government. They ought to be and are hereby rejected." This resolution was passed by a vote of forty-three to twenty-five, seemingly a party division and indicating that the constitutional doctrines of Virginia were not so heretical in the eyes of Pennsylvania Republicans as to preclude the partial endorsement of them which a vote against the resolution implied.
Delaware took prompt action upon each set of resolutions; on January 21, both houses of the General Assembly united in the opinion that the resolutions of Kentucky were "a very unjustifiable interference with the general government, and the constituted authorities of the United States, and of dangerous tendency, and therefore not a fit subject for further consideration of the General Assembly."[1] Eleven days later exactly the same words were again employed to dismiss the Virginia Resolutions.[2]
The New Jersey legislature did not meet until January 16, 1799, but its action was foreshadowed two days before in the Federalist, or New Jersey Gazette.[3] The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions will be dismissed "with contempt," for sedition forms no item of natural rights in New Jersey. Its second argument sounds like an echo of 1787 and shows that the Gazette understood the art of befogging the real issue by an appeal to ancient prejudices. Virginia, in reality, cares little or nothing for the Alien and Sedition Laws; it is the Constitution she aims at destroying, and that because the small states have an equality with herself in the Senate.
Four days after the appearance of this article the legislature disposed of both sets of resolutions in the manner predicted. But this action was not taken before a lively debate in the House had shown exactly the attitude of both the Federalist and the Republican members of the legislature towards the resolutions.[4] Additional interest is given to this debate by the fact that it is one of the two debates in the state legislatures over replies to the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions which have been preserved for us. Messrs. Campbell and Van Cleve, speaking for the Federalists, urged immediate dismissal by a unanimous vote. About the subject-matter of the resolutions "no honest American could entertain a doubt"; "all seemed to express, both publicly and privately, the most decided disapprobation of them." The consideration of a suitable
- ↑ Philadelphia Magazine and Review, February 1799. H. U.
- ↑ Elliot's Debates, IV. 558.
- ↑ The Federalist, or New Jersey Gazette, January 14, 1799. Am. Antiq. Soc.
- ↑ The account of the debate here given is extracted from a detailed report which appeared in several New Jersey papers. See the Federalist, January 21, 1799 (A. A. S.); the Guardian, or New-Brunswick Advertiser, January 29, 1799 (A. A. S.); the State Gazette, January 29, 1799 (A. A. S.).
