When Jefferson went home after the adjournment of Congress he remained completely silent for two months. But the newspaper war went on in Philadelphia with more virulence than ever: attacks against the arch plotter and the defender of the French Jacobins were multiplied, prosecutions were begun in Massachusetts under the Sedition Act and for a time Jefferson himself seems to have feared for his own safety. To Samuel Smith, who had sent him a clipping in which he was vehemently accused, he answered that he had "contemplated every event which the Maratists of the day can perpetrate, and I am prepared to meet every one in such a way, as shall not be derogatory to the public liberty or my own personal honor." He naturally denied that he had in any way plotted with Bache, the editor of the _Aurora_, or Doctor Leib; then he went on to define once more his position. He had acted on the same principles from the year 1775 to that day, and he was convinced that these principles were those of the great body of the American people. He was for peace certainly, not only with France but also with England. He was aware that both of them "have given and are daily giving, sufficient cause of war; that in defiance of the laws of nations, they are every day trampling on the rights of the neutral powers, whenever they can thereby do the least injury, either to the other." But he still maintained that the best policy was and would have been "to bear from France for one more summer what we have been bearing from both of them these four years." With England the United States had chosen peace; with France they had chosen war; to what extent the Government was supported by the majority of the people was a thing to be seen in the coming elections. He ended with a note of Christian forgiveness for Fenno and Porcupine, who "covered him with their implacable hatred." "The only return I will ever make them, will be to do them all the good I can, in spite of their teeth."[364] This was almost too godly to be true; but if we remember that his letters were intercepted and read by Adams' police, as he repeatedly complained, and that letters sent to him were opened on their way to Monticello, we may wonder whether he did not write these lines for the eye of the censor, and with his tongue in his cheek. That he really believed at the time in the existence of a monarchical conspiracy appears from a letter to Stephens Thompson Mason.[365] The Alien and Sedition bills were just a beginning. If the people did not revolt against them, the next step would be to persuade Congress that the President should continue in office for life, reserving to another time the transfer of the succession to his heirs and the establishment of the Senate for life.