John Quincy Adams by John Quincy Adams & Editor

Author:John Quincy Adams & Editor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Library of America
Published: 2017-04-12T16:00:00+00:00

[September 1836]

2. IV. Friday. ≈ I looked this day into Mr. Wirt’s Life of Patrick Henry, to see his account of the debates in the Virginia Convention upon the Constitution of the United-States, and of Henry’s opinion and conduct on the occasion of the alien and Sedition Laws — It seems difficult to reconcile them together — His opposition to the Constitution was founded perhaps on the peculiarity of his situation — His opinions then were in the highest tone of republican doctrine, and his aversion to the consolidation of the union deeply rooted — This makes his approbation of the Alien and Sedition Laws the more extraordinary. But in truth the opposition to those Laws was merely factious — The main argument of Mr. Madison’s report against the alien Law was that it applied to alien friends, when such measures should be applied only to alien enemies — But there was a fallacy in it — The foreign emissaries against whom the alien act was pointed were in no wise friends of this Country — They were chiefly Frenchmen. Jefferson in his correspondence says its principal object was Volney — The relative situation of the United States and France, at that time not a state of amity, but of hostility, though not of declared war. It was such that measures of defence against French secret emissaries were more necessary than they would have been in avowed and open War. The Sedition act was an ineffectual attempt to extinguish the fire of defamation — but it operated like oil upon the flames. Patrick Henry was elected a member of the Legislature of Virginia in 1799 but he died in June of that year, and before their meeting.

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