From Farm House to the White House: The life of George Washington, his boyhood, youth, manhood, public and private life and servicesThayer, William Makepeace
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From Farm House to the White House: The life of George Washington, his boyhood, youth, manhood, public and private life and services
Thayer, William Makepeace
Presidents -- United States -- Biography; Washington, George, 1732-1799
11. While, then, every part of our country thus feels an
immediate and particular interest in union, all the parties
combined cannot fail to find, in the united mass of means and
efforts, greater strength, greater resources, proportionably
greater security from external danger, a less frequent
interruption of their peace by foreign nations, and, what is of
inestimable value, they must derive from union an exemption from
those broils and wars between themselves, which so frequently
afflict neighboring countries not tied together by the same
government; which their own rivalships alone would be sufficient
to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments,
and intrigues, would stimulate and embitter. Hence, likewise,
they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military
establishments, which, under any form of government are
inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as
particularly hostile to republican liberty; in this sense it is
that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your
liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the
preservation of the other.
12. These considerations speak a persuasive language to every
reflecting and virtuous mind, and exhibit the continuance of the
Union as a primary object of patriotic desire. Is there a doubt
whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? Let
experience solve it. To listen to mere speculation in such a
case were criminal. We are authorized to hope that a proper
organization of the whole, with the auxiliary agency of
government for the respective subdivisions, will afford a happy
issue to the experiment. 'Tis well worth a fair and full
experiment. With such powerful and obvious motives to union
affecting all parts of our country, while experience shall not
have demonstrated its impracticability, there will always be
reason to distrust the patriotism of those who, in any quarter,
may endeavor to weaken its bands.
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