Thomas Jefferson: "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. The republican government of France was lost without a struggle, because the party of " un et indivisible " had prevailed, no provincial organizations existed to which the people might rally under authority of the laws, the scats of the directory were virtually vacant, and a small force sufficed to turn the legislature out of their chamber, and to salute its leader chief of the nation. But with us, sixteen out of seventeen states rising in mass, under regular organization, and legal commanders, united in object and action by their Congress, or, if that be in duresse, by a special convention, present such obstacles to an usurper as for ever to stifle ambition in the first conception of that object. Letter to De Tracy, 1811"
No comments:
Post a Comment