Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/462

452 hereditary orders. Hereditary kings and nobles, says Mr. Adams, are civil representatives of nations; well, let standing armies become their military representatives, and both their military and civil sovereignty will stand on the same ground, and reap the fruits of the same species of representation.

Neither the British nor Mr. Adams's system provides for any species of military sovereignty in the people. The English orders disarm the people. Mr. Adams acknowledges their sovereignty, is silent as to a militia, and gives them hereditary representatives. Our policy endeavours to combine a real militia with an elected temporary representation. It is whimsical to hear the British system talk of the sovereignty of the people. A lunatick only, can be persuaded that he is a king, by a crown of straw.

It is remarkable, that almost all governments, having a power to raise and pay standing armies, have neglected a militia. A power of resorting to the first mode of self defence, has created insurmountable objections to the second. Congress has power "to raise and support armies," and "to organize, arm and discipline the militia." Like other governments possessing the first, it has been unable to discover any mode of executing the second. The profound wisdom and admirable foresight of our policy, in providing a remedy for this indisposition to create a sound militia, merits an encomium, in which none other, ancient or modern, can pretend to any share. Other systems of government, in bestowing a power to raise mercenary armies, have bestowed an indisposition to cultivate a militia; ours has left with the state governments a power to cultivate a militia, and withheld from then that of raising mercenary armies. As no governments can exist without military protection, and as a militia constitutes that, to which alone the state governments can resort, they must make it adequate to the end or perish. Viewed as rivals, the general government seems to have possessed a distinct, and the states an obscure idea on this subject. By protecting them with a mercenary