One limiting debate, or suppressing scandals.
1798. Query have the Cherokees any gag-bill?—The Aurora, Phila., Aug. 1.
1798. If the people of Constantinople were so severe with a boy for gagging a fowl, how would they proceed with the old woman who should gag a whole nation.—Id., Aug. 17.
1798. “The Gag Bill,” so called, providing against scandalous and seditious publications, was approved by President John Adams, July 14, and printed in the Aurora, Dec. 13.
1799. To induce the people to believe standing armies are blessings, that the gag law is a blessing (for so the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Gallatin, said), &c.—Speech of Mr. Dennis in Congress.—Id., Feb. 16.
1799. The gag law is either destitute of that impartial spirit which ought to characterize every law, or &c.—Id., April 15.
1800. They have harrowed the feelings of the people by gag-bills, stamp-acts, and land-taxes, and hatchelled them with prosecutions, fines, and imprisonments.—Id., Oct. 20.
1805. I remember that Mr. Jefferson was among those who exclaimed against what was called the “gag law.”—Mass. Spy, July 10.
1808. If I could lay an embargo, or pass a new importation law against corruption and foreign influence, I would not make it a temporary, but a perpetual law, and I would not repeal it, though it should raise a clamor as loud as my gag-law.—J. Adams, ‘Letter to Benjamin Rush: Works’ (1854), ix. 604. (N.E.D.)
1810. It is to be hoped the majority in Congress will extend the Gag Rule to fiddles, and the whole tribe of musical instruments.—Mass. Spy, Feb. 7.
1812. People who clamored violently against Mr. Adams’s “gag-law” in ’99.—Boston-Gazette, Sept. 14: from the Messenger.
1841. The term was applied also to a rule introduced in the Senate by Henry Clay. Mr. Randolph warmly denounced it as a gag law. Mr. Calhoun said that this modern gag law was more odious than the old sedition law.—Cong. Globe, p. 210.
1846. It is well known that this bill passed through the other body under the operation of the gag-law.—Mr. Mangum of North Carolina in the U.S. Senate, July 6: id., p. 1054.
