All the members pronounced not guilty on this article.
The sixth article was read by the Secretary, as follows:
Art. 6. And whereas it is provided by the 34th section of the aforesaid act, entitled “An act to establish the judicial courts of the United States,” that the laws of the several States, except where the constitution, treaties, or statutes of the United States shall otherwise require or provide, shall be regarded as the rules of decision in trials at common law, in the courts of the United States, in cases where they apply; and whereas by the laws of Virginia it is provided, that in cases not capital, the offender shall not be held to answer any presentment of a grand jury until the court next succeeding that during which such presentment shall have been made, yet the said Samuel Chase, with intent to oppress and procure the conviction of the said James Thompson Callender, did, at the court aforesaid, rule and adjudge the said Callender to trial during the term at which he, the said Callender, was presented and indicted, contrary to law in that case made and provided.
Those who pronounced guilty on this article, are:
Messrs. Breckenridge, Cocke, Howland, and Maclay—4.
Those who pronounced not guilty, are:
Messrs. Adams, Anderson, Baldwin, Bayard, Bradley, Brown, Condit, Dayton, Ellery, Franklin, Gaillard, Giles, Hillhouse, Jackson, Logan, Mitchill, Moore, Olcott, Pickering, Plumer, Smith of Maryland, Smith of New York, Smith of Ohio, Smith of Vermont, Stone, Sumter, Tracy, White, Worthington, and Wright—30.
The seventh article was read by the Secretary, as follows:
Art. 7. That at a circuit court of the United States, for the district of Delaware, held at Newcastle, in the month of June, one thousand eight hundred, whereat the said Samuel Chase presided—the said Samuel Chase, disregarding the duties of his office, did descend from the dignity of a judge and stoop to the level of an informer, by refusing to discharge the grand jury, although entreated by several of the said jury so to do, and after the said grand jury had regularly declared, through their foreman, that they had found no bills of indictment, nor had any presentments to make, by observing to the said grand jury, that he, the said Samuel Chase, understood “that a highly seditious temper had manifested itself in the State of Delaware, among a certain class of people, particularly in Newcastle county, and more especially in the town of Wilmington, where lived a most seditious printer, unrestrained by any principle of virtue, and regardless of social order—that the name of this printer was”—but checking himself, as if sensible of the indecorum which he was committing, added, “that it might be assuming too much to mention the name of this person, but it becomes your duty, gentlemen, to inquire diligently into this matter,” and that with intention to procure the prosecution of the printer in question, the said Samuel Chase did, moreover, authoritatively enjoin on the District Attorney of the United States the necessity of procuring a file of the papers to which he alluded, (and which were understood to be those published under the title of “Mirror of the Times and General Advertiser,”) and by a strict examination of them to find some passage which might furnish the groundwork of a prosecution against the printer of the said paper; thereby degrading his high judicial functions, and tending to impair the public confidence in, and respect for, the tribunals of justice, so essential to the general welfare.
Those who pronounced guilty on this article, are: