of this sort will sometimes arise in all societies,
however constituted; that seditions and insurrections are, unhappily,
maladies as inseparable from the body politic as tumors and eruptions
from the natural body; that the idea of governing at all times by the
simple force of law (which we have been told is the only admissible
principle of republican government), has no place but in the reveries
of those political doctors whose sagacity disdains the admonitions of
experimental instruction.

Should such emergencies at any time happen under the national
government, there could be no remedy but force. The means to be employed
must be proportioned to the extent of the mischief. If it should be a
slight commotion in a small part of a State, the militia of the residue
would be adequate to its suppression; and the national presumption is
that they would be ready to do their duty. An insurrection, whatever may
be its immediate cause, eventually endangers all government. Regard to
the public peace, if not to the rights of the Union, would engage the
citizens to whom the contagion had not communicated itself to oppose the
insurgents; and if the general government should be found in practice
conducive to the prosperity and felicity of the people, it were
irrational to believe that they would be disinclined to its support.

If, on the contrary, the insurrection should pervade a whole State, or a
principal part of it, the employment of a different kind of force might
become unavoidable. It appears that Massachusetts found it necessary
to raise troops for repressing the disorders within that State; that
Pennsylvania, from the mere apprehension of commotions among a part of
her citizens, has thought proper to have recourse to the same measure.
Suppose the State of New York had been inclined to re-establish her lost
jurisdiction over the inhabitants of Vermont, could she have hoped for
success in such an enterprise from the efforts of the militia alone?
Would she not have been compelled to raise and to maintain a more
regular force for the execution of her design? If it must then be
admitted that the necessity of recurring to a force different from the
militia, in cases of this extraordinary nature, is applicable to the
State governments themselves, why should the possibility, that the
national government might be under a like necessity, in similar
extremities, be made an objection to its existence? Is it not surprising
that men who