Jefferson, presiding over the Senate while these measures, so obnoxious to him, were being passed, deprived of even the pleasure of casting an occasional deciding vote by the overwhelming Federal majority, quietly bided his time until this madness should die out. "War, land tax and stamp tax," said he, "are sedatives which must calm its ardour." To his mind, the people were still essentially republican; they retained unadulterated the principles of '75; they needed only reflection and information to bring themselves and their affairs to rights. "A little patience," he wrote to a correspondent in Virginia, who mentioned the possibility of separating that State and North Carolina from the tyrannical majority, "and we shall see the reign of the witches pass over, their spells dissolved, and the people recovering their true sight, restoring their government to its true principles. Better keep together as we are, haul off from Europe as soon as we can, and from all attachments to any portions of it." At the same time, if war should come, he advised all to join for the defence of home on the principle that if one's house is on fire he must try to extinguish it without stopping to inquire whether it was fired from without or within. The execution of the Alien and Sedition laws proved as unpopular and as futile as Jefferson had imagined. Callender escaped the Alien law by completing his naturalisation, but was fined and imprisoned for seditious publications. His counsel, Cooper, a lawyer-editor, suffered similar punishment. A chartered vessel carried back to France, now under more tolerant government, a large number of _émigrés_ including Volney, the philosophical writer and former friend of Washington, suspected of being at the head of the conspirators in the United States. The abusive _Time-Piece_ was abandoned, one of the editors fleeing the country and the other being under arrest. Duane was assaulted in his office, his presses destroyed by a mob, and himself haled before Congress for criticising their actions. Lyon, a violent Republican who had come near being expelled from the House for assaulting a fellow-member, was fined and imprisoned for commenting on certain appointments made by the President. A half-dozen or more insignificant country editors were caught in the Federalist drag-net, serving only to make the law more ridiculous.