ant cases, to the most important personages? If we
allow every pitiful patriot thus to insult us with
ridiculous accusations, without making him pay forfeit for
his temerity, we shall be eternally pestered with the
humming and buzzing of these stingless wasps. Though they
cannot wound or poison, they will tease and vex. They will
divert our attention from the important affairs of State to
their own mean antipathies, and passions, and prejudices.
Did they not count upon the spirit of the times and imagine
that the same latitude which is taken by the libellers is
here allowable, they would not have dared to offer so gross
an outrage. I hope we shall now handle them so roughly as to
make this the last of such audacious attempts. They are
already ridiculous and contemptible. To crown their
disgrace, let us inflict some exemplary punishment. Else
none of us is safe. Virtue and honor, you see from this
instance, are no safeguard from their attacks."

"The nature, the direct effect, and the remote consequences
of a State libel, are so complicated and involved with
various considerations of great pith and moment, that few
juries can be adequate judges. So many circumstances are at
once to be kept in view, so many ponderous interests are to
be weighed, so many comparisons to be made, and so many
judgments formed, that the mind of an ordinary man is
distracted and confounded, and rendered incapable of coming
to any regular conclusion. None but a judge, a man that has
from his infancy been accustomed to decide intricate cases,
is equal to such a difficult task. If we even suppose the
jury sufficiently enlightened to unravel those knotty
points, yet there remains an insuperable objection. In State
libels, their passions are frequently so much engaged, that
they may be justly considered as parties concerned against
the crown."

"In order, therefore, to preserve the balance of our
constitution, _let us leave to the judges_, as the most
indifferent persons, _the right of determining the malice or
innocence of the intention_."

"It is not that I think the intention a matter of fact; no,
in the sense put upon it by the judges, it is a matter of
law."

"Much dust has been raised about civil and criminal actions.
But to what purp