d only one question before them,
"Did Zenger publish the words charged in the information?" That fact
was clear; nay, he did not himself deny it. He confessed it in court.
But the jury fell back on their rights and duties to decide the
Question of Fact, of Law, and of the Application of the Law to the
Fact, and returned "NOT GUILTY," "upon which there were three huzzas
in the Hall." Had this Honorable Court been then in existence I
suppose it would have talked of indicting the jurors for "perjury,"
and would doubtless have had its labor for its pains. For the Common
Council of New York presented Mr. Hamilton with a costly gold box and
the freedom of the city. Gentlemen, this took place one hundred and
twenty years ago. Forty years before the Revolution, Andrew Hamilton
helped lay the "brilliant foundation of liberty," whereon another
Hamilton was also to raise up noble walls of freedom. Gentlemen of the
Jury, by Wisdom is a house builded, but the foolish plucketh it down
with her own hands. Will you allow that to be done? What if the jury
in 1735 had been faithless? The axe which smote down Zenger in New
York, bloody and cruel, would have shorn off the heads of Otis and
Quincy, and Adams and Hancock at Boston; the family of Scroggs alone
would be held in honor in New England.[148]

[Footnote 148: 17 St. Tr. 675.]

Gentlemen, it once happened in New York that Governor Nicholson was
offended with one of the clergymen of the Province. He met him on the
road one day, and "as it was usual with him (under the protection of
his commission) used the poor minister with the worst of language,
threatened to cut off his ears, slit his nose, and at last to shoot
him through the head." The minister, "being a reverend man, continued
all this time uncovered in the heat of the sun, until he found an
opportunity to fly for it, and coming to a neighbor's house fell ill
of a fever and wrote for a doctor," relating the facts and concluding
that the governor was crazy, for no man in his right mind would behave
so ill. The doctor showed the letter; the governor brought a
prosecution against the minister for publishing a "scandalous, wicked,
and seditious libel." No doubt he could have found a judge even then
who would twist the law so as to make the letter "sedition" and
"libel;" nay, perhaps he could construct a jury so as to secure a
conviction, but before it reached trial the prosecution was stopped by
the order of Queen Anne.

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