volunteers, whose distinguishing badges are a plume of cock-neck feathers and a small black cockade with a large eagle. He is doubtless a United Irishman, and the company is probably formed to oppose the au-