ed States judge for a seditious libel. He
petitioned for a remission of fine upon the ground that the law
was unconstitutional under which he was convicted. That petition
was very fully considered, and, in 1820, a report was presented
to the Senate by Mr. Barbour, of Virginia, which, after
elaborating the considerations, concludes thus:

In this case, therefore, the committee think the Government
is under a moral obligation to indemnify the petitioner.

In this claim of Lyon, after remaining before Congress until
1840, a bill, upon a favorable report of the Committee on the
Judiciary, was passed by the House, restoring the fine with
interest, by a vote of 124 to 15. This case, however, is subject
to the criticism, that in it Congress undertook to do justice to
a citizen suffering from an unconstitutional law which it had
enacted, and thereby distinguishes it from the present
application: but the case of General Jackson, so familiar to all
that its facts need not be recited, covers that point. There was
the remitting of a fine imposed by a judge in excess of his
authority in acting without warrant of law.

Assuming, therefore, that this application is properly before us,
we come to the second question of whether, by the proceedings in
court, the legal rights of the petitioner have been infringed,
from which she has suffered. It would not seem to be germane to
this question to inquire whether or not the petitioner had the
legal right to vote, because that was a question of law fully
within the competency of the judge to decide, and his decision
did not necessarily work a hardship to the defendant, even if
mistaken in judgment. Or, in other words, it was a rightful
execution of a power intrusted to him by law, from which there
was no appeal to this or any other jurisdiction.

We come, therefore, to the great question in this case: whether
the judge erred in withdrawing the case from the jury. Upon this
question it would seem that the judge himself vacillated in the
trial, because he permitted evidence to be gone into on both
sides as a question of fact, tending to show whether the
petitioner did or did not vote, knowing that she had no right so
to do; but afterward withdrew the consideration of that evidence,
upon the fact of i