Virginia Resolutions,
December 24, 1798.
Resolved, That the General Assembly of Virginia doth unequivocally express a firm resolution to maintain and defend the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of this State against every aggression, either foreign or domestic, and that they will support the Government of the United States in all measures warranted by the former.
2. That this Assembly most solemnly declares a warm attachment to the Union of the States, to maintain which it pledges its powers; and that, for this end, it is their duty to watch over and oppose every infraction of those principles which constitute the only basis of that Union, because a faithful observance of them can alone secure its existence and the public happiness.
3. That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the Federal Government as resulting from the compact as resulting from the compact to which the States are parties, as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting that compact, as nor further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that, in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the States who are parties thereto have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining, within their respective limits, the authorities, rights, and liberties appertaining to them.
4. That the General Assembly doth also express its deep regret that a spirit has, in sundry instances, been manifested by the Federal Government to enlarge its powers by forced constructions of the constitutional charter which defines them; and that indications have appeared of a design to expound certain general phrases (which, having been copied from the very limited grant of powers in the former Articles of Confederation, were the less liable to be misconstrued) so as to destroy the meaning and effect of the particular enumeration which necessarily explains and limits the general phrases, and so as to consolidate the States, by degrees, into one sovereignty, the obvious tendency and inevitable result of which would be to transform the president republican system of the United States into an absolute, or at best, a mixed monarchy.
5. That the General Assembly doth particularly protest against the palpable and alarming infractions of the Constitution in the two late cases of the “alien and sedition acts,” passed at the last session of Congress,
