Читать книгу Lydia Bailey - Kenneth Roberts - Страница 4

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On an autumn evening in 1800, the four of us—my uncle, Colonel William Tyng; his wife, my Aunt Emmy; my aunt’s mother, Madam Ross; and I—were sitting around the big table in the sitting-room of our Gorham farm when we heard a horse’s hoofs rustling in the drifts of maple leaves on our driveway. Aunt Emmy looked at me and asked, “Who’s that, Albion?” as if she suspected me of having second sight.

When I went to the door to find out, a bow-legged man swung himself groaningly from the saddle, felt tenderly of his back, and said he wanted to see Judge Tyng. He added that he was Hopestill Hicks of Boston, employed by the Independent Argus, and that he had an important message for Judge Tyng from Thomas Bailey. As he spoke, he drew a paper from his pocket and wagged it in my face; but when I made as if to take it from him, he hastily snatched it back.

“You ain’t Judge Tyng!” he said.

“I’m his nephew, Albion Hamlin,” I said.

“I don’t give a damn if you’re the Prophet Ezekiel,” he said. “This goes into the hands of Judge Tyng and nobody else, and Thomas Bailey told me to stick to the Judge till he writes an answer to it.”

I knew Thomas Bailey, from hearing Portland Federalists talk about him, as editor and owner of the Independent Argus, a paper forever doing its utmost to stir up trouble by publishing diatribes excessively offensive to Federalists and the Federalist Party, and by declaring flatly that the Federalist Party did not, as it claimed to do, contain all the rich, wise, and good men in the country.

“Tie your horse to the hitching post,” I said. “I’ll get my uncle.”

Hicks spat copiously and contemptuously. “Hitching post be damned! The Judge’ll be all night figuring out his answer to this-here message, whether he wants to or not. Where’s the barn? My horse goes in a stall, along with a peck of oats and a mess of clover!”

My Aunt Emmy brought Hopestill Hicks a pitcher of milk, a plate of cornbread, a pat of sweet butter, and four cold pigs’ feet, and he sat beside the fire chewing noisily while my uncle read us the letter from Thomas Bailey.

“Honored Sir [it ran]: You don’t know me, but I know of you from my friends General Henry Dearborn of Maine and John Langdon of New Hampshire, whose political views, unless I have been misinformed, are the same as yours and the same as mine. I know that you were a Loyalist during the Revolution, that you were robbed of your property in Portland for your Loyalist leanings, that you took your family to New Brunswick after the Revolution and were made Chief Justice of that Province. I know why you resigned as Chief Justice and returned to Portland. I know you were made welcome there, and your property restored, because of your English sympathies, now so entrancing to those very Federalists who hated England so violently during the Revolution. I even know, Judge Tyng, why you gave up your law practice in Portland and retired to your farm in Gorham.

“Of all men in this country, you have best learned how reason and truth vanish when men grow mob-minded. You are well aware that the Federalist legislature of Massachusetts has placed politics above patriotism by refusing to declare the Sedition Law oppressive and unconstitutional, which means that reason and truth are once more being obliterated in this country.

“That law will never be repealed until the Federalist Party is thrown out of office and the Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson put in power. Until then, no man and no newspaper can print the truth without persecution and abuse. While it exists, a free press is impossible in America, and Federalist waste, extravagance, and wrongheadedness will daily become more strongly entrenched. I believe you must agree with me that the Sedition Law is a greater threat to the liberty of free men than the British King and all his ministers could ever have been, for it makes us slaves to the Federalist Party.

“Sir, I implore your help. You have been a great Chief Justice, a steadfast guardian of all men’s rights, regardless of party. You are my only hope, for in all New England not one fair-minded jurist remains upon the bench. My own strength, owing to a lung complaint, has failed me when I need it most. Give me, sir, an outspoken opinion of the Sedition Law, pointing out that it is neither right, reasonable, necessary, nor constitutional, so that those of us who still cling to our freedom may be furnished with the ammunition of your thoughts and words. Because I know the vindictiveness of the Massachusetts Federalists, you may depend upon me not to reveal your identity. I have sent you a dependable man who will accurately take down your comments, and your identity will be kept a secret. Do not fail me, sir. Only a free press can maintain the majesty of a people.

“Believe me to be, sir, your obedient, admiring and desperately urgent servant,

“Thomas Bailey”.

My uncle, when he had finished reading, got up from his chair stiffly, as though his joints and muscles pained him, glanced fretfully from me to Aunt Emmy and Madam Ross, then went to stand in front of the fire. That stiff movement of his was a characteristic one, and I didn’t like it.

“I hope you spotted the weakness in that letter, Uncle Will,” I said. “He says he’ll keep your identity a secret, but of course he can’t.”

