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Legislatures, Judges, Governors, & Coun-
sellors of the states, nor their other preacea-
ble inhabitants whomay venture to reclaim
the constitutional rights & liberties of the
states & people, or who for other causes,
good or bad, may be obnoxious to the views
or marked by thesuspicionsof thePresident,
or be thought dangerous to his or their
elections or other interests public or per-
sonal: that the friendless alien has indeed
been selected as the safest subject of a
first experiment : but the citizen will
soon follow, or rather has already follow-
ed; for, already has a Sedition Act marked
him as its [pre?] : that these and successive
acts of the same character, unless arrested
on the threshold, may tend to drive these
states into revolution and blood, and will
furnish new calumnies against Republican
Governments, and new pretexts for those
who wish it to be believed, that man can-
not be governed but by a rod of iron :
that it would be a dangerous delusion were
a confidence in the men of our choice to
silence our fears for the safety of our
rights: that confidence is every where the
parent of despotism : free government is
founded in jealousy and not in confidence;
it is jealousy and not confidence which
prescribes limited Constitutions to bind
down those whom we are obliged to trust
with power : that our Constitution has
accordingly fixed the limits to which and
no further our confidence may go ; and
let the honest advocate of confidence read
the Alien and Sedition Acts, and say if the
Constitution has not been wise in fixing
limits to the Government it created, and
whether we should be wise in destroying
those limits? Let him say what the Gov-
ernment is if it be not a tyranny, which
the men of our choice have conferred on
the President, and the President of our
choice has assented to and accepted over
the friendly strangers, to whom the mild
spirit of our Country and its laws had
pledged hospitality and protection : that
the men of our choice have more respect-
ed the bare suspicious of the President
than the solid rights of innocence, the
claims of justificaiton, the sacred force of
truth, and the forms & substance of law and
justice. In questions of power then let no
more be heard of confidence in man, but
bind him down from mischief the [thec hains]
of the Constitution. That this Common-
wealth does therefore call on its Co-states
for an expression of their sentiments on
the acts concerning Aliens, and for the
punishment of certain crimes herein be-
fore specified, plainly declaring whether
these acts are or are not authorised by the
Federal Compact? And it doubts not that
their sense will be so announced asto prove
their attachment unaltered to limited Go-
vernment, whether general or particular,
and that the rights and liberties of their
Co-states will be exposed to no dangers
by remaining embarked on a common
bottom with their own: That they will
concur with this Commonwealth in con-
sidering the said acts as so palpably against
the Constitution as to amount to an un-
disguised declaration, that the Compact
is not meant to the be measure of the
powers of the General Government, but
that it will proceed in the exercise over
these states of all powers whatsoever: That
they will view this as seizing the rights
of the states and consolidating them in the
hands of the General Government with a
power assumed to bind the states (not
merely in cases made federal) but in all
cases whatsoever, by laws made, not with
their consent, but by others against their
consent: That this would be to surrender
the form of Government we have chosen,
and to live under one deriving it powers
from its own will, and not from our au-
thority ; and that the Co-states recurring
to their natural right in cases not made
federal, will concur in declaring these
acts void and of no force, and will each
unite with this Commonwealth in request-
ing their repeal at the next session of
Congress.
EDMUND BULLOCK, S.H.R.
JOHN CAMPBELL, S.S.P.T.
Passed the House of Representatives, Nov. 10th, 1798.
Attest,
THOMAS TODD, C.H.R.
IN SENATE, November 13th, 1798, unanimously
concurred in,
Attest, B. THRUSTON, Clk. Sen.
Approved November 16th 1798.
JAMES GARRARD, G. K.
BY THE GOVERNOR,
HARRY TOULMIN
Secretary of State.
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