But if the members of Congress are to be interested just as you and I are, and just as the members of our present legislatures are interested, we shall be just as safe, with even supreme power (if that were granted) in Congress, as in the General Assembly. If the members of Congress can take no improper step which will not affect them as much as it does us, we need not apprehend that they will usurp authorities not given them to injure that society of which they are a part.
The sole question, (so far as any apprehension of tyranny and oppression is concerned) ought to be, how are Congress formed? how far have you a control over them? Decide this, and then all the questions about their power may be dismissed for the amusement of those politicians whose business it is to catch flies, [pg 221] or may occasionally furnish subjects for George Bryan's Pomposity, or the declamations of Cato—An Old Whig—Son of Liberty—Brutus—Brutus junior—An Officer of the Continental Army,—the more contemptible Timoleon, and the residue of that rabble of writers.
A Countryman, III.
The New Haven Gazette, (Number 41)
Thursday, November 29, 1787.
To the People of Connecticut.
The same thing once more—I am a plain man, of few words; for this reason perhaps it is, that when I have said a thing I love to repeat it. Last week I endeavored to evince, that the only surety you could have for your liberties must be in the nature of your government; that you could derive no security from bills of rights, or stipulations, on the subject of a standing army, the liberty of the press, trial by jury, or on any other subject. Did you ever hear of an absolute monarchy, where those rights which are proposed by the pigmy politicians of this day, to be secured by stipulation, were ever preserved? Would it not be mere trifling to make any such stipulations, in any absolute monarchy?
On the other hand, if your interest and that of your rulers are the same, your liberties are abundantly secure. Perhaps the most secure when their power is most complete. Perhaps a provision that they should never raise troops in time of peace, might at some period embarrass the public concerns and endanger the liberties of the people. It is possible that in the infinite variety of events, it might become improper strictly to adhere to any one provision that has ever been proposed to be stipulated. At all events, the people have always been perfectly safe without any stipulation of the kind, when the rulers were interested to make them safe; and never otherwise.
No people can be more secure against any oppression in their [pg 223] rulers than you are at present; and no rulers can have more supreme and unlimited authority than your general assembly have.