Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/416

400 Public and private confidence daily and rapidly decrease. Experiments must be made, and in that form which we must find most to the interest of our country.

Gov. RANDOLPH. Mr. Chairman, our attention is summoned to this clause respecting the militia, and alarms are thrown out to persuade us that it involves a multiplicity of danger. It is supposed by the honorable gentleman lately up, and another gentleman, that the clause for calling forth the militia to suppress insurrections, repel invasions, and execute the laws of the Union, implies that, instead of using civil force in the first instance, the militia are to be called forth to arrest petty offenders against the laws. Ought not common sense to be the rule of interpreting this Constitution? Is there an exclusion of the civil power? Does it provide that the laws are to be enforced by military coercion in all cases? No, sir. All that we are to infer is, that when the civil power is not sufficient, the militia must be drawn out. Who are they? He says (and I cheerfully acquiesce in the rectitude of the assertion) that they are the bulwarks of our liberties. Shall we be afraid that the people, this bulwark of freedom, will turn instruments of slavery? The officers are to be appointed by the states. Will you admit that they will act so criminally as to turn against their country? The officers of the general government are attached to it, because they derive their appointment from it. Admitting the militia officers to be corrupt, what is to make them be in favor of the general government? Will not the same reason attach them to the state governments? But it is feared that the militia are to be subjected to martial law when not in service. They are only to be called out in three cases, and only to be governed by the authority of Congress when in the actual service of the United States; so that their articles of war can no longer operate upon them than when in the actual service of the Union.

Can it be presumed that you can vest the supreme power of the United States with the power of defence, and yet take away this natural defence from them? You risk the general defence by withholding this power.

The honorable gentleman, speaking of responsibility, has mistaken facts. He says the king cannot pardon offenders found guilty on impeachment. The king can pardon after