Lyon had the distinguished honor of having been elected as a representative from three states to congress,—Vermont, Kentucky and Arkansas. He learned the trade of a printer when a boy, ran away from the old country and settled in Vermont. Governor Chittenden took a great interest in the young Irish lad, and helped him in many ways. He married a daughter of the governor’s, and engaged in the manufacture of iron and paper. Becoming involved financially, in trying to build a flotilla of gunboats on the Delaware for the infant American navy, he moved to Kentucky, and there set up another printing office, the first in the state. He was elected to Congress in 1804, serving until 1810. He was the first delegate to Congress from Arkansas, having taken up his residence in Little Rock, but he died before taking his seat. To Matthew Lyon also belongs the distinguished honor of having cast the vote of Vermont for Jefferson for president against Adams in that critical period of American history, when the choice of president was thrown into the house of representatives. His son, Chittenden, was a prominent man of his day, a member of congress, and took an active part in public affairs. In 1840 congress refunded Matthew Lyon’s son the $1,000 fine imposed upon his father under the alien and sedition act. In Massachusetts, Attorney-General James Sullivan, afterward congressman and governor, the son of Irish emigrants, wrote and published a most able paper entitled, “A Dissertation on the Constitutional Freedom of the Press,” severely arraigning the sedition law. After enumerating the power of congress, Mr. Sullivan said: “It is very clear that, considering a libel as a private injury, the congress can have no authority to enact a law for its definition or punishment.... It went beyond what the constitution would warrant.” In his final summing up, Attorney-General Sullivan said, “that a reasonable, constitutional restraint, judicially exercised, is the only way in which the freedom of the press can be preserved as an invaluable privilege to the nation.” The alien and sedition laws were soon effaced from the statute books when the Democratic party came into power under Jefferson. Inasmuch as these laws were aimed especially at the men of Irish blood, who sought freedom at home in vain and came here to enjoy it, it was especially fitting that an Irishman, Senator Smilie of South Carolina, should introduce the bill for their repeal. He was chairman of the committee on foreign affairs on the part of the senate. John T. Morse, in his “American Statesmen” series, characterizes the alien and sedition laws as the “two great blunders of the Federal party,” and adds: “No one has ever been able heartily or successfully to defend these foolish outbursts of ill-considered legislation.”