and will each take measures of its own for 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 Virginia Resolutions, adopted in December, 1798, were drafted by Madison.  They view “the powers of the federal Government as resulting from the compact to which the States are parties,” and declare that, if those powers are exceeded, the States “have the right and are in duty bound to interpose.”  This doctrine was a vial of woe to American politics until it was cast down and shattered on the battlefield of civil war.  It was invented for a partisan purpose, and yet was entirely unnecessary for that purpose.

The Federalist party as then conducted was the exponent of a theory of government that was everywhere decaying.  The alien and sedition laws were condemned and discarded by the forces of national politics, and state action was as futile in effect as it was mischievous in principle.  It diverted the issue in a way that might have ultimately turned to the advantage of the Federalist party, had it possessed the usual power of adaptation to circumstances.  After all, there was no reason inherent in the nature of that party why it should not have perpetuated its organization and repaired its fortunes by learning how to derive authority from public opinion.  The needed transformation of character would have been no greater than has often been accomplished in party history.  Indeed, there is something abnormal in the complete prostration and eventual extinction of the Federalist party; and the explanation is to be found in the extraordinary character of Adams’s administration.  It gave such prominence and energy to individual aims and interests that the party was rent to pieces by them.

In communicating the X.Y.Z. dispatches to Congress, Adams declared:  “I will never send another Minister to France without assurance that he will be received, respected, and honored, as the representative of a great, free, powerful, and independent nation.”  But on receiving an authentic though roundabout intimation that a new mission would have a friendly reception, he concluded to dispense with direct assurances, and, without consulting his Cabinet, sent a message to the Senate on February 18, 1799, nominating Murray, then American Minister to Holland, to be Minister to France.  This unexpected action stunned the Federalists and delighted the Republicans as it endorsed the position they had always taken that war talk was folly and that France was ready to be friendly if America would treat her fairly.  “Had the foulest heart and the ablest head in the world,” wrote Senator Sedgwick to Hamilton, “been permitted to select the most embarrassing and ruinous measure, perhaps it would have been precisely the one which has been adopted.”  Hamilton advised that “the measure must go into effect with the additional idea