there was a design in them to transform the government into an absolute or at best a mixed monarchy.

The methods to arrest the evils of these alleged unconstitutional assumptions of undelegated powers were stated to be authorized by the Constitution itself. And by the concurrence with Virginia of the other States to whom the resolutions were submitted, they, the States, might remedy the alleged evils by their representatives in Congress or by the choice of Senators of different opinions; there were to be, the Virginia explanation said, no less than two Congresses before the laws expired by their limitation; or if necessary, the explanation further said, the States by a convention could alter the Constitution.

The resolutions are those of strict constructionists of the powers granted by the Constitution; they in no way assert the nullification doctrines of Kentucky, which some thirty years afterwards were revived and developed to their logical result of secession by Calhoun and South Carolina.

The prosecutions under the Sedition law, the arresting and carrying through the country and the fining and imprisoning as criminals, for the expression of opinions, of men whom the Republicans held as eminent and respectable, such as Thomas Cooper, Jefferson's dear friend, had very great influence in the defeat of the federal party under the elder Adams and

of the triumph of Jefferson and the Republicans.

The resolutions of Virginia alarmed Washington as exhibiting a discontent with the Union. He wrote to Patrick Henry, one of the Virginians Henry Adams names, to induce him to interpose his great influence in the matter.' Henry, whose impassioned eloquence had done so much to bring Virginia into the war of the revolution, who ably and persistently opposed in the Virginia convention the acceptance of the Constitution from fear that the great powers given to the United States would be fatal to liberty, had become one of its strongest supporters. He shared Washington's anxiety. Though he had often been Governor of the State, and had declined offers of the most important national offices under Washington, he offered himself as a candidate for election to the House of Burgesses, to do what he could to put an end to this discontent and what he considered the rash measures of the State. In his speech before his constituents, he declared that Virginia had quitted the sphere in which she had been placed by the Constitution in daring to pronounce upon the validity of federal laws, and asked, "whether the county of Charlotte would have any authority to dispute an obedience to the laws

1 Washington's letter to Henry, Sparks' Washington, vol. xi., p. 387. The letter also contains his opinion of those in opposition to the government.

of Virginia, and he pronounced Virginia to be to the Union what the county of Charlotte was to her." Nor did he believe that resistance would be peaceful; for he warned the people that the opposition of Virginia to the acts of the General Government must beget their enforcement, and that war would ensue with Washington and a veteran army as opponents. It was the period of our hostility with France, and Washington had been made commander-inchief. Henry was chosen to the House of Burgesses by a large majority, but died before the session began in which Virginia's conciliatory explanation of her resolves and her loyalty and attachment to the Union and the supremacy of those laws in all delegated powers was made.

The other two distinguished Virginians whom Mr. Adams mentions, are John Taylor of Caroline and John Randolph of Roanoke. Taylor, a great friend of Jefferson's, in 1823 published a book called New Views of the Constitution of the United States. Of so little importance, so little known, were the Kentucky resolutions then that he does not cite them, as far as we can find from our examination, which we do not claim to be thorough. In the preface he speaks of his "survey as not devoid of novelty." He controverts at great length the opinions of Hamilton and Madison, as given in

Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry, pp. 393, 394. John Coit Tyler's Life of Patrick Henry, p. 373.

the Federalist and a pamphlet published in South Carolina with similar views, called National and State Rights Considered by One of the People. His views of the Constitution. are, as he says, new. He advances the doctrine that in a conflict between the laws and measures of the State and General Government neither shall prevail, but substantially the State should, unless three fourths of the States by an amendment of the Constitution should decide otherwise.

John Randolph of Roanoke was notorious for his eccentricities and vagaries, his attacks on all parties and all policies; if he had any opinion it was probably, as he said, that the Virginia resolutions and their explanations were "his political Bible." What the resolutions and explanations are we have endeavored to set forth.

CHAPTER V.

SUPREMACY OF CONSTITUTION MAINTAINED.

IN less than the brief space of two and a half years after the Kentucky resolutions were passed Jefferson became President. If he believed in those resolutions he should at once have made a general jail delivery. All those in prison under United States laws for counterfeiting or forging United States bank bills, robbing or embezzling from the mail, violating the custom-house laws, interfering with the judicial proceedings of the government, or committing any crime, except the few mentioned in the Constitution, should have been set free (for the Kentucky resolutions expressly denounced all the United States laws punishing those crimes "as altogether void and of no force"). Jefferson contented himself with pardoning those imprisoned under the Sedition laws.

In his inaugural address to Congress, at the very beginning of his administration, Jefferson announced principles totally and fundamentally opposed to the Kentucky resolutions. He pleaded for unity, and denied that every dif