cretion
so latitudinary as this would afford ample room for eluding the force of
the provision.

The supposed utility of a provision of this kind can only be founded
on the supposed probability, or at least possibility, of a combination
between the executive and the legislative, in some scheme of usurpation.
Should this at any time happen, how easy would it be to fabricate
pretenses of approaching danger! Indian hostilities, instigated by Spain
or Britain, would always be at hand. Provocations to produce the desired
appearances might even be given to some foreign power, and appeased
again by timely concessions. If we can reasonably presume such a
combination to have been formed, and that the enterprise is warranted
by a sufficient prospect of success, the army, when once raised, from
whatever cause, or on whatever pretext, may be applied to the execution
of the project.

If, to obviate this consequence, it should be resolved to extend the
prohibition to the RAISING of armies in time of peace, the United States
would then exhibit the most extraordinary spectacle which the world has
yet seen, that of a nation incapacitated by its Constitution to prepare
for defense, before it was actually invaded. As the ceremony of a formal
denunciation of war has of late fallen into disuse, the presence of an
enemy within our territories must be waited for, as the legal warrant
to the government to begin its levies of men for the protection of the
State. We must receive the blow, before we could even prepare to return
it. All that kind of policy by which nations anticipate distant danger,
and meet the gathering storm, must be abstained from, as contrary to
the genuine maxims of a free government. We must expose our property
and liberty to the mercy of foreign invaders, and invite them by our
weakness to seize the naked and defenseless prey, because we are
afraid that rulers, created by our choice, dependent on our will,
might endanger that liberty, by an abuse of the means necessary to its
preservation.

Here I expect we shall be told that the militia of the country is
its natural bulwark, and would be at all times equal to the national
defense. This doctrine, in substance, had like to have lost us our
independence. It cost millions to the United States that might have been
saved. The facts which, from our own experience, forbid a reliance
of this kind, are too recent to permit us to be the dupes of such
a suggestion. The steady ope