Mr. Harper. Please inform the Court whether you were present at a circuit court for Delaware in 1800?
A. I recollect that I was present on the 27th of June. I arrived about 10 o’clock, at which time Judge Chase was not there. Some time after, the Court was formed, the grand jury was sworn, and Judge Chase delivered a charge. Having retired for about an hour, the grand jury returned to the bar. Judge Chase asked them if they had any bills or presentments to make. Their reply was that they had not. Judge Chase then asked the attorney of the district if he had no business to lay before them. He said he had not. The jury requested to be discharged. Judge Chase said, it was not usual to discharge them so early, some business might occur during the course of the day. He told them he had been informed that there was a printer who was guilty of libelling the Government of the United States; his name is ——; here he stopped, and said, “Perhaps I may commit myself, and do injustice to the man. Have you not two printers?” The attorney said there were. Well, said Judge Chase, cannot you find a file of the papers of the one I allude to? Mr. Read said he did not take the papers, or that he had not a file. Some person then observed that a file could be got at Mr. Crow’s. Judge Chase asked the attorney if he could examine the papers by the next morning. Mr. Read said, that under the directions of the Court, he conceived it to be his duty, and he would do it.
On the second day the same questions, whether they had found any bills, were put to the grand jury. They answered that they had not. Mr. Chase asked the attorney of the district if he had found any thing in the papers that required the interposition of the jury. He said that he had found nothing which in his opinion came within the sedition law; but there was a paragraph against his honor. Judge Chase said, that was not what he alluded to. He was abused from one end of the continent to the other; but his shoulders were broad enough to bear it.
Samuel Moore, affirmed.
Mr. Harper. Were you in the circuit court held in Delaware in June, 1800, when it met?
A. No, sir. I did attend early enough on the first day to hear the charge given to the grand jury. I think I did not attend before twelve o’clock. I attended as a juror. On the next day I attended early, and was in the court house when the Court met. When the jury returned into court, inquiry was made whether they had any bills or presentments to make. They answered no. The Court then inquired of the attorney of the district whether he had any business to lay before the grand jury. He said he had not. While he was making this reply, he rose, and laid hold of a file of newspapers, which I took to be the Mirror of the Times, and while he was in the act of presenting it, he observed that he had not seen any thing that in his opinion required notice, unless it were a publication reflecting on Judge Chase, which did not appear to him to come under the sedition law. Judge Chase answered, No, sir; they have abused me from one end of the continent to the other; but it is the Government, and not myself, that I wish protected from calumny. Immediately after the grand jury were discharged.
William H. Winder, sworn.
Mr. Harper. I will ask you whether you were in the circuit court of the United States, held at Baltimore, in May, 1803? I will, however, previously observe that it is not my intention to say or to prove that the witness, when he deposed to certain facts, knew that they had not passed. I mean only to impeach his correctness, and to infer that, as he was angry, he gave to what he heard the coloring of his own feelings.
Mr. Winder. I was present at that court when it was opened, and the jury impanelled, and I heard Judge Chase deliver his charge. After delivering the general and usual charge to the grand jury he said he begged leave to detain them a few minutes, while he made some general reflections on the situation of public affairs. He commenced by laying down some abstract opinions, stating that that Government was the most free and happy that was the best administered; that a republic might be in slavery and a monarchy free. He also drew some distinctions with regard to the doctrine of equal rights, and said that the idea of perfect equality of rights, more particularly such as had been broached in France, was fanciful and untrue; that the only doctrine contended for with propriety was, the equal protection of all classes from oppression. He commented on the repeal of the judiciary system of the United States, and remarked that it had a tendency to weaken the judiciary, and to render it dependent. He then adverted to the laws of Maryland respecting the judiciary, as tending to the same effect. One was a law for the repeal of the county court system. He also alluded to the depending law for the abolition of two of the courts of Maryland. He said something of the toil and labor and patriotism of those who had raised the fair fabric, (constitution of Maryland,) and said that he saw with regret some of their sons now employed in destroying it. He also said that the tendency of the general suffrage law was highly injurious, as, under it, a man was admitted to full political rights, who might be here to-day and gone to-morrow.