o President Adams's credit, he was no abettor of these hateful decrees,
and did little to enforce them. The sedition law, however, did not rest
with him for execution, and was applied right and left. Evidently its
champions were swayed largely by political motives. Matthew Lyon, a
fiery Republican member of Congress from Vermont, had, in an address to
his constituents, charged the President with avarice and with "thirst
for ridiculous pomp and foolish adulation," He was convicted of
sedition, fined $1,000, and sentenced to four months in prison. This
impoverished him, as well as took him from his place in Congress for
most of a session. Adams refused pardon, but in 1840 Congress paid back
the fine to Lyon's heirs.

It is now admitted that these measures were unconstitutional, as
invading freedom of speech and of the press, and assigning to the
Federal Judiciary a common-law jurisdiction in criminal matters. But
they were also highly unwise, subjecting the Federalist Party to the
odium of fearing free speech, of declining a discussion of its policy,
and of hating foreigners. The least opposition to the party in power, or
criticism of its official chiefs, became criminal, under the head of
"opposing" the Government. A joke or a caricature might send its author
to jail as "seditious." It was surely a travesty upon liberty when a man
could be arrested for expressing the wish, as a salute was fired, that
the wadding might hit John Adams behind. Even libels upon government, if
it is to be genuinely free, must be ignored--a principle now acted upon
by all constitutional States.

But the Federalists were blind to considerations like these. As Schouler
well remarks: "A sort of photophobia afflicted statesmen, who, allowing
little for the good sense and spirit of Americans, or our geographical
disconnection with France, were crazed with the fear that this Union
might be, like Venice, made over to some European potentate, or chained
in the same galley with Switzerland or Holland, to do the Directory's
bidding. That, besides this unfounded fear, operated the desire of
ultra-Federalists to take revenge upon those presses which had assailed
the British treaty and other pet measures, and abused Federal leaders;
and the determination to entrench themselves in authority by forcibly
disbanding an opposition party which attracted a readier support at the
polls from the oppressed of other countries, no candid writer can at
this day questi