The Gazette

Exclusion of Aliens.

Massachusetts will add honorable addition to her laurels, in being the first to propose measures for obtaining an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, excluding foreign influence from the councils of the Union. New York, Connecticut, and New-Hampshire (if we mistake not) have concurred in the measure. The following is the Resolution of Connecticut.

General Assembly. Oct. 1798.

RESOLVED, that the Senators and Representatives of this State, in the Congress of the United States, be, and they are hereby requested, to use their best endeavors, that Congress propose to the Legislatures of the several States, the following amendment of the Constitution of the United States, viz. That (in addition to the other qualifications prescribed by said Constitution) no person shall be eligible as President or Vice President of the United States; nor shall any person be a Senator or Representative in the Congress of the United States, except a natural born citizen, or unless he shall have been a resident in the United States, at the time of the declaration of independence, & shall have continued either to reside within the same, or to be employed in its service from that period to the time of his election. And in case the Senators and Representatives of this State in Congress, shall find that the aforesaid amendment is not conformable to the sentiments of a constitutional majority of both branches of the National Legislature, they are hereby requested so to modify the same as to meet the sentiments of such majority.—Provided however, that any amendment which may be agreed upon shall exclude from a seat in either branch of Congress any person who shall not have been naturalized at the time of making this amendment, and have been admitted a citizen of the United States fourteen years at least, at the time of such election.