Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/329

under my Direction as a Trustee for a Society in London) which had been printed four weeks before in both the English Newspapers, and in one of them by the Assembly' s own Printer after consulting the Speaker and two other leading Members. 2 This statement brings the gravamen down to one charge, of his instrumentality in printing it in the German paper. It is true it had appeared in Franklin's Gazette and Bradford's Journal but only in sequence with other State Papers, and these newspapers were more just to Judge Moore in printing both sides of the controversy than was the German paper in merely printing the Judge's Counter Address. In this sense the Assem- bly adjudged him guilty " of promoting and publishing a false, scandalous, virulent and seditious libel against the late House of Assembly of this Province, and highly derogatory of and destructive to the rights of this House and the privileges of Assembly." Their error and fault lay in their entire course, for they could not pass upon the libeller of the former assembly, and their proceeding to his imprisonment was contrary to all prin- ciple of sound justice. The Germans found that their only means of securing general news was through a newspaper in their own language ; and as they were assumed to be inimical to the Assembly which was largely composed of Quakers, to circulate Judge Moore's Counter Address was certainly treating them to that view of the controversy which was the most prejudicial to their influence, and they rightly deemed that this was not the intent of the publication in the German newspaper. But whatever the former Assembly might have done to vindicate their honor, their successors had no standing upon which to take up the cudgels for them. Here was Mr. Smith's strong point, and he was aware of it ; and he would be content with even imprison- ment if he felt that justice in the end would be attained. That there were lurking suspicions .against Mr. Smith as to his connection with the controversies of the day, and somewhat of a fear of the force of his trenchant pen, there can be no doubt, but to what extent there existed ground for the former we now 2 Isaac Norris, William Masters, and Joseph Galloway. American Magazine, p. 200.