But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority
of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single
State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm.
Every government would espouse the common cause. A correspondence would
be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted. One spirit would
animate and conduct the whole. The same combinations, in short, would
result from an apprehension of the federal, as was produced by the dread
of a foreign, yoke; and unless the projected innovations should be
voluntarily renounced, the same appeal to a trial of force would be made
in the one case as was made in the other. But what degree of madness
could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity. In the
contest with Great Britain, one part of the empire was employed against
the other. The more numerous part invaded the rights of the less
numerous part. The attempt was unjust and unwise; but it was not in
speculation absolutely chimerical. But what would be the contest in the
case we are supposing? Who would be the parties? A few representatives
of the people would be opposed to the people themselves; or rather one
set of representatives would be contending against thirteen sets of
representatives, with the whole body of their common constituents on the
side of the latter.
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