dom from restraint prior to publication, was unsuited to the spirit of American institutions. As a better definition of liberty of the press the defense offered to read a passage from John Adams's Canon and Feudal Law.[1] This definition the chief-justice refused to hear, finding excuse that it was published anonymously, that "it was unusual and improper to submit any matter to the jury unsupported by regular authority," and that speculative productions, written at a period of disorder and commotion, "however respectable and illustrious the author," should not be admitted.
After the refusal of the chief-justice to listen to any definition of liberty of the press other than that which obtained in England, one would like to know in what terms he defined that subject to the jury. Presumably he adopted the English rule without material qualification, for a verdict of guilty was rendered in accordance with that principle. The prisoner was sentenced to thirty days' imprisonment, payment of the costs of his trial, and to make a recognition in the sum of five hundred dollars to keep the peace and maintain a good behavior for one year.[2] Before sending the prisoner away to jail the chief-justice seized the occasion to deliver a long harangue, in the course of which he declared himself emphatically upon what he called "the monstrous positions" of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions.[3]
The imprisonment of Abijah Adams was the most flagrant but not the only instance of the persecution of Massachusetts Republicans for their attitude against the reply to Virginia and Kentucky. Both of the Republican legislative leaders suffered much annoyance at the hands of Federalist zealots. The incidents, though trivial in themselves, are interesting for the light which they throw upon the methods by which the Federalist leaders retained their control over Massachusetts. Bacon, the Republican senator who had unaided opposed the passage of the reply, was held up to ridicule in the Federalist press as the Solitary Nay, a character altogether too contemptible for punishment.[4] Being defeated for re-election to the Senate, Bacon offered himself as a candidate for the House in the town of Stockbridge. A few days before the election a communication appeared in the Centinel,[5] professing to recount an incident in Bacon's early life which the voters of Stockbridge ought to be in-
- ↑ This passage is in John Adams, Works, III. 456–459.
- ↑ Manuscript records of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Vol. 1799, folio 183, No. 8191. The costs amounted to at least thirty-two dollars and thirty-one cents.
- ↑ Columbian Centinel, March 30, 1799.
- ↑ Columbian Centinel, April 27, 1799. This article was copied by nearly all the Federalist papers of the state.
- ↑ April 27, 1799.
