8th. _Resolved_, That a committee of conference and
correspondence be appointed, who shall have in charge to communicate
the preceding resolutions to the legislatures of the several States;
to assure them that this commonwealth continues in the same esteem of
their friendship and union which it has manifested from that moment
at which a common danger first suggested a common union: that it
considers union, for specified national purposes, and particularly to
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 co-States are, to submit to undelegated, and
consequently unlimited powers in no man, or body of men on earth:
that in cases of an abuse of the delegated powers, the members of the
General Government, being chosen by the people, a change by the
people would be the constitutional remedy; but, where powers are
assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is
the rightful remedy: that every State has a natural right in cases
not within the compact, (casus non f;oederis,) to nullify of their
own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits:
that without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute
and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for
them: that nevertheless, this commonwealth, from motives of regard
and respect for its co-States, has wished to communicate with them on
the subject: that with them alone it is proper to communicate, they
alone being parties to the compact, and solely authorized to judge in
the last resort of the powers exercised under it, Congress being not
a party, but merely the creature of the compact, and subject as to
its assumptions of power to the final judgment of those by whom, and
for whose use itself and its powers were all created and modified:
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
in Congress to protect from a like exportation, or other more
grievous punishment, the minority of the same body, the legislatures,
judges, governors, and counsellors of the States, nor their other
peaceable inhabitants, who may venture to reclaim the constitutional
rights and liberties of the States 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
election, 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 at
the threshold, necessarily drive these States into revolution and
blood, and will furnish new calumnies against republican government,
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.
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