By thus circumscribing the plan, it
will be possible to have an excellent body of well-trained militia,
ready to take the field whenever the defense of the State shall require
it. This will not only lessen the call for military establishments, but
if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an
army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties
of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at
all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready
to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This
appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing
army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist."
Thus differently from the adversaries of the proposed Constitution
should I reason on the same subject, deducing arguments of safety from
the very sources which they represent as fraught with danger and
perdition. But how the national legislature may reason on the point, is
a thing which neither they nor I can foresee.
There is something so far-fetched and so extravagant in the idea of
danger to liberty from the militia, that one is at a loss whether to
treat it with gravity or with raillery; whether to consider it as a mere
trial of skill, like the paradoxes of rhetoricians; as a disingenuous
artifice to instil prejudices at any price; or as the serious offspring
of political fanaticism.
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