Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v2.djvu/114

98 should not have power to raise armies, is a doctrine he had never heard before. Charles II., in England, kept in pay an army of five thousand men, and James II. augmented them to thirty thousand. This occasioned a great and just alarm through the nation; and, accordingly, when William III. came to the throne, it was declared unconstitutional to raise or keep a standing army, in time of peace, without the consent of the legislature. Most of our own state constitutions have borrowed this language from the English declaration of rights, but none of them restrain their legislatures from raising and supporting armies. Those who never objected to such an authority in Congress, as vested by the old Confederation, surely ought not to object to such a power in Congress, where there is to be a new branch of representation, arising immediately from the people, and which branch alone must originate those very grants that are to maintain an army. When we consider that this branch is to be elected every two years, there is great propriety in its being restrained from making any grants in support of the army for a longer space than that of their existence. If the election of this popular branch were for seven years, as in England, the men who would make the first grant, might also be the second and third, for the continuance of the army; and such an acquaintance might exist between the representatives in Congress and the leaders of the army as might be unfavorable to liberty. But the wisdom of the late Convention has avoided this difficulty. The army must expire of itself in two years after it shall be raised, unless renewed by representatives, who, at that time, will have just come fresh from the body of the people. It will share the same fate as that of a temporary law, which dies at the time mentioned in the act itself, unless revived by some future legislature.

Capt. DENCH said, it had been observed, and he was not convinced that the observation was wrong, that the grant of the powers in this section would produce a consolidation of the states, and the moment it begins, a dissolution of the state governments commences. If mistaken, he wished to be set right.

Afternoon.—Dr. TAYLOR asked why there was not to be a federal town, over which Congress is to exercise exclusive legislation.