ms, who stand ready
to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This
appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing
army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist."

Thus differently from the adversaries of the proposed Constitution
should I reason on the same subject, deducing arguments of safety
from the very sources which they represent as fraught with danger and
perdition. But how the national legislature may reason on the point, is
a thing which neither they nor I can foresee.

There is something so far-fetched and so extravagant in the idea of
danger to liberty from the militia, that one is at a loss whether to
treat it with gravity or with raillery; whether to consider it as a mere
trial of skill, like the paradoxes of rhetoricians; as a disingenuous
artifice to instil prejudices at any price; or as the serious offspring
of political fanaticism. Where in the name of common-sense, are our
fears to end if we may not trust our sons, our brothers, our neighbors,
our fellow-citizens? What shadow of danger can there be from men who
are daily mingling with the rest of their countrymen and who participate
with them in the same feelings, sentiments, habits and interests? What
reasonable cause of apprehension can be inferred from a power in the
Union to prescribe regulations for the militia, and to command its
services when necessary, while the particular States are to have the
SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE APPOINTMENT OF THE OFFICERS? If it were possible
seriously to indulge a jealousy of the militia upon any conceivable
establishment under the federal government, the circumstance of the
officers being in the appointment of the States ought at once to
extinguish it. There can be no doubt that this circumstance will always
secure to them a preponderating influence over the militia.

In reading many of the publications against the Constitution, a man is
apt to imagine that he is perusing some ill-written tale or romance,
which instead of natural and agreeable images, exhibits to the mind
nothing but frightful and distorted shapes--

"Gorgons, hydras, and chimeras dire";

discoloring and disfiguring whatever it represents, and transforming
everything it touches into a monster.

A sample of this is to be observed in the exaggerated and improbable
suggestions which have taken place respecting the power of calling for
the services of the militia. That of N