Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/638

626 without a sound militia," is reiterated by our constitutions; and our legislatures bestow penalties and contempt on this mode of defence associated with the general interest; and pay, clothes, rations, bounties and honour, on a mode of defence associated by its moral nature with legal beings of the same moral nature. Fraud and folly then express astonishment at beholding a good thing uncultivated, less thrifty than a bad one carefully nurtured. Suppose the comparison had been, between a regular army nursed by privations, and a militia fed by money. Let an honest inquirer after truth, ascertain the amount spent on the perishing modes of defence by parties of exclusive interest, military and naval, since the revolution, and estimate the impetus which the same sum judiciously applied, would have communicated to the general and immortal mode of defence.

Perhaps the principles and doctrines of England, for many centuries, in favour of liberty, so incomprehensible to the rest of Europe, and so useful to these U. States, arose from her long disuse of standing armies, and her moderate recourse to them, after the rest of Europe had been made subservient to the chiefs of these parties of interest. Providence seems to have raised up another nation in the United States, better isolated against the pretexts under which the military separate interest poison is administered. Oceans in front and rear, on one flank a barren, and on the other an enervating climate, with vast expanse of territory within these natural circumvallations, ought to enable them forever to reject the bitter potion, so long resisted by their ancestors within the shadow of powerful rivals. The legislative neglect of agriculture and the militia. and cultivation of parties of interest to enrich and for defence, have been selected to shew the necessity of distinguishing between good and bad principles. for the purpose of preserving the loyalty of legislation to the political laws, enunciated by the sovereign national authority.

Rely not upon oaths for this loyalty. They were formerly used to hide treachery by kings themselves, who