1821 April 29

Needless continued

Constitution

Penal Law

Under Representative Democracy there is no such thing as a seditious libel, /-/ under the General Government of the Anglo American United States there is no such thing as a seditious libel. Charge the President of Congress, charge the Vice President, charge the Chief Justice with having taken a bribe - do this in print, circulate the print all over the United States no one of them will cause you to be punished as for a seditious libel, no one of them will have it in his power so to do: no information granted ex offices, without motion: no information granted on motion: no, nor so much as any indictment. Action civil i.e. non penal, yes, viz. as for defamation. Prove thereupon the imputation to be well grounded, in a man on whom it has been cast, /and he/ will be punished accordingly: tho' such is the effect of blind obsequiousness to a corrupt original, be the evidence ever so complete, it will have to be delivered over again in a needless and worse than useless prosecution, required by lawyercraft for the purpose. If you fail in the proof, you may be punished for the injury by the obligation of paying /being obliged to pay/ money on that account to the individual injured: and it is right you should be so if you had not before you a reasonable ground for believing the charge /imputation/ true; much more, if you are conscious of the falsity of it. In this there would be nothing but what is right: for tho' he is neither a vice-god, nor a Magnate the person in question is an individual, and an individual whom you have injured.