Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/191

Rh Judges of these Courts, and the upholding of the consti- tutionality of that Law by Judges Paterson and Chase in the trials of Mathew Lyon, Thomas Cooper, James Callender and others in 1799 and 1800 was regarded as a serious attack on the Constitution itself.^ Moreover, the constant practice indulged in by the Judges of the United States Courts of expressing their views on polit- ical issues in charges to the grand juries was regarded by the Anti-Federalists as an outrageous extension of judicial power. JeflFerson termed it "a perversion of the institution of the grand jury from a legal to a polit- ical engine."^ "We have seen Judges who ought to be independent, converted into political partisans and like executive missionaries pronouncing political ha- rangues throughout the United States** was the de- scription of tJie situation given by an Anti-Federalist Congressman. This language was surely justified when a Judge of the Court deemed it proper to deliver a charge reported by the FederaUst newspapers as " truly patriotic** as follows: "After some general reflections on the relative situation between the United States and France, the learned Judge went into a defence of the alien and sedition laws, and proved them, it is believed,

> See especially, MarthaU, HI, 8-45 ; The EnforcemerU qf the Alien and Sedition Lowe, by Frank Malley Anderson, Amer, Hist. Ass, Report (1912). In Contemporary Opinion qf the Virginia and Kentucky ReeoltUione, by Frank Malley Anderson, Amer, Hist. Rev. (1899), X, it is said : "The Federalists manifested an utterly imperious and intolerant demeanour towards their Republican opponents and the imprisonment of (Abijah) Adams indicates that the Federalists were ready upon the slightest provocation to treat opposition to the policy of the Administration, whether Federal or State, as a crime. That case certainly does much to explain why Jefferson and other Republican leaders could fear that Republican institutions were about to be overthrown.*'


 * Jeffereon, Vm, letter to P. Fitzhugh, June 4, 1797; 7th Cong., 1st Sese,, speech of William B. Giles in the House, Feb. 18, 1802. A letter to the Independent Chronicle, quoted in Aurora, June 21, 1802, spoke of Judges "itinerating through their Circuits and converting the holy seat of law, reason and equity into a rostrum from which they could harangue the populace under the artful pretence of instructing a grand jury, and excite an alarming fanaticism among them under cover of legal authority."