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Hamilton] port of a navy and of naval wars would involve contin- gencies 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 govern- inent 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 extend- ing 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, how- ever 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 so soon have looked with so hostile an aspect upon each other? To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be com- pelled to conclude that the fiery and destructive passions of war reign in the human breast with much more power- ful sway than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace; and that to model our political systems upon speculations of lasting tranquillity is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character. What are the chief sources of expense in every govern- ment? What has occasioned that enormous accumula- tion of debts with which several of the European nations are oppressed? The answer plainly is, wars and re- bellions; the support of those institutions which are necessary to guard the body politic against these two