in the customary and ordinary modes practiced in other governments.

If the circumstances of our country are fuch, as to demand a compound inftead of a fimple, a confederate inftead of a fole government, the effential point which will remain to be adjusted, will be to difcriminate the OBJECTS, as far as it can be done, which fhall appertain to the different provinces or departments of power; allowing to each the most ample authority for fulfilling THOSE which may be committed to its charge. Shall the union be conftituted the guardian of the common fafety? Are fleets and armies and revenues neceffary to this purpose? The government of the union must be impowered to pass all laws, and to make all regulations which have relation to them. The fame must be the cafe, in refpect to commerce, and to every other matter to which its jurifdi&tion is permitted to extend. Is the administration of justice between the citizens of the fame ftate, the proper department of the local governments? These muft poffefs all the authorities which are connected with this object, and with every other that may be allotted to their particular cognizance and direction. Not to confer in each cafe. a degree of power, commenfurate to the end, would be to violate the most obvious rules of prudence and propriety, and improvidently to truft the great interefts of the nation to hands, which are disabled from managing them with vigour and fuccefs.

Who fo likely to make fuitable provifions for the public defence, as that body to which the guardianfhip of the public fafety is confided-which, as the centre of information, will beft understand the extent and urgency of the dangers that threaten-as the reprefentative of the WHOLE will feel itfelf moft deeply interested in the prefervation of every partwhich, from the refponfibility implied in the duty affigned to it, will be moft fenfibly impreffed with the neceffity of proper exertions-and which, by the extenfion

extenfion of its authority throughout the flates can alone establish uniformity and concert in the plans and measures, by which the common fafety is to be fecured? Is there not a manifeft inconfiflency in devolving upon the federal government the care of the general defence, and leaving in the ftate governments the effective powers, by which it is to be provided for? Is not a want of co-operation the infallible confequence of fuch a fyftem? And will not weakness, diforder, an undue diftribution of the burthens and calamities of war, an unneceffary and intolerable increase of expence, be its natural and inevitable concomitants? Have we not had unequivocal experience of its effects in the courfe of the revolution, which we have juft atchieved?

Every view we may take of the subject, as candid inquiries after truth, will ferve to convince us, that it is both unwife and dangerous to deny the federal government an unconfined authority in refpect to all thofe objects which are intrufted to its management. It will indeed deferve the most vigilant and careful attention of the people to fee, that it be modelled in fuch a manner as to admit of its being fafely vested with the requifite powers. If any plan, which has been, or may be offered to our confideration fhould not upon a difpaflionate inspection be found to answer this defcription, it ought to be rejected. A government, the conftitution of which renders it unfit to be trusted with all the powers which a free people ought to delegate to any government, would be an unfafe and improper depofitory of the NATIONAL INTERESTS. Wherever THESE can with propriety be confided, the coincident powers may fately accompany them. This is the true refult of all just reafoning upon the subject. And the adverfaries of the plan, promulgated by the convention, would have given a better imprefion of their candour, if they had confined themselves to fhowing that the internal ftructure of the propofed government, was fuch as to render it unworthy of

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the confidence of the people. They ought not to have wandered into inflammatory declamations and unmeaning cavils about the extent of the powers. The POWERS are not too extenfive for the OBJECTS of federal adminiftration, or in other words for the management of our NATIONAL INTERESTS; nor can any fatisfactory argument be framed to fhow that they are chargeable with fuch an excefs. If it be true, as has been infinuated by fome of the writers on the other fide, that the difficulty arifes from the nature of the thing, and that the extent of the country will not permit us to form a government, in which fuch ample powers can fafely be repofed, it ..would prove that we ought to contract our views and refort to the expedient of feparate confederacies, which will move within more practicable fpheres. For the abfurdity muft continually ftare us in the face of confiding to a government the direction of the most effential national interefts, without daring to trust it with the authorities which are indifpenfable to their proper and efficient management. Let us not attempt to reconcile contradictions, but firmly embrace a rational alternative.

I truft, however, that the impracticability of one general fyftem cannot be fhewn. I am greatly mistaken if any thing of weight has yet been advanced of this tendency; and I flatter myself, that the observations, which have been made in the course of thefe papers, have ferved to place the reverfe of that pofition in as clear a light as any matter still in the womb of time and experience can be fufceptible of. This at all events must be evident, that the very difficulty itself, drawn from the extent of the country is the strongest argument in favor of an energetic government; for any other can certainly never preferve the union of fo large an empire. If we embrace the tenets of thofe, who oppofe the adoption of the propofed conftitution, as the ftandard of our political creed, we cannot fail to verify the gloomy

doctrines,

doctrines, which predict the impracticability of a national fyftem, pervading the entire limits of the prefent confederacy.

PUBLIUS.

NUMBER XXIV.

The Subject continued, with an Answer to an Objection concerning standing Armies.

T:

the powers proposed to be conferred upon the federal government in respect to the creation and direction of the national forces-I have met with but one specific objection; which if I understand it right is this that proper provifion has not been made against the exiflence of standing armies in time of peace: An objection which I fhall now endeavour to fhew, refts on weak and unfubftantial foundations.

It has indeed been brought forward in the most vague and general form, fupported only by bold. affertions, without the appearance of argument--without even the fanction of theoretical opinions, in contradiction to the practice of other free nations, and to the general fenfe of America, as expreffed in most of the existing conftitutions. The propriety of this remark will appear the moment it is recollected that the objection under confideration turns upon a fuppofed neceffity of reftraining the LEGISLATIVE authority of the nation, in the article of military establishments; a principle unheard of except in one or two of our ftate conftitutions, and rejected in all the reft.

A ftranger to our politics who was to read our newspapers at the prefent juncture, without having previously infpected the plan reported by the corvention, would be naturally led to one of two conclufions-either that it contained a pofitive injunction,

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that

that standing armies fhould be kept up in time of peace, or that it vested in the EXECUTIVE the whole power of levying troops, without fubjecting his difcretion in any shape to the controul of the legislature.

If he came afterwards to perufe the plan itself, he would be furprised to difcover that neither the one nor the other was the cafe-that the whole power of raising armies was lodged in the legislature, not in the executive; that this legislature was to be a popular body confifting of the reprefentatives of the people periodically elected-and that inftead of the provifion he had supposed in favor of standing armies, there was to be found in refpect to this object, an important qualification even of the legislative difcretion, in that claufe which forbids the appropriation of money for the fupport of an army for any longer period than two years: A precaution which, upon a nearer view of it, will appear to be a great and real fecurity against military establishments without evident neceffity.

Difappointed in his firft furmife, the perfon I have fuppofed would be apt to purfue his conjectures a little further. He would naturally fay to himself, it is impoffible that all this vehement and pathetic declamation can be without fome colorable pretext. It muft needs be that this people, fo jealous of their liberties, have in all the preceding models of the conftitutions which they have established, inferted the most precife and rigid precautions on this point, the omiffion of which in the new plan has given birth to all this apprehenfion and clamour,

If under this impreffion he proceeded to pass in review the feveral ftate conflitutions, how great would be his difappointment to find that two only of them* contained an interdiction of standing armies

in

This ftatement of the matter is taken from the printed collections of fiate conftitutions. Pennsylvania and North-Carolina, are the two which contain the interdiction in thefe words-" As “standing a:mïes in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, THEY

"OUGHT