imprisonment not exceeding two years.

The debates in Congress left little doubt that the Sedition Act was a
weapon forged for partisan purposes. The Federalists were convinced that
France maintained a party in America which by means of corrupt hirelings
and subsidized presses was paralyzing the efforts of the Administration
to defend national rights. That there was great provocation for the act
cannot be denied. The tone of the press generally was low; but between
the scurrilous assaults of Cobbett in _Porcupine's Gazette_ upon
Republican leaders, and the atrocious libels of Bache upon President
Washington, there is not much to choose.

What the opposition had to fear from the Sedition Act, appeared with
startling suddenness in October, 1798, when Representative Matthew Lyon,
of Vermont, an eccentric character who had become the butt of all
Federalists, was indicted for publishing a letter in which he maintained
that under President Adams "every consideration of the public welfare
was swallowed up in a continual grasp for power, in an unbounded thirst
for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice." The
unlucky Lyon was found guilty, sentenced to imprisonment for four
months, and fined one thousand dollars.

Alarmed by this attack on what he termed the freedom of speech and of
the press, Jefferson cast about for some effective form of protest.
Collaborating with John Breckenridge, a member of the Kentucky
Legislature, he prepared a series of resolutions which were adopted by
that body, while Madison, then a member of the Virginia House of
Burgesses, secured the adoption of a set of resolutions of similar
purport which he had drafted. Both sets of resolutions condemned the
Alien and Sedition Acts as unwarranted by the letter of the Constitution
and opposed to its spirit. Both reiterated the current theory of the
Union as a compact to which the States were parties; and both intimated
that, as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common
judge, each party had an equal right to judge for itself, as well of
infractions as of the mode of redress.

The real purport of these Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions has been
much misunderstood. The emphasis should fall not upon the compact
theory, for that was commonly accepted at this time; nor yet upon the
vague remedies suggested by the phrases "nullification" and
"interposition." With these remedies Jefferson and Madison were not
greatly concerned