We have no reason to conclude that friendly arrangements would
be declined by the other nations, with whom we have such commercial
intercourse as may render them important. In the meanwhile, it would
rest with the wisdom of Congress to determine whether, as to those
nations, they will not surcease _ex parte_ regulations, on the
reasonable presumption that they will concur in doing whatever
justice and moderation dictate should be done.
_Draft of the Kentucky Resolutions_
October 1798
1. _Resolved_, That the several States composing the United
States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited
submission to their General Government; but that, by a compact under
the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of
amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special
purposes, -- delegated to that government certain definite powers,
reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their
own self-government; and that whensoever the General Government
assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and
of no force; that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and
is an integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other
party: that the government created by this compact was not made the
exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to
itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the
Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other
cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has
an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the
mode and measure of redress.
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