There being no authorities cited to sustain the motion of the Attorney for the United States, we have no other guide to enlighten and direct us than the established principles and rules of law in criminal proceedings. I take it to be well settled, that in indictments for libels, publication is the gist and essence of the crime; that having in one's possession one or more seditious or libellous writings, whether written or printed, if their contents be not communicated or made known to one or more persons, then the possessor is not criminal in a legal point of view. It is true that Hawkins was cited to prove that having in one's possession a known published libel is _prima facie_ evidence of publication against such possessors; admitting this authority, it seems not to touch the case before us, unless those libels were published within this District. They purport on the face of them to have been printed in _New York_, and there published, so far as sending them abroad, within that state, from the printing office, and putting them into the hands of others amounts to a publication within this District; and no evidence has been offered that the traverser ever distributed a single copy or imparted their contents to any person within this District saving the one charged in the first count. Hawkins surely did not mean that having a copy of a libel published in a foreign country in one's possession, was evidence of publication in another state or country where the possessor of such copy may be found: for example, a libel against the British government printed and published in France would be no publication in England, to charge a person found in England with one or more copies of such libels in his possession, with the guilt of publishing such libel against the laws of England. It is true, in times of great excitement in England, when the rebellious principles of France were gaining ground and endangering the very existence of the government, the Scottish courts did condemn and send to Botany bay, Muir and Palmer for having in their possession a printed copy of Thomas Paine's Rights of Man. It is very long since I read the case; indeed shortly after we first obtained the information of their trial, and shortly indeed after the trial; but I have never heard the judgment of the court in their case spoken of but with reprobation. I cannot remember the particulars of the case. The evidence was, that the book had been reprinted and published in Great Britain. If so, that case is stronger than that of having a printed copy in possession of a libel published only in a foreign country; and so far, if such be the fact, it is sustained by the dictum in Hawkins, but this dictum is not itself sustained, as far as I could judge from the authorities cited at the bar, from Hawkins himself, nor by any adjudged case. I think I may boldly assert, then, that the merely having in possession a libel printed and published in a foreign country only, is not an indictable