Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/79

Rh tenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. The sentence, however, was not carried out.

Hamilton, therefore, approached his trial knowing well that he must acquit Zenger, not by the law, but by the feeling in the community—the growing feeling among human beings that the law was wrong.

It was to this feeling that he appealed—in a larger sense it was to the yet unborn feeling of Nationalism that he addressed himself, and in this connection alone his speech is one of the important documents in the history of the rise of the American republic. But it was a novel doctrine that he enunciated; even to those whose interest he espoused it must have come with a shock when he declared, "What strange doctrine is it to press everything for law here which is so in England!"

That Hamilton appreciated, as did those who were back of Zenger in his fight, that it was not a local matter, or a personal vindication that was sought, is shown by one of the concluding paragraphs:

"The question before the Court, and you, gentlemen of the Jury, is not of small or private concern; it is not the cause of a poor printer, nor of New York alone, which you are trying. No! it may, in its consequences, affect every freeman that lives under a British government, on the main of America."

He ridiculed the assumption that power must always be protected. It was a beautiful river while it was kept within bounds, but when it overflowed its banks, it bore down all before it and brought destruction and desolation wherever it went. Liberty was the only bulwark against lawless power, which in all ages had sacrificed the blood of the best men that had ever lived to its wild and boundless ambition.

"I hope to be pardoned, Sir, for my zeal upon this