his compact was not made the exclusive
or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since
that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the
measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among
powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge
for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of
redress."

The Resolutions, after enumerating the Alien and Sedition and certain
other laws as in point, conclude by calling upon the other States to
join Kentucky in her opposition to such Federal usurpations of power as
thus embodied, and express confidence: "That they will concur with this
Commonwealth in considering the said Acts as so palpably against the
Constitution as to amount to an undisguised declaration that that
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 the power assumed to bind the States (not merely as to
the cases made federal (casus foederis) 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 live under one deriving its powers from its own will, and not from
our authority; and that the co-States, returning to their natural rights
in cases not made federal, will concur in declaring these Acts void and
of no force, and will each take measures of its own in providing that
neither these Acts, nor any others of the General Government, not
plainly and intentionally authorized by the Constitution, shall be
exercised within their respective territories."

The doctrine of States Rights as formulated in these Resolutions,
including the assumed right of a State to nullify laws of the General
Government, naturally led up, as we shall see, not only to threats of
disunion, but ultimately to a dreadful sectional War waged in the effort
to secure it. That Jefferson, when he penned them, foresaw the terrible
results to flow from these specious and pernicious doctrines, is not to
be supposed for an instant; but that his conscience troubled him may be
fairly inferred from the fact that he withheld from the World for twenty
years afterward the knowledge that he was thei