[742] The attention of Thomas and Abijah Adams, editors of the Independent Chronicle, during the fall and winter of 1798–99 was mostly occupied with very pressing personal considerations. In October, 1798, Thomas Adams was arrested under the Sedition Act. While his trial was in progress objectionable comments on the state and federal governments continued to appear in the Chronicle, with the result that his clerk and acting editor, Abijah Adams, was likewise arrested and put on trial. Thomas Adams died before his case was concluded; but Abijah Adams was later convicted and had the sentence of the court imposed upon him. Duniway, The Development of Freedom of the Press in Massachusetts, pp. 144 et seq. These facts supply a new angle from which to view the relative silence of the Independent Chronicle with regard to the Illuminati controversy.
[743] Independent Chronicle, April 15, 1799. Cf. ibid., Jan. 7, 1799.
[744] Outside of Boston the newspapers of Massachusetts appear to have been generally content to furnish their readers an occasional article bearing on the controversy, copied in most cases from the columns of Boston or Hartford journals, or from papers which entered New England from without, particularly from New York and Philadelphia. Some of these Massachusetts newspapers are to be noticed later in connection with the effort that the Masons made to clear themselves of guilt.
[745] American Mercury, Aug. 16, 1798.
[746] The following quotation bears upon the topic, and does full justice to the abilities of the rhymster, although offering only slight suggestion respecting the variety of subjects which the poem, after the manner of its kind, touched upon:
“Of late the pulpits roar’d like thunder
To bring the Whore of Bab’lon under;
But now she’s down, the tone is turn’d,
And the old Whore is sadly mourn’d.
This brings us on to Politicks,—