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VII. Resolved, that the construction applied by the general government (as is evinced by sundry
of their proceedings) to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate to Congress
a power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises; to pay the debts, and provide for the
common defense, and general welfare of the United States, and to make all laws which shall be necessary
and proper for carrying into execution the powers vested by the Constitution in the government of the
United States, or any department thereof, goes to the destruction of all the limits prescribed to their
power by the Constitution: That words meant by that instrument to be subsidiary only to the execution
of the limited powers ought not to be so construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part
so to be taken as to destroy the whole residue of the instrument: That the proceedings of the general
government under color of these articles will be a fit and necessary subject for revisal and correction
at a time of greater tranquillity, while those specified in the preceding resolutions call for immediate
redress.
VIII. Resolved, that the preceding Resolutions be transmitted to the Senators and Representatives
in Congress from this Commonwealth, who are hereby enjoined to present the same to their respective Houses,
and to use their best endeavors to procure, at the next session of Congress, a repeal of the aforesaid
unconstitutional and obnoxious acts.
IX. Resolved, lastly, that the Governor of this Commonwealth be, and is hereby authorized and requested
to communicate the preceding Resolutions to the Legislatures of the several States, to assure them that
this Commonwealth considers Union for specified National purposes, and particularly for those specified
in their late Federal Compact, to be friendly to the peace, happiness, and prosperity of all the States:
that faithful to that compact according to the plain intent and meaning in which it was understood and
acceded to by the several parties, it is sincerely anxious for its preservation: that it does also believe,
that to take from the States all the powers of self-government, and transfer them to a general and consolidated
government, without regard to the special delegations and reservations solemnly agreed to in that compact,
is not for the peace, happiness, or prosperity of these States: And that, therefore, this Commonwealth
is determined, as it doubts not its coStates are, tamely to submit to undelegated and consequently unlimited
powers in no man or body of men on earth: that if the acts before specified should stand, these conclusions
would flow from them; that the general government may place any act they think proper on the list of crimes
and punish it themselves, whether enumerated or not enumerated by the Constitution as cognizable by them:
that they may transfer its cognizance to the President or any other person, who may himself be the accuser,
counsel, judge, and jury, whose suspicions may be the evidence, his order the sentence, his officer the
executioner, and his breast the sole record of the transaction: that a very numerous and valuable description
of the inhabitants of these States being by this precedent reduced as outlaws to the absolute dominion
of one man, and the barrier of the Constitution thus swept away from us all, no rampart now remains against
the passions and the powers of a majority of Congress, to protect from a like exportation or other more
grievous punishment the minority of the same body, the legislatures, judges, governors, and counselors
of the States, nor their other peaceable inhabitants who may venture to reclaim the constitutional rights
and liberties of the State and people, or who for other causes, good or bad, may be obnoxious to the views
or marked by the suspicions of the President, or be thought dangerous to his or their elections or other
interests, public or personal: 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 followed: for, already
has a sedition act marked him as its prey: 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 cannot 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 everywhere
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 government 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 respected the bare suspicions of the President than the solid rights
of innocence, the claims of justification, the sacred force of truth, and the forms and 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 by the claims of the Constitution. That this Commonwealth 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 before specified, plainly declaring whether these acts are or are not authorized by the
Federal Compact. And it doubts not that their sense will be so announced as to prove their attachment
unaltered to limited government, 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 considering the said acts so palpably against the Constitution
as to amount to an undisguised declaration, that the compact is not meant to be the 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 its powers
from its own will, and not from our authority; 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 concur in
declaring these acts void and of no force, and will each unite with this Commonwealth in requesting their
repeal at the next session of Congress.
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