a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection

For the Independent Journal. Wednesday, November 21, 1787

HAMILTON

To the People of the State of New York:

A FIRM Union will be of the utmost moment to the peace and liberty of
the States, as a barrier against domestic faction and insurrection. It
is impossible to read the history of the petty republics of Greece
and Italy without feeling sensations of horror and disgust at the
distractions with which they were continually agitated, and at the
rapid succession of revolutions by which they were kept in a state of
perpetual vibration between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy. If they
exhibit occasional calms, these only serve as short-lived contrast to
the furious storms that are to succeed. If now and then intervals of
felicity open to view, we behold them with a mixture of regret, arising
from the reflection that the pleasing scenes before us are soon to be
overwhelmed by the tempestuous waves of sedition and party rage. If
momentary rays of glory break forth from the gloom, while they dazzle us
with a transient and fleeting brilliancy, they at the same time admonish
us to lament that the vices of government should pervert the direction
and tarnish the lustre of those bright talents and exalted endowments
for which the favored soils that produced them have been so justly
celebrated.

From the disorders that disfigure the annals of those republics the
advocates of despotism have drawn arguments, not only against the forms
of republican government, but against the very principles of civil
liberty. They have decried all free government as inconsistent with the
order of society, and have indulged themselves in malicious exultation
over its friends and partisans. Happily for mankind, stupendous fabrics
reared on the basis of liberty, which have flourished for ages, have, in
a few glorious instances, refuted their gloomy sophisms. And, I trust,
America will be the broad and solid foundation of other edifices, not
less magnificent, which will be equally permanent monuments of their
errors.

But it is not to be denied that the portraits they have sketched of
republican government were too just copies of the originals from which
they were taken. If it had been found impracticable to have devised
models of a more perfect structure, the enlightened friends to liberty
would have been obliged to abandon the cause of that species of
government as indefensible. The sci