“Why can’t he?” my uncle demanded.

“Because such information always leaks out. Hicks tells some woman friend——”

“Me?” Hicks asked. “I ain’t got any—not any regular ones, that is.”

“Another thing,” I said. “If he keeps your identity a secret, the opinion’s no good; it might as well be written by any sailor or brewer, or by Bailey himself. Well, why not let Bailey write it?”

“The man’s a whiner,” Aunt Emmy put in. “He says he’s sick, but he’s well enough to write a letter as long as a snake’s tail.”

“Silence!” my uncle roared. “Order!” He glared at her, then turned to me. “You know as well as I do why Bailey can’t write it or get anybody but me to do it. Bailey doesn’t know enough about constitutional law; and, as he says himself, there isn’t a judge in Massachusetts whose brain and judgment haven’t been ground into pulp and sawdust by that damned Alien and Sedition Act!”

He turned irascibly to Hicks. “Why didn’t he say how long he wanted it? How do I know how long an opinion he can use? Constitutional? Of course the Sedition Law isn’t constitutional! Why, good God, I could write an entire book on its damnable injustices—on the narrow-minded, contemptible, shortsighted, treacherous, cowardly, idiotic asses who wrote such twaddle and called it legal!”

Hopestill Hicks took a pig-bone from his mouth and tapped it on the table to emphasize his words. “You tell me what to say, and we’ll do the worrying. If you want eight columns, take eight columns.”

“Eight!” my uncle shouted. “I can’t say what I want to say about the Sedition Law in eight columns—no, nor in eighty! Why, that law permits the arrest of honest men for daring to speak up when Congress does something wrong! But when did Congress ever do anything right? It’ll never do anything right. Congressmen never do anything that won’t get votes for themselves. They no sooner get into Congress than they have to lie, hedge, and trim so they can be re-elected! Look at the men in this Congress! Look at the men in the President’s Cabinet! Perjurers! Petty thieves! Liars! Dastards——”

“Oh, Colonel Tyng!” Aunt Emmy protested.

Hopestill Hicks, in the middle of a draft of milk, rapped sharp knuckles on the table and swallowed convulsively, like a turkey downing a giant grasshopper. “That’s the stuff!” he cried. “Dastards! That’s practically the exact word for ’em! Only one letter wrong! Dastards! That’s what Bailey wants! We’ll run it on the front page—two solid columns: we’ll set it pica!” He smacked his lips.

“Pah!” my uncle said. “Two columns!”

“You can say a lot in two columns,” Hicks reminded him. “I never stuck type on the Bible, but I figure that the whole story of the Flood, from gopher-wood ark to dry ground, was just about two columns.”

My uncle glared at him, then at his wife, mother-in-law, and me, as was his custom when his mind was furiously at work. I saw that he actually intended to give Hicks the opinion for which Bailey asked; and, recalling the physical and mental misery my uncle, my aunt, and my own parents had suffered for years for daring to defy openly the opinion of the majority, I made one more effort to stop him.

“If you give Bailey an unbiased opinion,” I said, “and he prints it, he’ll be jailed. Then you’ll feel obligated to go to Boston to defend him, and before you know it you’ll be in a mess up to your ears.”

“By the Lord Harry,” my uncle shouted, “you talk like a wet-nurse! If the Sedition Law had ever touched you directly, you’d feel a damned sight different!”

“I propose to take good care it doesn’t touch me,” I said; “but it’s going to touch you if you do what you’re figuring to do.”

“You’re worrying about your own security,” my uncle said. “You’re afraid something’ll break in on your peace and comfort here on the farm. So’s Emmy. So’s Madam Ross.”

“Yes,” I said, “and why not? You gave up your law practice in Portland and moved out here to this farm because you couldn’t listen to your Federalist friends in silence, didn’t you? Of course you did! You knew that if you spoke your mind, your friends would in all likelihood become enemies overnight, and you and your family would certainly suffer! Why in God’s name should you mix in politics? I’ve heard you say repeatedly that when peoples and nations go mad, any sensible man will keep his own counsel, buy a farm, and live in peace and plenty. What’s wrong with taking a little thought about our security?”

“Because there’s no security except in a tranquil mind,” my uncle said. “Because any man who, by so much as the blink of an eye, permits himself to condone injustice, has forever lost all hope of tranquillity—and Bang! goes his security with it.”

“I don’t see it,” I said.

My uncle nodded. “No, I guess you don’t. Not now you don’t; but you will!”

“But why should you consider yourself to be the one man ordained by Providence to speak out?” Aunt Emmy asked. “Seems to me you’re attaching undue importance to your own ideas!”

Hicks, who had produced a traveling pen-case and a package of paper from an inner pocket, cleared his throat, rattled his pen against his inkwell, and said, as if in time to the words he was writing on the sheet, “Noted Jurist Calls Sedition Law Unconstitutional!”

