9. Resolved, lastly, That the governor of this commonwealth be, and is hereby authorized and requested to communicate 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 faithful to that 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 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 delegations 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 determined, as it doubts not its co-states are, tamely to submit to undelegated and consequently unlimited powers 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 government may place any act they think proper on the list of crimes, and punish it themselves, whether enumerated or not enumerated by the constitution as cognizable by them; that they may transfer its cognizance to the President or any other person, who may himself be the accuser, counsel, judge and jury, whose suspicions may be the evidence, his order the sentence, his officer the executioner, and his breast the sole record of the transaction; that a very numerous 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 barrier of the constitution thus swept away from us all, no rampart now remains against the passions and the power of a majority of Congress to protect from a like exportation, or other more grievous punishment, the minority of the same body, the legislators, judges, governors, and councillors of the states, nor their other peaceable inhabitants who may venture to reclaim the constitutional rights and liberties of the states and people, or who for other causes, good or

bad, may be obnoxious to the views, or marked by the suspicions of the President, or be thought dangerous to his or their elections, or other interests public or personal; that the friendless alien has indeed been selected as the safest subject of a 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 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 it to be believed that man cannot be governed but by a rod of iron: that it would be a dangerous delusion, were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights; that confidence is every where the parent of despotism; free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power: that our constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which and no further our confidence may go, and let the honest advocate of confidence read the Alien and Sedition acts, and say if the constitution has not been wise in fixing limits to the government it created, and whether we should be wise in destroying those limits? Let him say what the government is, if it be not a tyranny, which the men of our choice have conferred on the President, 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 had pledged hospitality and protection; that the men of our choice have more respected the bare suspicions of the 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 power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution. That this commonwealth does therefore call on its co-states for an expression of their sentiments 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 compact. And it doubts not that their sense will be so announced, as to prove their attachment unaltered to limited government, whether general or particular, and that the rights and liberties of their co-states will be exposed to no dangers by remaining embarked on a common bottom with their own; that they will concur with this commonwealth in considering the said acts were so palpably against the constitution, as to amount to an undisguised declaration that the compact is not meant to be the measure of the powers of the general government, but that it will proceed in the exercise over these states of all powers whatsoever; that they will view this as seizing the rights of the states, and consolidating them in the hands of the general government, with a power assumed to bind the states, not merely in cases made federal, but in all cases whatsoever, by laws made, not with their consent, but by others against their consent; that this would be to surrender the form of government we have chosen, and to live under one deriving its powers from its own will, and not from our authority; and that the co-states, recurring to their natural right in cases not made federal, will concur in declaring these acts void and of no force, and will each unite with this commonwealth in requesting their repeal at the next session of Congress,

•

INDEPENDENT TREASURY.

We have considered it proper to publish the Independent Treasury law, together with the speech of the Hon. Levi Woodbury on the passage of the bill to repeal that law, delivered in the Senate of the United States, June 9th, 1841. We desire the people to examine the whole subject before they pass sentence of condemnation on that important and valuable measure of the late administration of Mr. Van Buren. The real democracy of the

country have no wish to destroy sound banking. They wish to produce a more uniform system of the currency, and to lessen the mischiefs and evils of over-banking, by preventing, as far as possible, the great expansions and contractions of the paper money system. Its continued ebbs and flows render the value of all property uncertain and unstable. The managers of the scheme make large fortunes by the ruin and distress they have contributed to bring on a most valuable class of our active and industrious citizens.

AN ACT

TO PROVIDE FOR THE COLLECTION, SAFE-KEEPING, TRANSFER, AND DISBURSEMENT OF THE PUBLIC REVENUE.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That there shall be prepared and provided, within the new treasury building now erecting at the seat of government, suitable and convenient rooms for the use of the treasurer of the United States, his assistants and clerks; and sufficient and secure fire-proof vaults and safes, for the keeping of the public moneys in the possession and under the immediate control of the said treasurer; which said rooms, vaults, and safes are hereby constituted and declared to be the treasury of the United States. And the said treasurer of the United States shall keep all the public moneys which shall come to his hands in the treasury of the United States as hereby constituted, until the same are drawn therefrom according to law.

SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That the mint of the United States in the city of Philadelphia, in the state of Pennsylvania, and the branch mint in the city of New Orleans, in the state of Louisiana, and the vaults, and safes thereof, respectively, shall be places of deposite and safe-keeping of the public moneys at those points respectively; and the treasurer of the said mint and

branch mint, respectively, for the time being, shall have the custody and care of all public moneys deposited within the same, and shall perform all the duties required to be performed by them, in reference to the receipt, safe-keeping, transfer and disbursements of all such moneys, according to the provisions hereinafter contained.

SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, That there shall be prepared and provided, within the custom-houses now erecting in the city of New York, in the state of New York, and in the city of Boston, in the state of Massachusetts, suitable and convenient rooms for the use of the receivers-general of public moneys, hereinafter directed to be appointed, at those places, respectively; and sufficient and secure fire-proof vaults and safes for the keeping of the public moneys collected and deposited with them, respectively; and the receivers-general of public money, from time to time, appointed at those points, shall have the custody and care of the said rooms, vaults and safes, respectively, and of all the public moneys deposited within the same; and shall perform all the duties required to be performed by them, in reference to the receipt, safe-keeping, transfer, and disbursement of all such moneys, according to the provisions of this act.

SEC. 4. And be it further enacted, That there shall be erected, prepared and provided, at the expense of the United States, at the city of Charleston, in the state of South Carolina, and at the city of St. Louis, in the state of Missouri, offices, with suitable and convenient rooms for the use of the receivers-general of public money hereinafter directed to be appointed at the places above named; and sufficient and secure fire-proof vaults and safes for the keeping of the public money collected and deposited at those points, respectively; and the said receivers-general, from time to time appointed at those places, shall have the custody and care of the said offices, vaults and safes, so to be erected, prepared and provided, and of all the public moneys deposited within the same; and shall perform all the duties required to be performed by them; in reference to the receipt, safekeeping, transfer, and disbursement of all such moneys, according to the provisions hereinafter contained.

VOL. II.

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