East Saginaw courier. (East Saginaw, Mich.) 1859-18??, 1864-09-28

lnut INC prOceeuinB VI the penerui
Government under color of those ar
ticles will be fit and necessary sub
ject for revisal and correction at a
time Of greater tranquility, while those
specified in the preceding resolutions
call for immediate redress.
8. Resolped, That the preceding res
olutions be transmitted to the Sena-
tors and Representatives in Congress
from the commonwealth who are en-
joined to present the same to their re-
spective houses, and to use their best
endeavors to procure at the next ses-
sion Of Congress, a repeal of the afore-
said unconstitutional, obnoxious acts.
0. Resolred lastly, That the Govern
or Of this commonwealth be, and is
authorized and requested to communi-
cate the preceding resolutions to the
Legislatures of the several States to
assure them that this commonwealth
considers union for specified national
purposes, and particularly for those
specified in their late federal compact,
to be friendly to the peace, happiness,
and prosperity of all the States--that
are faithful to that compact, accord
ing to the plain intent and meaning
in which it was understood and ac-
ceded to by the several parties, it is
sincerely anxious for its preservation;
that it does also believe, that to take
from the States all the powers Of self
government, and transfer them to a
general and consolidated government,
without regard to the special delega-
tons and reservations, solemnly agreed
to in that compact, is not for the peace,
happiness or prosperity of these States.
And that therefore, this common
wealth is determined, as it doubts not
its co-States are, TO submit to undele-
gated and consequently unlimited pow
ers in no man, or body of men on
earth; that if the acts before specified
should stand, these conclusions would
flow from them, that the general goy-
ernment may place any act they think
proper on the list of crimes and pun
ish it themselves, whether enumera-
ted by the Constitution orcognizable by
them, that they may transfer its cog
nizance to tho President or any other
person, who may himself be the ac-
cuser, counsel, judge and jury, whose
suspicious may bo the evidence, his
order the sentence, his officer the exc
cutioner, and his breast the sole record
of the transaction, that very numer-
Gus and valuable description of the
inhabitants Of these States, being by
this precedent reduced as outlaws to
the absolute dominion Of one man,
and the barriers Of the Constitution
thus swept from us all, no rampant
now remains against the passions and
the power of a majority of Congress
to protect from alike expectation or
other grevious punishment the minor
ity of the same body, the Legislators,
judges, governors and counsellors Of
the States, nor their other peaeeable
inhabitants who may venture to re-
claim the constitutional rights and
liberties of the State and people, or
who for other causes, good or bad,
may be obnoxious to tho views, or
marked by the suspicious of the Pres
ident, or to be thought dangerous to
his or their elections or other interest,
public or personal; that the friendless
alien has been selected as the safest
subject of first experiment, but the
citizen will soon follow, or rather has
already followed; for, already has a
sedition act marked him as its prey.
That these and successive acts of the
same character, unless arrested at the
threshold may tend to drive these
States into revolution and blood, and
will furnish new calumnies against
republican government, and new pre-
texts for those who wish to be believed
that men cannot be governed but by a
rod of iron; that it would be dam
gerous delusion 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 confidence il is
jealousy and not confidence which
prescribes limited constitutions to bind
down those whom we are obliged to
trust with power, that our Constitu-
ton has fixed the limits to which, and
no further, our confidence may GO;
and let the honest advocates Of conf
dence read tho alien and sedition acts,
and say if the Constitution has not
been wise in fixing limits to the Gov
ernment it created, and whether we
should be wise in destroying those
limits? Let him say what the Gov
ernment is, if it be not tyranny,
which the men of our choice have con-
ferred on the President, and the Pres
ident of our choice has assented to
and accepted over the friendly stran-
gers, to whom the mild spirit of our
country and its laws have pledged hos
pitality and protection; that the men
Of our choice have more respected the
bare suspicious of tho President than
the solid rights Of innocence, the claims
Of justification, the sacred force OF
truth, and the forms and substance of
law and justice. In questions of pow
or, then, let no more be heard of con-
fidence in man but bind him down
from mischief by the chains of the
Constitution. That this common
wealth does therefore call ON its CO.
States for an expression of its senti-
ments on the acts concerning aliens,
and for the punishment of certain
crimes, herein before specified, plainly
declaring whether these acts are or
are not authorized by the federal COM
pact. And it doubts not that their
sense will be SO announced as to prove
their attachment unaltered to limited
government whether general or par
ticular, and that the rights and liber-
ties of their co-States will be exposed
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