“Exactly!” my uncle said. He glared at Aunt Emmy and then, before our eyes, changed from an irate husband to a sober judge, eyed Hicks threateningly, and embarked on his opinion in the same measured tones I’d heard so often in New Brunswick.

“The Constitution of the United States expressly commands the Congress to make no law abridging freedom of speech or of the press. In violation of this express command, Congress has passed the Sedition Law; and the Sedition Law does exactly what the Constitution forbids. It abridges freedom of speech and of the press. Consequently this law is not constitutional, and is void——No objection to that, is there, Albion?”

“I think you’re deliberately asking for trouble,” I said.

“Pish!” my uncle said. “(Don’t put that in, Hicks.) Now, then: when Massachusetts ratified the Constitution, she plainly asserted that liberty of conscience and freedom of the press could not be canceled, abridged, modified, or restrained by the United States. Yet the United States, in the Sedition Law, has abridged, modified, restrained, and canceled liberty of conscience and freedom of the press, and the Massachusetts Legislature has assented to it.”

“I suggest leaving in the ’Pish,’ “ I interrupted.

“Look here, Albion,” my uncle said. “When I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it.”

“If you don’t listen to some of our opinions, you may find yourself in no position to ask us for them.”

“That’s my lookout,” my uncle said.

“I’m not at all sure of that,” I said. “Aunt Emmy and Madam Ross and I think it may prove to be our lookout before you’re finished.”

My uncle started to say something, caught himself, and turned to Hicks. “Put down that the Federalist Party and the Massachusetts Legislature have thus authorized and condoned the very injustices that the authors of the Constitution sought to prevent. The Federalist Party is at the height of its prosperity and power, both in Massachusetts and in the nation. It controls the Senate. It controls the House. Yet it is inevitable that any party which thus uses its power and prosperity to force injustices upon the people must perish.”

“Don’t forget to put in about the dastards in the Federalist Party,” Hicks said. “You take Timothy Pickering. There’s a first-class dastard! A failure at everything, and everybody knows it—a failure as a farmer, as a lawyer, as a merchant. Hell, he was even a failure at teaching the violin! So he’s Secretary of State, and working his brain to the bone to get us into a war with France! That’s how you can tell the President’s a real dyed-in-the-wool dastard! He picks dastards to advise him and act for him, and only a dastard can stand dastards around him.”

“There you go, Uncle William,” I said. “You’re willing to have your opinions interpreted by an intemperate man.”

“Intemperate!” Hicks cried. “Who wants to be temperate about those dastards!”

“Colonel Tyng,” Aunt Emmy said, “I appeal to your better nature!”

“Ladies,” my uncle said desperately, “you’ll do me the kindness to retire. You know nothing about the Alien and Sedition Law, and yet you have the presumption to attempt to influence me in my attitude toward it! That’s a woman for you! There’s nothing on earth she isn’t willing to deliver an opinion on!”

Aunt Emmy and Madam Ross silently left the room, their backs eloquent of impotent resentment.

Hicks turned on me furiously. “What’s intemperate about telling how Oliver Wolcott never did anything in his life but live on public money? He spends his days being a dastard, and his nights figuring out ways to get this country to fight France, so he’s Secretary of the Treasury! What’s intemperate about saying James McHenry got to be Secretary of War because of being the outstanding mediocrity of all time? That ain’t intemperate! That’s cold fact!”

“Well, what of it?” I asked. “You can’t stop ’em from being dastards by calling ’em so! I say it’s damned nonsense to howl and yell about something you can’t remedy.”

“By God, Albion,” my uncle said, “if I hadn’t brought you up to have your own opinions and act on your own judgment, I’d speak pretty plainly to you. Why don’t you go to bed where you belong?”

“For the same reason I don’t leave a sheep to freeze in a snow-storm,” I said. I knew his temper was near the breaking point, and there was just a bare chance of so distracting him that he’d stop his dictating and perhaps—in a day or two—change his mind.

He only glared at me, however, turned back to Hicks, and calmly resumed dictating. “Let us examine the Sedition Act and the reason for its passage. What is the Sedition Act? It is an act providing for a fine of no more than two thousand dollars and imprisonment for no more than two years for the writing, printing, uttering, or publishing of any false, scandalous, or malicious writing or writings against the Government of the United States, or against the President, or against any members of his Cabinet, or against any member of the Senate or the House of Representatives, or against any of the government’s policies or lack of policies in regard to anything.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I said, “what if it is! A law that’s no good is bound to be repealed or ignored eventually. You can’t change it by rushing into print with all this twaddle.”

