The fate of this question and of America may depend on this. Have they said, We, the states? Have they made a proposal of a compact between states? If they had, this would be a confederation. It is otherwise most clearly a consolidated government. The question turns, sir, on that poor little thing — the expression, We, the people, instead of the states, of America. I need not take much pains to show that the principles of this system are extremely pernicious, impolitic, and dangerous. Is this a monarchy, like England — a compact between prince and people, with checks on the former to secure the liberty of the latter? Is this a confederacy, like Holland — an association of a number of independent states, each of which retains its individual sovereignty? It is not a democracy, wherein the people retain all their rights securely. Had these principles been adhered to, we should not have been brought to this alarming transition, from a confederacy to a consolidated government.... It is radical in this transition; our rights and privileges are endangered, and the sovereignty of the states will be relinquished: and cannot we plainly see that this is actually the case? The rights of conscience, trial by jury, liberty of the press, all your immunities and franchises, all pretensions to human rights and privileges, are rendered insecure, if not lost, by this change...
Emphasis added; there is a great deal more to the speech that is worth review.
As is well known, objections such as his gave us the Bill of Rights, which has been an insufficient but necessary defensive measure. On some occasions it has been successful, and on many occasions it has provided a part of a successful legal defense.
He also talked about the danger posed by a central state to the physical defense of liberty. Even today his words bear consideration.
My great objection to this government is, that it does not leave us the means of defending our rights, or of waging war against tyrants. It is urged by some gentlemen, that this new plan will bring us an acquisition of strength — an army, and the militia of the states. This is an idea extremely ridiculous: gentlemen cannot be earnest. This acquisition will trample on our fallen liberty. Let my beloved Americans guard against that fatal lethargy that has pervaded the universe. Have we the means of resisting disciplined armies, when our only defence [sic], the militia, is put into the hands of Congress?... Whither is the spirit of America gone? Whither is the genius of America fled? It was but yesterday, when our enemies marched in triumph through our country. Yet the people of this country could not be appalled by their pompous armaments: they stopped their carer [sic], and victoriously captured them. Where is the peril, now, compared to that? Some minds are agitated by foreign alarms. Happily for us, there is no real danger from Europe; that country is engaged in more arduous business: from that quarter there is no cause of fear: you may sleep in safety forever for them.
I likewise think that America is not ripe for conquest by a foreign power, certainly not a European one but not any one; and it is so not because of the fact that the central government has a strong army and has managed to turn the state militias into a National Guard it can federalize at will, but because the people remain heavily armed and capable of independent action.
Indeed, this is the chief thing that has kept all of that centralized Federal power from becoming a true tyranny. The lines they wish to cross and do not remain uncrossed because they are cognizant of the limits of their power to control the ordinary people's ideals given the ordinary people's arms.
That is a partial answer to his concern about whether we have the means to resist disciplined armies given the lack of a disciplined force loyal to each of the states. Like the Bill of Rights, however, it is not a complete defense even if it is a necessary one.
The alternative to Henry's feared stronger central government was a real-time, objective failure in danger of utter collapse and foreign domination: the diplomatic treaty among 13 separate States that was the Articles of Confederation.
ReplyDeleteNor was Henry's fear of a strong(er) central government unique to the structure then under consideration as the diplomatic concord's replacement. All governments exist only as hypothetical constructs; only the men and women populating the constructs do the governing. Regardless of the constraints nominally arranged throughout the constructs, those men and women, and their successor men and women, will do as men and women always do: some good, some bad, some for personal gain that may happen to coincide with general good or bad. And always, the definitions of "good" and "bad" are determined, by their actions if not formally, by those men and women populating the government.
Our own structure worked well enough for some hundreds of years, and it may be in early recovery today. The intermediate and finishing touches, though, still need to done, and that will be best and most efficiently done by crushing the Progressive-Democratic Party in a series of successive elections. And then doing the same to whatever the Republican Party will have become.
As I've argued before, it's a generational struggle, not a one-or-two-and-done affair.
Eric Hines