Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/433

.] insurrections, &c., it appeared to him, most decidedly, that the power of suppressing insurrections was exclusively given to Congress. If it remained in the states, it was by implication.

Mr. CORBIN, after a short address to the chair, in which he expressed extreme reluctance to get up, said, that all contentions on this subject might be ended, by adverting to the 4th section of the 4th article, which provides, "that the United States shall guaranty to every state in the Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion, and, on application of the legislature, or of the executive, (when the legislature cannot be convened,) against domestic violence." He thought this section gave the states power to use their own militia, and call on Congress for the militia of other states. He (observed that our representatives were to return every second year to mingle with their fellow-citizens. He asked, then, how, in the name of God, they would make laws to destroy themselves. The gentleman had told us that nothing could be more humiliating than that the state governments could not control the general government. He thought the gentleman might as well have complained that one county could not control the state at large. Mr. Corbin then said that all confederate governments had the care of the national defence, and that Congress ought to have it. Animadverting on Mr. Henry's observations, that the French had been the instruments of their own slavery, that the Germans had enslaved the Germans, and the Spaniards the Spaniards, &c., he asked if those nations knew any thing of representation. The want of this knowledge was the principal cause of their bondage. He concluded by observing that the general government had no power but such as the state government had, and that arguments against the one held against the other.

Mr. GRAYSON, in reply to Mr. Corbin, said he was mistaken when he produced the 4th section of the 4th article, to prove that the state governments had a right to intermeddle with the militia. He was of opinion that a previous application must be made to the federal head, by the legislature when in session, or otherwise by the executive of any state, before they could interfere with the militia. In his opinion, no instance could be adduced where the states could employ the militia; for, in all the cases wherein they could be 53