acter and
principles, when he went to Connecticut to suppress the school founded
by Arthur Tappan & Co., which he thought an improper and dangerous
institution; and though he has always avowed himself to be opposed to
slavery, yet he has always been as firmly opposed to excitement. He had
traced him here, and shewn his declarations and principles here, and the
business in which he was engaged.

He said he had been satisfied, early in the trial, that there was no
ground for the prosecution--that the counsel for the United States had
not made out a case which would satisfy themselves or you; but it was
necessary to go on with the trial, for the satisfaction of others. The
public were anxious to have the whole truth before them; and he was
happy to believe that the jury would come to the conclusion that the
Government had wholly failed, upon their own evidence, to make out a
case which would justify a conviction of the prisoner.

_Mr. Coxe_ addressed the jury. He was not aware, he said, that during
his whole career as a professional man, he had ever entered upon the
discharge of his professional duties with feelings of more anxiety than
in the present case. The interest which he felt in the result was not
limited to the consequences which might befall the traverser--an
individual to whom he was an entire stranger; but principles had been
advanced, and a course of proceeding adopted in this case, which
involved results of the most general and momentous character; results
which may to-morrow, and through all time, be brought to bear upon each
one of us and upon our posterity.

The cause now on trial was the first of the same description which, to
his knowledge, had ever been brought up for judicial decision. It was an
indictment for a seditious libel at common law. Mr. Coxe here adverted
to a portion of our history, during the administration of the elder
Adams, when we were threatened with a foreign war and internal
commotion, and when it was believed that a resort to unusual means of
protection from impending peril was necessary. At that crisis was passed
the act of July 14, 1798, commonly called the Sedition Act, by which it
was provided that any person guilty of uttering a seditious libel
against the Government of the United States, with intent to defame the
same and bring it into contempt and disrepute, shall be punished by a
fine not exceeding two thousand dollars, and by imprisonment not
exceeding two years. The act