We are not
authorized to expect that a more liberal or more equitable spirit would
preside over the legislations of the individual States hereafter, if
unrestrained by any additional checks, than we have heretofore seen in
too many instances disgracing their several codes. We have observed the
disposition to retaliation excited in Connecticut in consequence of the
enormities perpetrated by the Legislature of Rhode Island; and we
reasonably infer that, in similar cases, under other circumstances, a
war, not of PARCHMENT, but of the sword, would chastise such atrocious
breaches of moral obligation and social justice.
The probability of incompatible alliances between the different States
or confederacies and different foreign nations, and the effects of this
situation upon the peace of the whole, have been sufficiently unfolded
in some preceding papers. From the view they have exhibited of this part
of the subject, this conclusion is to be drawn, that America, if not
connected at all, or only by the feeble tie of a simple league,
offensive and defensive, would, by the operation of such jarring
alliances, be gradually entangled in all the pernicious labyrinths of
European politics and wars; and by the destructive contentions of the
parts into which she was divided, would be likely to become a prey to
the artifices and machinations of powers equally the enemies of them
all.
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