Matthew Lyon under the Alien and Sedition Laws, 1799, were refunded with interest to his heirs.  Mr. Van Voorhis found an authority also in an act passed by the British Parliament in 1792, correcting the departure from the common law, in respect to the rights of juries, by Lord Mansfield and his associates in the cases of Woodfall and Shipley.  This act was passed through the exertions of Lord Camden and Mr. Fox in order to prevent the erroneous decisions of the judges from becoming the law of England.

Both of the attorneys keenly resented the action of Judge Hunt, Mr. Selden pronouncing it “the greatest judicial outrage ever perpetrated in the United States;” and Mr. Van Voorhis asserting that “trial by jury was completely annihilated in this case, and there is no remedy except to appeal to the justice of Congress to remit the fine and declare that trial by jury does and shall exist in this country.”  The appeal, or petition, was prepared and Miss Anthony carried it to Washington when she went to the National Convention, January 15, 1874.  It was an able document, reciting the facts in the case and the action of the judge, and concluding: 

Your petitioner respectfully submits that, in these proceedings, she has been denied the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to all persons accused of crime, the right of trial by jury and the right to have the assistance of counsel for their defense.  It is a mockery to call hers a trial by jury; and, unless the assistance of counsel may be limited to the argument of legal questions, without the privilege of saying a word to the jury upon the question of the guilt or innocence in fact of a party charged, or the privilege of ascertaining from the jury whether they do or do not agree to the verdict pronounced by the Court in their name, she has been denied the assistance of counsel for her defense.

Of the decision of the judge upon the question of the right of your petitioner to vote, she makes no complaint.  It was a question properly belonging to the Court to decide, was fully and fairly submitted to the judge, and of his decision, whether right or wrong, your petitioner is well aware she can not here complain.  But in regard to her conviction of crime, which she insists, for the reasons above given, was in violation of the principles of the common law, of common morality, of the statute under which she was charged, and of the Constitution—­a crime of which she was as innocent as the judge by whom she was convicted—­she respectfully asks, inasmuch as the law has provided no means of reviewing the decisions of the judge, or of correcting his errors, that the fine imposed upon your petitioner be remitted, as an expression of the sense of this high tribunal that her conviction was unjust.

This was presented in the Senate by A.A.  Sargent, of California, and in the House by William Loughridge, of Iowa, and was referred to the judiciary committees.