Page:The Federalist (1818).djvu/204

 the world. Observations, confined to the mere prospects of internal attacks, can deserve no weight: though even these will admit of no satisfactory calculations: but if we mean to be a commercial people, it must form a part of our policy to be able one day to defend that commerce. The support of a navy, and of naval wars, would involve contingencies that must baffle all the efforts of political arithmetic.

Admitting that we ought to try the novel and absurd experiment in politics, of tying up the hands of government from offensive war, founded upon reasons of state: yet, certainly, we ought not to disable it from guarding the community against the ambition or enmity of other nations. A cloud has been for some time hanging over the European world. If it should break forth into a storm, who can insure us, that in its progress a part of its fury would not be spent upon us? No reasonable man would hastily pronounce that we are entirely out of its reach. Or if the combustible materials that now seem to be collecting, should be dissipated without coming to maturity; or if a flame should be kindled without extending to us; what security can we have that our tranquillity will long remain undisturbed from some other cause, or from some other quarter? Let us recollect, that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition, of others. Who could have imagined, at the conclusion of the. last war, that France and Britain, wearied and exhausted as they both were. Would already have looked with so hostile an aspect upon each other? To judge from, the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude, that the fiery and destructive passion of war reign in the human breast with much more powerful sway, than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace; and that to model our political systems upon speculations of lasting tranquillity, would be to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.

What are the chief sources of expense in every government? What has occasioned that enormous