The conservative body you propose
might be so constituted, as, while it would be an admirable sedative in
a variety of smaller cases, might also be a valuable sentinel and check
on the liberticide views of an ambitious individual. I am friendly to
this idea. But the true barriers of our liberty in this country are our
State governments: and the wisest conservative power ever contrived by
man, is that of which our Revolution and present government found us
possessed. Seventeen distinct States, amalgamated into one as to their
foreign concerns, but single and independent as to their internal
administration, regularly organized with a legislature and governor
resting on the choice of the people, and enlightened by a free press,
can never be so fascinated by the arts of one man, as to submit
voluntarily to his usurpation. Nor can they be constrained to it by any
force he can possess. While that may paralyze the single State in which
it happens to be encamped, sixteen others, spread over a country of
two thousand miles diameter, rise up on every side, ready organized for
deliberation by a constitutional legislature, and for action by their
governor, constitutionally the commander of the militia of the State,
that is to say, of every man in it, able to bear arms; and that militia,
too, regularly formed into regiments and battalions, into infantry,
cavalry, and artillery, trained under officers general and subordinate,
legally appointed, always in readiness, and to whom they are already
in habits of obedience.
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