ions, would oppose, in any State,
difficulties not to be despised; would form, in a large State, very
serious impediments; and where the sentiments of several adjoining
States happened to be in unison, would present obstructions which the
federal government would hardly be willing to encounter.

But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority
of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single
State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm.
Every government would espouse the common cause. A correspondence would
be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted. One spirit would
animate and conduct the whole. The same combinations, in short, would
result from an apprehension of the federal, as was produced by the
dread of a foreign, yoke; and unless the projected innovations should be
voluntarily renounced, the same appeal to a trial of force would be made
in the one case as was made in the other. But what degree of madness
could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity. In the
contest with Great Britain, one part of the empire was employed against
the other. The more numerous part invaded the rights of the less
numerous part. The attempt was unjust and unwise; but it was not in
speculation absolutely chimerical. But what would be the contest in the
case we are supposing? Who would be the parties? A few representatives
of the people would be opposed to the people themselves; or rather one
set of representatives would be contending against thirteen sets of
representatives, with the whole body of their common constituents on the
side of the latter.

The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State
governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may
previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition. The
reasonings contained in these papers must have been employed to little
purpose indeed, if it could be necessary now to disprove the reality
of this danger. That the people and the States should, for a sufficient
period of time, elect an uninterrupted succession of men ready to betray
both; that the traitors should, throughout this period, uniformly and
systematically pursue some fixed plan for the extension of the military
establishment; that the governments and the people of the States should
silently and patiently behold the gathering storm, and continue to
supply the materials, until