Henry Knox

 Passage 1 is adapted from Henry Knox, “A Plan for the 
General Arrangement of the Militia of the United States,” 
presented to Congress in 1790. Passage 2 is adapted from 
Wilson Nicholas’s comments in a 1788 session of the 
Virginia state convention on the adoption of the US 
Constitution. Both passages discuss volunteer militias and 
standing armies, or permanent forces of professional 
soldiers.
Passage 1
[W]hoever seriously and candidly estimates the 
power of discipline and the tendency of military 
habits will be constrained to confess, that whatever 
may be the efficacy of a standing Army in War, it 
cannot in peace be considered as friendly to the 
rights of human nature. . . .
A small Corps of well disciplined and well 
informed Artillerists and Engineers, and a Legion for 
the protection of the frontiers, and the Magazines 
and Arsenals, are all the Military establishment
which may be required for the present use of the 
United States, the privates of the Corps to be enlisted 
for a certain period and after the expiration of which 
to return to the mass of the Citizens.
An energetic National Militia is to be regarded as 
the capital security of a free republic, and not a 
standing Army forming a distinct class in the 
community.
It is the introduction and diffusion of vice and 
corruption of manners into the mass of the people 
that render a standing army necessary. It is when 
public spirit is despised, and avarice, indolence, and 
[excessive refinement] of manners, predominate and 
prevent the establishment of institutions, which 
would elevate the minds of the youth in the paths of 
virtue and honor, that a standing Army is formed 
and rivetted forever.
While the human character remains unchanged, 
and societies and Governments of considerable 
extent are formed, a principle ever ready to execute 
the laws and defend the State must constantly exist. 
Without this vital principle, the Government would 
be invaded or overturned and trampled upon by the 
bold and ambitious. No community can be long held 
together unless its arrangements are adequate to its 
probable exigencies.
If it should be decided to reject a standing Army 
for the military branch of the Government of the 
United States as possessing too fierce an aspect, and 
being hostile to the principles of liberty it will follow 
that a well constituted Militia ought to be established.
Passage 2
[T]he great object of government, in every 
country, is security and public defence. I suppose, 
therefore, that what we ought to attend to here, is, 
what is the best mode of enabling the general 
government to protect us. One of three ways must be 
pursued for this purpose. We must either empower 
[elected officials] to employ, and rely altogether on, a 
standing army; or depend altogether on militia; or 
else we must enable them to use the one or the other 
of these two ways, as may be found most
expedient. . . . If a standing army were alone to be 
employed, such an army must be kept up in time of 
peace as would be sufficient in war. The dangers of 
such an army are so striking that every man would 
oppose the adoption of this government, had it been 
proposed by it as the only mode of defence. Would it 
be safe to depend on militia alone, without the 
agency of regular forces, even in time of war?
Were we to be invaded by a powerful, disciplined 
army, should we be safe with militia? Could men 
unacquainted with the hardships, and unskilled in 
the discipline of war—men only inured to the 
peaceable occupations of domestic life—encounter 
with success the most [skillful] veterans, inured to
the fatigues and toils of campaigns? Although some 
people are pleased with the theory of reliance on 
militia, as the sole defence of a nation, yet I think it 
will be found, in practice, to be by no means 
adequate. Its inadequacy is proved by the experience 
of other nations. But were it fully adequate, it would 
be unequal. If war be supported by militia, it is by 
personal service. The poor man does as much as the 
rich. Is this just? What is the consequence when war 
is carried on by regular troops? They are paid by 
taxes raised from the people, according to their 
property; and then the rich man pays an adequate 
share.
. . . As these two ways are ineligible, let us
consider the third method. Does this Constitution 
put this on a proper footing? It enables Congress to 
raise an army when necessary, or to call forth the 
militia when necessary. What will be the
consequence of their having these two powers? Till 
there be a necessity for an army to be raised, militia 
will do. And when an army will be raised, the militia 
will still be employed, which will render a less 
numerous army sufficient. By these means, there will 
be a sufficient defence for the country, without 
having a standing army altogether, or oppressing the 
people.

تعليقات

إرسال تعليق

المشاركات الشائعة من هذه المدونة

Sat 2018 October passage 1 2 3

  This passage is adapted from Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance. ©1995 by Rohinton Mistry. Maneck Kohlah, a teenager from a remote mountain village in India, has been away at boarding school. A new road has just been built to the village, where Maneck’s famliy owns a store. The promised rewards began rolling up the road into the mountains. Lorries big as houses transported goods from the cities and fouled the air with their exhaust. Service stations and eating places sprouted along the routes to provide for the machines and their men. And developers began building luxury hotels. That year, when Maneck came home for the holidays, he was puzzled (and later alarmed) to discover his father perpetually irritable. They found it impossible to get through the day without quarrelling, breaking into argument even in the presence of customers. “What’s the matter with him?” Maneck asked his mother. “When I’m here, he ignores me or fights with me. When I’m at school, he writes letters saying how...
قراءة المزيد

Daniyal Mueenuddin

  This passage is adapted from Daniyal Mueenuddin, “Nawabdin Electrician.” ©2009 by Daniyal Mueenuddin. Another man might have thrown up his hands—but not Nawabdin. His twelve daughters acted as a spur to his genius, and he looked with Line satisfaction in the mirror each morning at the face of a warrior going out to do battle. Nawab of course knew that he must proliferate his sources of revenue—the salary he received from K. K. Harouni for tending the tube wells would not even begin to suffice. He set up a little one-room flour mill, run off a condemned electric motor—condemned by him. He tried his hand at fish-farming in a little pond at the edge of his master’s fields. He bought broken radios, fixed them, and resold them. He did not demur even when asked to fix watches, though that  enterprise did spectacularly badly, and in fact earned him more kicks than kudos, for no watch he took apart ever kept time again. K. K. Harouni rarely went to his farms, but lived mostly in Lah...
قراءة المزيد

MacDonald Harris, The Balloonist

This passage is adapted from MacDonald Harris, The Balloonist. ©2011 by The Estate of Donald Heiney. During the summer of 1897, the narrator of this story, a fictional Swedish scientist, has set out for the North Pole in a hydrogen-powered balloon. My emotions are complicated and not readily verifiable. I feel a vast yearning that is simultaneously a pleasure and a pain. I am certain of the consummation of this yearning, but I don’t know yet what form it will take, since I do not understand quite what it is that the yearning desires. For the first time there is borne in upon me the full truth of what I myself said to the doctor only an hour ago: that my motives in this undertaking are not entirely clear. For years, for a lifetime, the machinery of my destiny has worked in secret to prepare for this moment; its clockwork has moved exactly toward this time and place and no other. Rising slowly from the earth that bore me and gave me sustenance, I am carried helplessly toward an uninhabit...
قراءة المزيد