Constitutional history -- United States -- Sources; Constitutional law -- United States
The clearest marks of this prudence are stamped on the proposed
Constitution. The Union itself, which it cements and secures, destroys
every pretext for a military establishment which could be dangerous.
America united, with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier,
exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America
disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat. It was
remarked, on a former occasion, that the want of this pretext had saved
the liberties of one nation in Europe. Being rendered by her insular
situation and her maritime resources impregnable to the armies of her
neighbors, the rulers of Great Britain have never been able, by real
or artificial dangers, to cheat the public into an extensive peace
establishment. The distance of the United States from the powerful
nations of the world gives them the same happy security. A dangerous
establishment can never be necessary or plausible, so long as they
continue a united people. But let it never, for a moment, be forgotten
that they are indebted for this advantage to the Union alone. The moment
of its dissolution will be the date of a new order of things. The fears
of the weaker, or the ambition of the stronger States, or Confederacies,
will set the same example in the New, as Charles VII. did in the Old
World. The example will be followed here from the same motives which
produced universal imitation there. Instead of deriving from our
situation the precious advantage which Great Britain has derived from
hers, the face of America will be but a copy of that of the continent
of Europe. It will present liberty everywhere crushed between standing
armies and perpetual taxes. The fortunes of disunited America will be
even more disastrous than those of Europe. The sources of evil in the
latter are confined to her own limits. No superior powers of another
quarter of the globe intrigue among her rival nations, inflame their
mutual animosities, and render them the instruments of foreign ambition,
jealousy, and revenge. In America the miseries springing from her
internal jealousies, contentions, and wars, would form a part only of
her lot. A plentiful addition of evils would have their source in that
relation in which Europe stands to this quarter of the earth, and which
no other quarter of the earth bears to Europe.
This picture of the consequences of disunion cannot be too highly
colored, or too often exhibited. Every man who loves peace, every man
who loves his country, every man who loves liberty, ought to have it
ever before his eyes, that he may cherish in his heart a due attachment
to the Union of America, and be able to set a due value on the means of
preserving it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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