The intent, he said, must be gathered from the circumstance of the publication, and not alone from the libel charged; and he then commented upon the manner in which this paper was taken by Mr. King, and upon his character as a substantial, respectable man, who had just given the prisoner a warning, to show that no presumption could arise of an intent as charged in the indictment. The words "read and circulate," upon which so much stress had been laid, showed no evidence of an intent to publish the pamphlets here, for they were put on two years before in Peekskill; and even the having them brought here was no act of the prisoner's, nor does it appear that he knew they were in the box.
He went at length into an examination of the evidence tending to show Crandall's good character, and the accidents which brought him here and induced him to make it his permanent residence. The trouble and excitement, he said, had not been owing to the prisoner or to any act of his, but was entirely owing to the misapplied zeal of the officers, and to their indiscretion and stupidity. He said he had gone over all the evidence of publication, and it was certain that no other publication had been made by him, for the District Attorney would have brought proof of it; if one had been dropped ten fathoms deep, into the vilest well, some one would have been found to fish it up.
He traced the course of the prisoner from his boyhood to college, and to the study of his profession—from that to his settlement at Peekskill; and urged upon the jury the consideration of his uniformly sustained character, and of his blameless life. He followed him with Mr. Austin's family to this city, and afterwards shewed his course to New York, when the important bundle of abolition tracts was palmed upon him; and then followed him here with those papers, which he did not even open, and of which he could not have known the contents, till he was informed by Mrs. Austin. He had shewn that no Anti-Slavery Society existed where he came from, and that he had never been a member of any such society. He had also shewn his acts, in connection with his good character 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 was denounced as tyrannical, oppressive, unconstitutional, and destructive of the liberty of speech and of the press, and it was made one of the principal charges against the party in power of that day, and was the chief means of its overthrow. During the short period of the existence of that odious law, some few prosecutions were instituted under it against obnoxious individuals; and these were the only cases of prosecution for seditious libel that had ever occurred in this country.
In the present case, an attempt was made to apply the well known principles of the common law to the same improper and unconstitutional end. The case was new to our courts, and was of rare occurrence in the courts of England. Without being a prophet or the son of a prophet, Mr. Coxe said he would venture to predict that, if the doctrines which had been urged in behalf of this prosecution, and the proceedings which had been here justified by the District Attorney, should be established as lawful, the seeds will have been sown from which will be reaped, for us and for our children, a harvest of woe and disaster.
He could not, therefore, but deeply feel the share of responsibility which devolved
upon him in the management of this case, and in the vindication of the great principles of constitutional liberty in which he had been nurtured and to which he was bound to adhere.