The southern aegis. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1857-1862, 1861-11-16

tulS COMMUNICABLE cOuSlueTS Union TOT
special national purposes, and particularly
for those specified in their late federal COM
pact, to be friendly to the peace, bappi-
ness and prosperity of all the States-that
faithful to the compact, according to the
plain intent and meaning in which it was
understood and acceded to by the several
parties, it is'sincerely anxious for its pres
ervation; that it does also believe, that to
take from the States all the powers of self
government, and transfer them to a gen.
eral and consolidated government, with
out regard to the special government, and
reservations solemnly agreed to in that
compact, is not for the peace, happiness or
prosperity of these States. And that
therefore, this commonwealth, is determi-
ned, as it doubts not its co-States are to
submit to undelegated and consequently
unlimited powers in no man, Or body of
men on earth; that if the acts before speci-
fed should stand, these conclusions flow
from them, that the general Government
may place any act they think proper on
the lists of crimes and punish it themselves
whether enumerated or not enumerated by
the Constitution, cognizable by them, that
they may transfer its coenizance to the
President Or 0ny other person, acho may
hamse!f be the occuscr, counsel, Judge and
ju'y, aohose su1'iciohs may be the evidence,
has order the sentence, his officer the enecat-
toner, andhis breast the sole record of the
transaction, that very numerous and val
liable description of the inhabitants of
these States, being by this precedent re-
duced as outlaws to absolute dominion of
one man, and the barriers of the Constitu-
ton thus swept from us all, no rampant
now remains against the passions and the
power of majority of Congress to protect
from like expectation or rather grievous
punishment the minority of the same body,
the Legislatures, judges, Governors, and
councillors of the States, nor their other
peaceable inhabitants who may venture to
reclaim the constitutional rights and liber-
ties of the States, and people, or who for
other causes, good or bad may be obnox-
ious to the view or marked by the suspi-
cions of the President, or to be thought
dangerous to his or their elections or other
interest public or personal that the friend
less alien has been selected as the safest
subject of his first experience, but the citi-
zen will soon follow, or rather has already
followed for already has sedition act
marked him as prey. That these and
successive acts of the same character, I'M
less arrested on the threshold may tend to
drive these States into revolution and
blood, and will furnish new calumnies
against republican governments and new
pretexts for those who wish to be believed
that man cannot be governed but by rod
of iron !; that would be dangerous delu-
sion were confidence in the men of our
choice to silence our fears for the safety of
our rights that confidence is everywhere
the parent of despotism; free government
is founded in jealousy and not in conf
dence; it is the jealousy and not conf
dence which prescribes limited constitu-
ton to bind down those whom we are
obliged to trust with power, that our con-
stitution has fixed the limits to which and
NO further our confidence may go; and let
the honest advocates of confidence read the
alien and sedition acts, and say if the coi-
stitution has not been wise in fixing limits
to the government it created, and whether
we should be wise in destroying those lin
its? Let him say what the government
is, if it be not tyranny, which the men
Of our choice have conferred on the Presi-
dent, and the President of our choice has
assented to and accepted over the friendly
strangers, to whom the mild spirit of our
country and its laws have pledged hospi-
tality and protection; that the men Of our
choice have more resnected the snsnicinns