Page:Kentucky Resolutions of 1798.djvu/31

Rh France to be a public enemy, and made the giving of comfort or aid to Frenchmen or France by any one owing allegiance to the United States treason, and punishable with death. The second clause made the concealing or withholding of information concerning the acts made treason by the preceding section misprision of treason, and punishable by fine and imprisonment. The third was directed against combinations and conspiracies to resist the laws and the execution of the laws by officers of the United States. This crime of sedition was punishable by fine and imprisonment, and the judges were given authority to require securities for future good conduct. The fourth section was directed against seditious publications.

It would have been wonderful had such a measure become a law. It was tremendously sweeping in its provisions ; to pronounce France and her people enemies when not in a state of declared war was unexampled, and to make it a high misdemeanor to use language "tending to justify the hostile conduct of the French government" a great stretch of censorship. The first two sections were stricken out bodily; not, however, till they had served to create alarm, and to supply a bugbear wherewith to frighten the uneasy, as examples of what the administration party desired and were working to obtain. The last two sections were purged of their more objectionable features, but a residuum remained ample to awake the fiercest invectives and the most determined opposition. It now included the two classes of seditious practices