It may be said, sir, that I was charged in the indictment with publishing a copy of a letter, from an American diplomatic character in France, to a member of Congress, commonly called the Barlow letter. I was so, and there was a third count in the indictment for aiding and abetting in the publication of said letter. The words selected as seditious were as follow: "The misunderstanding between the two governments has become extremely alarming: confidence is completely destroyed; mistrust, jealousy, and a wrong attribution of motives, are so apparent as to require the utmost caution in every word and action that are to come from your Executive; I mean if your object is to avoid hostilities. Had this truth been understood with you before the recall of Monroe, before the coming and the second coming of Pinkney, had it guided the pens that wrote the bullying speech of your President, and the stupid answer of your Senate, in November last, I should probably have had no occasion to address you this letter; but when we found him borrowing the language of Edmund Burke, and telling the world that although he should succeed in treating with the French, there was no dependence to be placed on their engagements; that their religion or morality was at an end, and they had turned pirates and plunderers; and it would be necessary to be perpetually armed against them, though you were at peace, we wondered that the answer of both Houses had not been an order to send him to a madhouse! Instead of this, the Senate have echoed his speech with more servility than ever George the Third experienced from either house of Parliament." No proof appeared on the trial of my printing, or aiding or abetting in printing, or circulating a printed copy of this famous letter. I had read the copy of the letter in company, but the advocates of the sedition law would never admit that such reading was punishable by that law. The printer who printed the letter, swore that he had been anxious to get the letter from me, and that I had refused to suffer it to be printed, and repelled every attempt to persuade me to the printing; that he had obtained the copy of the letter in my absence. The fact was, that my wife was persuaded by a gentleman who is now a member of this House, that the Republican cause and my election (which was pending) would be injured if the letter was not published; and, as I understood, she gave it to him, the letter was printed, and that gentleman had some of the copies before I came home. I suppressed the remainder of the edition. The judge, finding no proof to support this part of the charge, directed the jury to find a verdict of guilty generally, as there could be no doubt of my being guilty on the first count. I had acknowledged my having written the letter to Alden Spooner. They did so. I will not detain the House by going into a detail of the manner in which that jury was packed. After all the care and management in the original selection, there