Page:Contemporary Opinion of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, p1.djvu/16

 absolutely imperative under the circumstances, for silence would be construed as assent to the doctrines of Virginia and Kentucky.

Lowell, as the Federalist leader in the House and as a member of the joint committee, made the most elaborate argument in behalf of the report. Three distinct propositions are involved in the report. 1. "The first, and the most important," said Lowell, is "that the State Legislatures have no constitutional right to judge of the acts and measures of the Federal Government." 2. The Alien and Sedition Laws are constitutional. 3. They are also "expedient and necessary." In support of the second and third propositions, Lowell argued that the Alien Law was forced upon the United States by the machinations of France; that the Sedition Law was equally well grounded and, if possible, yet more expedient. For the constitutionality of the Sedition Law Lowell offered no argument, while upon that phase of the Alien Law his only argument was to declare, in reply to a challenge to point out the clause of the Constitution which warranted it, "the very object and scope of the Federal Compact was to invest in one general head the whole National Concerns."

Taking the Federalist speeches in the aggregate there appears to have been considerable warrant for the Chronicle's complaint that the question was superficially argued by the advocates of the report. Doubtless the certainty of a large majority in its favor will account for this and for their maintaining, as the Chronicle charged, an intolerant and contemptuous attitude towards their opponents "more conspicuous than ever disgraced these walls."

On the Republican side five or six short speeches were made by different members, but little can be learned about the ground which they took for opposing the report. The Mercury, the only paper which notices these speeches, states that all of these speakers "professed a strong disapprobation of the Resolutions of Virginia, but could not agree to the proposition adopted by the Senate in reply to them." The only elaborate speech on the Republican side was one read from manuscript by Dr. Aaron Hill of Cambridge in concluding the debate. This, like the speech of Bacon in the Senate, was afterwards published in the Chronicle. The most important feature of it is the portion devoted to a consideration of the declaration contained in the report, that the right to pass upon the constitutionality of federal laws belongs to the federal government. Denying the correctness of this doctrine, Hill set forth what he conceived to be the true nature of the federal union and the rights of the states in cases of encroachment upon their reserved powers.