Page:Kentucky Resolutions of 1798.djvu/60

44 of Richmond, Virginia; while a sister was the wife of Edmund Randolph. Their father was Robert Carter Nicholas, the last Royal and first State Treasurer of Virginia, and a grandson of old Robert Carter, popularly known as "King" Carter, who owned sixty-three thousand acres in the valley of Virginia, and was president of the council, lieutenant-governor, and acting governor of the province in the good old days of the colony. He thus combined the factors needful in the States of Kentucky and Virginia, namely, democratic sentiments combined with great family influence and distinguished descent. It seems a strange mixture, but it was the one that gave the greatest influence. Nicholas had now retired from active politics, but was still in full practice at the bar, and was a professor in the law department of Transylvania University. He used his private influence freely, and published a card entitled The Political Creed of George Nicholas, in the Kentucky Gazette for August 1, 1798. It is as follows:

"In vindication of my right as a free citizen of the United States to, and as an exercise of, the invaluable privilege of speaking and publishing my sentiments of the official conduct of those who have been appointed to administer the government of the United States, and which is in itself so inestimable that the want of it must render all other earthly things of no value: I do solemnly declare that I do verily believe that the majority of the Legislature of the United States who voted for the act entitled 'An act in addition to the act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United