the legislature, they had arrived at the ultimate point of precaution, which was reconcileable with the safety of the community.
From the same source, the people of America may be said to have derived an hereditary impression of danger to liberty, from standing armies in time of peace. The circumstances of a revolution quickened the public sensibility on every point connected with the security of popular rights, and in some instances raised the warmth of our zeal beyond the degree, which consisted with the due temperature of the body politic. The attempts of two of the states, to restrict the authority of the legislature in the article of military establishments, are of the number of these instances. The principles which had taught us to be jealous of the power of an hereditary monarch, were, by an injudicious excess, extended to the representatives of the people in their popular assemblies. Even in some of the states, where this error was not adopted, we find unnecessary declarations, that standing armies ought not to be kept up, in time of peace, without the consent of the legislature. I call them unnecessary, because the reason which had introduced a similar provision into the English bill of rights, is not applicable to any of the state constitutions. The power of raising armies at all, under those constitutions, can by no construction be deemed to reside any where else, than in the legislatures themselves; and it was superfluous, if not absurd, to delare, that a matter should not be done without the consent of a body, which alone had the power of doing it. Accordingly, in some of those constitutions, and among others, in that of the state of New York, which has been justly celebrated, both in Europe and America, as one of the best of the forms of government established in this country, there is a total silence upon the subject.
It is remarkable, that even in the two states, which seem to have meditated an interdiction of military establishments in time of peace, the mode of expression made use of is rather monitory, than prohibitory. It is not said, that standing armies shall not be kept up, but that they
