had no occasion to address you this letter; but when we found him borrowing the language of Edmund Burke, and telling the world that although he should succeed in treating with the French, there was no dependence to be placed on their engagements; that their religion or morality was at an end, and they had turned pirates and plunderers; and it would be necessary to be perpetually armed against them, though you were at peace, we wondered that the answer of both Houses had not been an order to send him to a madhouse! Instead of this, the Senate have echoed his speech with more servility than ever George the Third experienced from either house of Parliament." No proof appeared on the trial of my printing, or aiding or abetting in printing, or circulating a printed copy of this famous letter. I had read the copy of the letter in company, but the advocates of the sedition law would never admit that such reading was punishable by that law. The printer who printed the letter, swore that he had been anxious to get the letter from me, and that I had refused to suffer it to be printed, and repelled every attempt to persuade me to the printing; that he had obtained the copy of the letter in my absence. The fact was, that my wife was persuaded by a gentleman who is now a member of this House, that the Republican cause and my election (which was pending) would be injured if the letter was not published; and, as I understood, she gave it to him, the letter was printed, and that gentleman had some of the copies before I came home. I suppressed the remainder of the edition. The judge, finding no proof to support this part of the charge, directed the jury to find a verdict of guilty generally, as there could be no doubt of my being guilty on the first count. I had acknowledged my having written the letter to Alden Spooner. They did so. I will not detain the House by going into a detail of the manner in which that jury was packed. After all the care and management in the original selection, there was one man on it whose honesty my persecutors feared; and, to get him off, a wretch falsely swore that the summoned juryman had expressed to him something like an opinion that I could not be found guilty. I will not here dwell upon the judge's denial to me of a challenge upon the jury – as great a crime as any Judge Chase was charged with. I look for an investigation of this business when all the features of it shall come fairly to public view. Should that investigation be refused at this time, I shall not fail to look for it at some future time. I can never forgive the unjust stigma that has been placed on my character; and should justice be refused me during my whole life, I will leave it with my children and theirs to seek it. When my enemies wounded my feelings, robbed me of my property, and affected temporarily my reputation, I consoled myself that my friends would soon be in power, and they would make every thing right. My wounded honor would be consoled; the wound would be healed – a share at least of the property of which I had been deprived, would be reimbursed. How cruelly have I been thus far disappointed! Generous men, at the time I suffered, said it is enough for you to bear the mortification of the temporary insult – we will share with you the loss of property. Under this impression much money was collected, the greater part of which went to relieve oppressed Republican printers – it has all been charged to me. I never asked, nor would I have received a cent of this gratuity, could I have avoided it without insulting the benevolent views of the good man (Gen. Stevens Thompson Mason, deceased) who set the subscription on foot. That good man gave me a list of those to whom he considered me beholden, and the amount; while the thing was fresh in every one's mind I made a compliment, which he considered ample, and more than ample, to every one of those on that list that was within my reach; to those few that remain on that list uncompensated, I feel beholden and much indebted. As the thing has grown old, and as I have come in contact with those gentlemen, I have felt myself in an embarrassed, awkward situation, from which I wished to be relieved by being able to say to them, the public have restored your money – here it is – it is yours, not mine. Judging other men to have feelings like myself, I am at a loss how to get rid of the obligation I feel, in any other way than the restoration of their money when it comes in a way they cannot refuse it. From this source my anxiety for the restoration of the money unjustly taken from me, arises more than any other; and on every review of the subject, I am bound to say that I have been more cruelly treated by the neglect of a duty to which my friends had pledged themselves, when they declared me innocent and patriotic, than by enemies who thought me guilty, and found me goading them in their progress toward the destruction of the liberty and republicanism of this country. As if to make their cruelty more insupportable, insult is added to the injury, by daily insinuations that I am bound by gratitude to stand by those who call themselves Republicans, in all their projects, right or wrong. Before I was elected a member of Congress from the State of Kentucky, I sent to a member of this House, who had promised me to bring it forward, a petition to be laid before the House of Representatives for redress in this case. He returned the petition to my son in a letter, which I have in my hand – in which he says, "I am sorry and ashamed that I have not presented the petition. I have not wrote to your father, and confess I am ashamed; pray you, the first time you write to Colonel Lyon, do endeavor to make an excuse for me." Such I believe was the impression of most of those I had acted with in the reign of terror, as we called it; but that impression has been wearing off, it seems, while my feelings have been every day increasing in their poignancy at their neglect of a duty, to which they had solemnly pledged themselves, while they were struggling with their adversaries for pre-eminence and power. Happily the awful silence which surrounded this extraordinary business has been broken. I consider this a prelude to investigation and a correct issue; and, let the event of the vote now about to be taken be what it may, I shall not despair.
I shall at this time say no more on this subject than to declare I wish not to have my case singled out for reparation. I wish the investigation general; the provision for remuneration general, to all who suffered under the lash of that unconstitutional sedition law.
Mr. Sawyer's amendment was negatived without a division.
Mr. Ross rose to propose another amendment to the resolution. It was a fact, he said, well known in almost every part of the United States, that the people in the district from which he had just been returned, had suffered as much in the cause of democracy as that of any other; that they had presented as firm a barrier to Federal oppression, and perhaps had as just claims as any other people in the United States to remuneration for losses in the cause. It was well known that at the time that high-handed measures were taken in this country, an insurrection had taken place in Pennsylvania, commonly known by the name of the Hot-water Insurrection; that it occurred in consequence of the oppression of the law for the collection of a direct tax. Many persons who had opposed the law, under the idea of its being unconstitutional, were prosecuted, punished, and some of them, in consequence of those prosecutions and the sentence resulting from them, expired in prison. To some who remained after the aspect of the affairs of the country was changed, mercy was extended by the United States; but to those whose prosecutions and convictions were of an earlier date, lenity was not extended; they were compelled to pay their fines before they could be relieved from imprisonment. Mr. R. declared his object in rising to be, to move to amend the resolution in such a way as to instruct the committee to inquire whether any, and if any, what compensation and remuneration should be made to the persons who suffered and were punished in consequence of an act to lay and collect a direct tax in the United States.
Mr. Dana said the gentleman's amendment contemplated remunerating those who suffered by their opposition to a statute. He would propose an amendment to inquire into the propriety of remunerating those who had suffered by their submission (not by their opposition) to the several acts respecting the embargo, certainly so much more meritorious conduct than that of opposition. As respected the whole of this subject, he said he was very free to declare that as regarded those who had been prosecuted at common law in the State of Connecticut, who had certainly been at very considerable expense, their defence perhaps having cost them several thousand dollars, yet, on the principle of correct legislation, he had not the least idea of remunerating them. Where shall we stop, said Mr. D., if we tread back on the steps of each other? We shall have opportunity enough for censure in reviewing our conduct. Perhaps it might be as well to draw the veil of oblivion over past transactions, and learn from experience to err no more.
Mr. Johnson said, that however much the act laying a direct tax was disapproved, and arose from measures which were improper, yet he had never deemed it an unconstitutional law, as he had the sedition law. He should therefore vote against the amendment and for the resolution.
