omply
with the requisitions of Congress, that I was willing to grant the general
government those powers which the proposed constitution gives it in every
case.(59) Had I been a greater friend to a standing army, and not quite so
averse to expose your liberties to a soldiery, I do not believe the
Landholder would have chose me for the object on whom to expend his
artillery of falsehood.

That a system may enable government wantonly to exercise power over the
militia, to call out an unreasonable number from any particular state
without its permission, and to march them upon, and continue them in,
remote and improper services; that the same system should enable the
government totally to discard, render useless, and even disarm, the
militia, when it would remove them out of the way of opposing its
ambitious views, is by no means inconsistent, and is really the case in
the proposed constitution. In both these respects it is, in my opinion,
highly faulty, and ought to be amended. In the proposed system the general
government has a power not only without the consent, but contrary to the
will of the state government, to call out the whole of its militia,
without regard to religious scruples, or any other consideration, and to
continue them in service as long as it pleases, thereby subjecting the
freemen of a whole state to martial law and reducing them to the situation
of slaves. It has also, by another clause, the powers by which only the
militia can be organized and armed, and by the neglect of which they may
be rendered utterly useless and insignificant, when it suits the ambitious
purposes of government. Nor is the suggestion unreasonable, even if it had
been made, that the government might improperly oppress and harass the
militia, the better to reconcile them to the idea of regular troops, who
might relieve them from the burthen, and to render them less opposed to
the measures it might be disposed to adopt for the purpose of reducing
them to that state of insignificancy and uselessness. When the Landholder
declared that "I contended the powers and authorities of the new
constitution must destroy the liberties of the people," he for once
stumbled on the truth, but even this he could not avoid coupling with an
assertion utterly false. I never suggested that "the same powers could be
safely entrusted to the old Congress;" on the contrary, I opposed many of
the powers as being of that nature that, in my opinion, they could no