Convictions under the sedition law were few, but there were enough of them to cause great alarm. A Jerseyman, who had expressed a wish that the wad of a cannon, fired as a salute to the President, had hit him on the rear bulge of his breeches, was fined $100. Matthew Lyon of Vermont, while canvassing for reëlection to Congress, charged the President with "unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and a selfish avarice." This language cost him four months in jail and a fine of $1000. But in general the law did not repress the tendencies at which it was aimed but merely increased them. The Republicans, too weak to make an effective stand in Congress, tried to interpose state authority. Jefferson drafted the Kentucky Resolutions, adopted by the state legislature in November, 1798. They hold that the Constitution is a compact to which the States are parties, and that "each party has an equal right to judge for itself as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress." The alien and sedition laws were denounced, and steps were proposed by which protesting States "will concur in declaring these Acts void and of no force, and will each take measures of its own for providing that neither these Acts, nor any others of the general Government, not plainly and intentionally authorized by the Constitution, shall be exercised within their respective territories." The Virginia Resolutions, adopted in December, 1798, were drafted by Madison. They view "the powers of the federal Government as resulting from the compact to which the States are parties," and declare that, if those powers are exceeded, the States "have the right and are in duty bound to interpose." This doctrine was a vial of woe to American politics until it was cast down and shattered on the battlefield of civil war. It was invented for a partisan purpose, and yet was entirely unnecessary for that purpose.