s. It was for this jury to resist the first attempt,
now made, to render our courts of justice accessory to their designs.

He would demonstrate from the evidence that the traverser had no part
in producing the excitement which prevailed in this District during the
last summer. Dr. Crandall was not even the innocent cause of it. It
was an excitement got up against Crandall, and not by him. When the
constables went to his lodgings and office with their warrant, there was
no excitement nor commotion among the people. All was calm, and but for
the constables and their process, would have remained so. But they
published in the streets of Georgetown the nature and object of their
errand, and collected a number of individuals who were curious to see
the result of this extraordinary search. One of the constables, Jeffers,
after leaving the office of the traverser, goes to Linthicum's shop, and
there proclaims to the assembly that "they had found more than they
expected;" that "their hopes were more than realized." The constable
then goes on to proclaim that he had found a large number of incendiary
pamphlets, 150 or 160. Then ensued an excitement, and a cry was at once
heard, "carry him across the street and hang him to the tree!" Such was
the origin of the excitement which pervaded our community, and which the
District Attorney lays to the charge of the traverser.

The testimony was silent as to any act of publication by the traverser
of more than one of the publications referred to in the indictment, and
in that he was shown to have had no improper design. We were told,
however, that the possession was proof of criminal design. Was it to be
endured that, without authority of law, and contrary to all law, private
papers should thus be wrested from the possession of an individual,
and then be offered as a proof of malicious intent and malicious
publication? In any prosecution for a libel it was necessary to prove a
malicious publication. Malice may be inferred to an individual from the
simple act of publication. But in cases of seditious libel, it was
necessary, in order to infer malice, to prove that the publication was
made to such persons as that the public could be injured by it. His case
being destitute of such proof, the traverser was entitled to a verdict
in his favor. Mr. Coxe went into a minute examination of the testimony
to prove that the pamphlets were brought innocently and without intent
to circulate them. Those