The Virginia Resolution, authored by Madison, said that by enacting the Alien and Sedition Acts, Congress was exercising “a power not delegated by the Constitution, but on the contrary, expressly and positively forbidden by one of the amendments thereto; a power, which more than any other, ought to produce universal alarm because it is levelled against that right of freely examining public characters and measures and of free communication among the people, there on, which has ever been justly deemed, the only effectual guardian of every other right.
