Thomas Cooper's Plea of "Not Guilty"

Transcript

Circuit Court of the United States for the district of Pennsylvania The United States
v 
Thomas Cooper

Indictment for Libel under the Sedition Law.

The above named Defendant (protesting against the Insinuations and constructions in the said Indictment alledged against him) pleads not guilty; [insert mark] [arrow pointing to “guilty”] and by this he puts himself on his country [end of insert] and will give the following facts in evidence on the Trial in justification of the supposed Libel stated in the aforesaid Indictment.

I That Mr. Adams either by himself or by the Officers of the State acting under his authority has given the Public to understand that he wd. bestow no Office but on persons who conformed to his political Opinions.

II Mr Adams has declared that a Republican Governmt. may mean anything.

III Mr Adams did sanction the Alien Law, and thereby the abolition of the Trial by Jury in the Cases that fall under that Law.

IV Mr Adams did sanction the Sedition Law & thereby entrenched his public character behind the legal provisions of that Law.

V Under the auspices of Mr Adams the expence of a permanent Navy is [undecipherable word] on the People

VI Under the auspices of Mr Adams we are threatened with the existence of a Standing Army.

VII The Government of the United States has borrowed Money at 8 percent in time of Peace.

VIII The unnecessary Violence of official Expressions used by Mr Adams, and those in authority under him, & his adherents, might justly have provoked a War.

IX Political Acrimony has been fostered by those who call themselves his friends and adherents.

X Mr Humphries after being convicted of an assault and Battery [blacked out word] on Benjamin Franklin Bache the printer of the Aurora merely from political motives, was before his Sentence eas expired, promoted by Mr Adams to a public Office viz to carry his dispatches to France

XI Mr Adams did project and put in execution embassies to Prussia Russia and the Sublime Porte.

XII Mr Adams in the case of Jonathan Robbins alias Nash did interfere to influence the decision of a Court of Justice.

Thomas Cooper

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Circ Ct. Apl 1800
United States v Thomas Cooper} Plea.
15 Apl 1800