ew Hampshire is to be marched to
Georgia, of Georgia to New Hampshire, of New York to Kentucky, and of
Kentucky to Lake Champlain. Nay, the debts due to the French and Dutch
are to be paid in militiamen instead of louis d'ors and ducats. At one
moment there is to be a large army to lay prostrate the liberties of the
people; at another moment the militia of Virginia are to be dragged from
their homes five or six hundred miles, to tame the republican contumacy
of Massachusetts; and that of Massachusetts is to be transported an
equal distance to subdue the refractory haughtiness of the aristocratic
Virginians. Do the persons who rave at this rate imagine that their
art or their eloquence can impose any conceits or absurdities upon the
people of America for infallible truths?

If there should be an army to be made use of as the engine of despotism,
what need of the militia? If there should be no army, whither would
the militia, irritated by being called upon to undertake a distant and
hopeless expedition, for the purpose of riveting the chains of slavery
upon a part of their countrymen, direct their course, but to the seat
of the tyrants, who had meditated so foolish as well as so wicked a
project, to crush them in their imagined intrenchments of power, and
to make them an example of the just vengeance of an abused and incensed
people? Is this the way in which usurpers stride to dominion over
a numerous and enlightened nation? Do they begin by exciting the
detestation of the very instruments of their intended usurpations? Do
they usually commence their career by wanton and disgustful acts
of power, calculated to answer no end, but to draw upon themselves
universal hatred and execration? Are suppositions of this sort the sober
admonitions of discerning patriots to a discerning people? Or are they
the inflammatory ravings of incendiaries or distempered enthusiasts?
If we were even to suppose the national rulers actuated by the most
ungovernable ambition, it is impossible to believe that they would
employ such preposterous means to accomplish their designs.

In times of insurrection, or invasion, it would be natural and proper
that the militia of a neighboring State should be marched into another,
to resist a common enemy, or to guard the republic against the violence
of faction or sedition. This was frequently the case, in respect to the
first object, in the course of the late war; and this mutual succor is,
indeed, a princi