When the Legislature seemed about to pass laws intended to crush the efforts of the Abolitionists, by prohibiting the publication and circulation of Anti-Slavery documents, he charged the grand jury of the county that any laws tending to prevent freedom of speech or of the press were null and void. The official manifesto of the American Anti-Slavery Society was also written by him, and was signed by men whose names are now famous in history.

After being relieved from the office of judge he went to Europe, extended his travels to Egypt, and made a careful examination of the institution of slavery as it existed there. A firm believer that the time would come when men should " beat their swords into plowshares," and " learn war no more," he became president of the American Peace Society, and published a work, " War and Peace -- the evils of the first, with plans of preserving the last." This book led to the famous protocol adopted by the Congress of Paris after the Crimean War, the first united international effort to have arbitration take the place of war. In 1833 he published the life and writings of liis father, the chief justice.

Judge Jay was an able writer and possessed reasoning powers of the highest order. The works which he published were forty-three in number, and to analyze them would require a volume. It is sufficient to say that all, without exception, were devoted to the elevation of society, by the removal of the evils which retard its progress. His useful and eventful life ended October 14, 1858. This event caused heartfelt grief among all who realized the value of the friend of humanity. The various societies of which he was a member paid tributes of respect to his memory, and Frederick Douglas, as the fit representative of the race for whose freedom he had labored so long and so well, delivered an eloquent and fitting eulogy.