226 Government, Laws, [Part 11. 



draw up specific Constitutions, in -which they forbade 

 any of their future Ituv-makers to allow of any Titles 

 of Nobility, any Privileged Class, any Established 

 Church, or to pass any law to give to any body the 

 power oj imprisoning men otherwise than in due course 

 of Common Law, except in cases of actual invasion or 

 open rebellion. And, though actual invasion took place 

 several times during the late war; though the Capital 

 city was in possession cf our troops, no such law was 

 passed. Such is the effect of that confidence, which a 

 good and just government has in the people whom it 

 governs ! 



415. There is one more particular, as to the Laws" 

 of America, on which, as it is of very great impor- 

 tance, 1 think it right to remark. The uses, which,, 

 have been made of the Laic of Libel \\\ England are 

 •well known. In the first place, the Common Law 

 knows of no such offence as that of criminal libel, for 

 which so many men have been so cruelly punished in 

 England. The crime is an invention of late date. 

 The Common Law punished men for breaches of the 

 peace, but no words, whether written or spoken, can 

 be a breach of the peace. But, then some Borough- 

 monger judges said, that words might tend to produce 

 a breach of the peace ; and that, therefore, it was 

 criminal to use such words. This, though a palpable 

 stretch of law, did, however, by usage, become law 

 so far as to be acted upon in America as well as in 

 England ; and, when i lived in the State of Pennsyl- 

 VANi.A, eighteen years ago, the Chief Justice of that 

 State, finding even this law not sufficiently large, gave 

 it another siretch to make it fit me. "Whether the 

 Legislature- of that State will repair this act of injustice 

 and tyranny remains yet to be seen, 



4lij. The State of Xew Yoke, in which I now live, 

 awakened, probably by the act of tyranny, to which 

 I allude, has taken care, by an Act of " the State, 

 passed in 1805, to put an end to those attacks on the 

 press by charges of constructive libel, or, at least, to 

 make the law such, that no man shall suffer from the 

 preferring of any such charges unjustly. 



417. The principal effect of this twisting of the law 