“ ‘Twaddle’?” my uncle cried. “ ‘Twaddle’ that the Federalists of New England conceived the Alien and Sedition Law, and enacted it, because they consider themselves chosen by God to regulate the affairs of the nation and of the entire world? (Put down that pen, Hicks!) Twaddle that the Federalist Party numbers among its members practically all New England shipowners, manufacturers, merchants, and landowners who have grown rich since the Revolution? (I’m not talking to you, Hicks!) Twaddle that these windbags consider they hold a monopoly on the wisdom and goodness of America? Twaddle that they think they’re the aristocracy of America and are trying to perpetuate themselves by law?”

“Well, isn’t it twaddle?” I asked. “Do you think for a moment that these nincompoops can perpetuate themselves? Why, hell and damnation, they’ll be dead and forgotten in four years’ time, and it takes four years to build an asparagus bed!”

“What’s an asparagus bed got to do with it?” my uncle shouted. “No: don’t tell me! Shut up! Put this down, Hicks. In passing the Sedition Act, the Federalist Party had only one object in view—to stifle all criticism of the Federalist Party. It wished to destroy the Jacobins, the Jeffersonians, the radicals, and the democratic foundations of the United States with one deadly blow; and so crushing and so comprehensive is the Sedition Act that it virtually abolishes the Bill of Rights, those first ten amendments to the Constitution which specify that Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech or of the press, which secure the people against unreasonable searches and seizures, which safeguard life, liberty, and property, which entitle accused persons to trial by an impartial jury.”

“Now see here,” I said, “you’re scaring yourself half to death with an imaginary bogey! Nobody’s going to abolish the Constitution with just one act!”

“Damn it, Albion,” my uncle shouted, “they have abolished it! You just don’t know a damned thing about the cases that have been tried under the Sedition Act! I knew you weren’t listening to me when I told you about ’em!”

“I never made any secret of it,” I said. “Nobody’ll read this long-winded stuff you’re giving Hicks, either.”

“By God,” my uncle said, “they’d better, and you’d better! We’ve had a regular reign of terror under the Sedition Act. Matthew Lyon of Vermont was prosecuted for writing that he couldn’t support President Adams and his party... (All right, Hicks: write this down and I’ll make it a speech.) ... because under Adams every consideration of the public welfare was swallowed up by a continual grasp for power, by an unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice—all of which was true. He was prosecuted for saying that men of real merit were daily turned out of office for daring to think independently—which was evident to every man in possession of his senses. He was pilloried for saying the Federalist Party was doing its utmost to promote hate and persecution among mankind—which was an understatement. The indictment against Lyon charged him with stirring up sedition. He had not stirred up sedition: he had merely committed lèse majesté by criticizing the President. Yet Lyon was convicted, fined one thousand dollars, and sentenced to four months in jail. There, by God! (No, no, Hicks! That’s an aside!) I suppose that’s long-winded, Albion!”

“So far as I’m concerned,” I said, “it is. Lyon was probably an ass who deserved all he got.”

My uncle hopped with rage. “Open your mind, you stubborn pup! Look at Anthony Haswell, editor of the Vermont Gazette, tried for daring to print an advertisement saying that Lyon was being badly treated in prison! They called his advertisement seditious, if you can believe it, and he was fined two hundred dollars and thrown in jail for two months! I suppose he was an ass! Thomas Cooper, editor of a Pennsylvania newspaper, criticized President Adams for political ineptitude, and that, by God, was lèse majesté! They fined him three hundred dollars—no, come to remember, it was four hundred—and gave him something like six months in jail. Was he an ass? Can’t you see, you young fool, that since the Sedition Act is a direct attack on our civil liberties and the Bill of Rights, it must inevitably destroy the democratic features of the Constitution? Can’t you see that the right of free speech is basic to all other democratic rights? Can’t you see that where free opinion ceases, tyranny begins?”

“Free opinion isn’t going to cease in this country for any length of time,” I said. “There couldn’t be any free opinion during the Revolution—except on the rebel side—but it reappeared afterward.”

My uncle shook his fist at me. “All over the United States men have been jailed, fined, and persecuted by Federalists for daring to express their opinions freely! (Put this in, Hicks, by James!) If you can’t get mad over that, I’m ashamed of you! If it’s permitted to continue, if Federalists are permitted to remain in office, are permitted to destroy the principles for which the American Revolution was fought, then republicanism in America is dead, freedom in America is dead, and the United States is nothing but a despotic oligarchy! That’s as simple as A-B-C, and anybody not a damned fool will admit it!”

I was afraid he was right, but I didn’t want to think about it. In fact, I was determined not to think about it; I wanted peace and security too much to think about it. So there was nothing for me to do but bow as dignifiedly as possible and march upstairs to bed, leaving the two of them rumbling at each other far into the night.