State Documents on Federal Relations/40

by Herman V. Ames

40. Reply of the Legislature of New Jersey.^[1]

February 17, 1815.

House of Assembly, February 10.

The committee to whom was referred the several propositions for the amendment of the Constitution of the United States, adopted by the general assembly of Connecticut, and at their request communicated to his excellency the governor, to be laid before the legislature of this state for their approbation and adoption, beg leave to report, that they have been induced by the untoward circumstances of the times, and the general aspect of our political affairs to consider the same, with a view rather to their general bearing, character and tendency, than to their several intrinsic merits. Under these impressions they are constrained to remark, that the leading purpose, the favorite master principle pervading all the propositions in question, is to reduce within a narrower sphere the power and influence of the general government, and thereby to weaken its arm, at a time when, above all others, it requires to be strengthened. Their obvious tendency also is, to throw amongst the states of the union the apple of discord—to increase those jealousies and suspicions, which have been already too far excited, and to give new life, activity and nurture to those seeds of dissention and disunion which have been recently sown with an unsparing hand by insidious combinations and associations, all of them professing to promote the general good, but acting in direct opposition to their professions. The committee feel themselves impelled, therefore, by the strongest obligations of patriotism and duty, to recommend to the house, that each and all of the before mentioned seven propositions of amendment be most promptly and unqualifiedly rejected.

To which report the house of assembly agreed and thereupon,

Resolved, by the house of assembly of New Jersey, That the before mentioned seven propositions of amendment of the constitution of the United States be and the same are hereby rejected. [Agreed to by the Senate, February 17.]

[Niles' Register, VIII, 16.]

1. For message of Governor Pennington of Jan. 11, 1815, condemning the movement in the Eastern States, see Niles, VII, 108, 109.