Whereas, at the time of framing and adopting the present Constitution of the United States, there was a strong party whose favorite project was to make the tenure of the offices of the President and Senators of the United States endure for life, and of clothing Congress and the Executive with unlimited powers, reserving but few to the several States:

And whereas the State Rights or Republican party, with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison at its head, was opposed to a strong consolidated empire, and believed that the powers of the Federal Government should rest in certain grants, clearly expressing, and explicitly defining, all powers, rights, and privileges, bestowed upon the Federal Government; and, therefore, had the following provision incorporated into said Constitution—”that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people:”

And whereas the Federal Constitution is one whose very existence is derived from the States, acting in their high sovereign capacity as States, and the Constitution of the United States is alone the charter of the powers of the Federal Government, and when that is transcended by the Executive, Judicial or Legislative Departments of the General Government,

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they act in derogation of the reserved rights of the States, and substitute their own discretion as the measure of their Power:

And whereas the Federal party succeeded, in 1796, in electing the elder Adams to the Presidency, and in 1798, his friends, adopting a latitudinous construction of the Constitution of the United States, and claiming substantive and distinct powers by implication, which were not conferred in that saced[sacred] instrument, succeeded in passing through Congress the “Alien and sedition laws.” and the same were approved and signed by the elder Adams; which said laws not only muzzled the press in regard to public functionaries, but also armed the Executive of the nation with fearful and alarming discretionary powers over the person and property of alien friends:

And whereas the Virginia and Kentucky Legislatures, in 1798 and '99, passed resolutions condemnatory of the odious and tyrannical doctrines contained in the “Alien and sedition laws,” and of the flagrant encroachments upon, and violations of, the rights of the States; in which resolutions they, in a most lucid manner, define the great land-marks which separate the Federal and State Governments:

And whereas the great Republican State Rights party rallied upon Thomas Jefferson, “the apostle of American liberty,” and, after one of the most acrimonious and exciting conflicts ever witnessed in this or any other country, effected that great political revolution by which Thomas Jefferson, in 1801, was placed in the executive chair of the nation:

And whereas, in our country, all power is vested in the people, and is subject to their disposal—and all of our institutions are founded upon the broad basis that the people are capable of self-government: Therefore,

1. Resolved by the House of Representatives, That it is safe to recur frequently to fundamental principles, that we may the better detect new-fangled doctrines and popular heresies.

2. Resolved, That the resolutions of the Virginia and Kentucky Legislatures of 1798-9, penned by Madison and Jefferson, in opposition to the “Alien and sedition laws,” contain the correct doctrines in respect to the powers of the Governments of the several States, and of the United States; and that we do concur in the doctrines contained in said resolutions.

3. Resolved, That the doctrine of implied powers, as contended for by the Federal party, destroys not only the Constitution itself, but totally annihilates the rights of the States, and constructs upon their ruins a vast central and consolidated empire.

4. Resolved, That when the Federal Constitution—the great charter of the rights of the minority—shall be construed away or disregarded, the dominant party have an unlimited control over the person and property of the citizen, and over all offices and their emoluments, restricted only by the unchastened discretion of those who happen to be in power.

5. Resolved, That we are in favor of a strict construction of the Federal Constitution, and are opposed to the Legislative, Executive, or Judicial Departments of that Government exercising any power which is not delegated, or plainly deducible from, and incident to, some substantive grant of power.

6. Resolved, That the discretionary exercise, by any one man, of the undefined and undefinable patronage of the Federal Government, is dan-

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gerous to Republican liberty, and that it should be curtailed and checked by all the restrictions and safe-guards which can be constitutionally thrown around it.

7. Resolved, That it is the duty of those holding office at the hands of the people, whether in the State or National Governments, to obey the known will of a majority of their constituents or resign the trust confided to them; and the doctrine that the Representative should not be “palsied by the will of his constituents,” whether coming from those claiming to be Federalists or Republicans, is radically wrong in principle, and at war with the frame and spirit of our Government.

8. Resolved, That the illustrious framers of our Federal Constitution, acting upon the sound and safe principle, that “the world is governed too much,” designed to make ours a Government of republican simplicity and plainness, conducted with an eye to economy—taking from the people by exactions and taxes no more money than might be absolutely necessary for the administration of the Government.