When the final vote came the division was strictly upon party lines, fifty to forty-three. The preamble and resolution adopted are short and directly to the point. The right to decide upon the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress belongs to the judiciary, the assumption of that power by a state legislature is unwarrantable and dangerous; this house, accordingly, disclaims for itself such a power as that assumed by the legislatures of Virginia and Kentucky, to pass upon either the expediency or the constitutionality of the Alien and Sedition Laws, and the committee is discharged from further consideration of the matter.
In the Senate, as in the House, consideration of the resolutions was chiefly in committee of the whole; but of the proceedings there nothing has been learned. When the committee rose, on March 5, Mr. Van Vechten, a Federalist leader, reported the preamble and resolution which constitute the New York reply as given in Elliot's Debates. Spencer, the Republican leader, offered a substitute which declared that the senators think "themselves, individually, and in a legislative capacity, invested with the right of expressing their opinions upon the acts and proceedings of Congress; and that in cases of dangerous encroachments and innovations on the rights and sovereignty of the State Legislatures, it would become their bounden duty to mark and proclaim such innovations; yet this committee, most solemnly impressed with the importance and necessity of preserving harmony between the national and state governments at the present eventful period, do not judge it expedient or proper to adopt the resolutions of the States of Virginia and Kentucky." Another Republican member offered a resolution consisting of a brief statement, that it would be improper to adopt the resolutions of Virginia and Kentucky. Debate upon these substitutes was shut off by the previous question, carried by party votes. An amendment offered by Spencer for the purpose of making it appear that the reply of the Senate was chiefly directed against those portions of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions which assert for the states a power to render acts of Congress void, was defeated though several Federalists joined with the Republicans on that issue. Then the final vote came and the division was strictly according to party lines, 31 to 7.[1] The questions passed upon in the Senate did not involve the attitude of its members towards the protesting and the remedial features of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions so exactly as did those raised in the House, but taking them together they show, beyond much doubt, that the attitude of the Republicans in both houses was the same, endorsement of the
- ↑ Albany Centinel, March 8, 1799. H. U.
