Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/222

196 seem to have aroused their lying faculties beyond their ordinary state, to re-agitate the public mind. What appointments to office they have detailed which had never been thought of, merely to found a text for their calumniating commentaries! However, the steady character of our countrymen is a rock to which we may safely moor; and notwithstanding the efforts of the papers to disseminate early discontents, I expect that a just, dispassionate and steady conduct will at length rally to a proper system the great body of our country."

Under further newspaper attacks he showed that his mind was working somewhat sympathetically towards the point of view of the Federalists, and in a letter to Mrs. John Adams, dated September 11, 1804, he admitted that the state had the right to control the freedom of the press. "While we deny," he wrote, "that Congress have a right to control the freedom of the press, we have ever asserted the right of the States, and their exclusive right, to do so. They have accordingly, all of them, made provisions for punishing slander, which those who have time and inclination, resort to for the vindication of their characters. In general, the State laws appear to have made the presses responsible for slander as far as is consistent with its useful freedom. In those states where they do not admit even the truth of allegations to protect the printer, they have gone too far."

While his mind was working in this way it was decided by some of his advisors that there should be a check put on the libels of the Federalists against the President, while at the same time the Federalists were given a taste of their own medicine.

The Hudson (New York) Balance was the paper se-