so sharply divided — neutrality. Federal common law
criminal jurisdiction, the right of expatriation, the
constitutionality of the Alien and Sedition laws — had
been presented in cases arising before the Judges of the
Court sitting on Circuit, and on each of these questions
the decisions had been invariably adverse to the view
held by the Anti-Federalists. The assertion of the
jurisdiction of the United States Courts in cases in-
volving criminal indictments based on English common
law and on international law, in the absence of any
Federal i>enal statute, had been especially obnoxious to
the Anti-Federalists; and the successive cases had
been regarded with growing alarm — principally be-
cause such common law indictments had been
chiefly employed in convictions of persons accused of
pro-French activ'ties.^ In the fall of 1799, the feeling
of hostility towards these Fede al decisions had been
brought to a head by a ruling made by Chief Justice
Ellsworth in the Circuit Court for the District of Con-
necticut in the case of Unied States v. Isaac Williams;
for, in sustaining an indictment for violation of the
neutrality law prohibiting American citizens from ac-
cepting commissions to serve a foreign power, he held
that an American had no right of expatriation, since
imder the English common law no such right existed and
the common law was binding upon the United States
V 1 Chief Justices Jay and Ellsworth, and Judges Gushing, Iieddl, Wilson and Washington had all sustained indictments at common law in the United States Courts; and Judge Chase alone had taken the contrary view in April, 1708, in Uniied States v. WonaU, 2 Dallas, 884. See, in general, PoUHes far American Farmers (1807), by William Duane; Aurora, Nov. 7, 1799; Independent Chronicle, Nov. 18, 1799; History qf the American Bar (1911), by Charies Warren; Marshall, m, 8-45. Attorney-General Lincoln in an official opinion. May 12, 1802, said : "I doubt the competency of the Federal Courts, there being no statute recognising the offence", £6th Cong., 2d Sess., House Doc. No. 128, this opinion not being published in the official Ops. Attys.-Oen., I ; see also letter oi Jefferson, Aug. 16, 1793, as to the deduons cl Jay and Wilson, relative to commoii law. Amer. State Papers, For. Rel., I, 107.
