Page:Contemporary Opinion of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, p1.djvu/4

 and intellectual prominence, enjoyed the best newspapers published in the United States. These papers, taking notice at an early date of the agitation in Virginia and Kentucky, reported its progress with considerable promptitude and fullness. Unlike most of the papers elsewhere, the Philadelphia press was not content to merely print a portion of the news; resolutions like those of Virginia and Kentucky called for comment, and the kind of comment made is significant. Fenno in the Gazette of the United States presented to his Federalist readers the resolutions of both states together with portions of the speech of Governor Gerrard [sic] to the legislature of Kentucky, under the title: "Fruits of French Diplomatic Skill." Dismissing the resolutions without discussion, he attacked the speech. One portion of it he pronounced "a most atrocious train of misrepresentation and falsehood;" another he characterized as "too weak and contemptible to merit much attention;" the whole is an "abominable speech, distinguished no less by the depravity of its sentiments, than the most desperate folly." It was the spirit rather than the matter of the speech that alarmed Fenno; little attention was paid to the remedy which Gerrard had suggested and no attempt was made to show that it might not rightfully be employed. It was the possibility of resistance to federal government rather than the cause of that opposition or the proposed method of resistance that seemed to Fenno the important side of the affair. The resolutions seem to have had upon him an effect similar to that produced upon other Federalist editors, strengthening his already implicit belief in the rapid approach of disaster. On March 4, he pointed out to his readers four "indications of approaching convulsion"; number one is "the imbecility of our frame of government," and allusions make it plain that the imbecility referred to was that which made possible such opposition to the federal government as that of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. The present system he characterized as "a mere experiment," "a jangling and chaotic confusion of federal and state governments, which can compare to nothing more nearly than a farrow of pigs, who have so strengthened and increased on the nourishment she has afforded them, as to be able to insult her authority and resist her controul."

As might have been expected, the bitterest invective came from Cobbett, who in this connection wrote some of his most characteristic paragraphs. At one moment the reader is surprised by a touch showing remarkable insight into some problem then facing the