. . .They cannot pay the fines which you impose for their refusal, for you demand them as an equivalent for what they cannot concede to you. Here then are they placed, without (according to their belief) the power of moving. If you insist upon the payment, you must despoil them of their goods. It is to be sure alleged, that the state cannot, with a due regard to its own safety, dispense with the military allegiance of its citizens. Admit this to be the case. Do you, in abstaining from the petty, alienating vexations of a militia law in time of peace, yield or forego the claim to this allegiance? You pass an edict oppressive to a class of citizens, whose motive for non-compliance is sacred in the eye of the constitution,—an edict, which your experience of the past assures you, they will not comply with, and you create, in order to enforce it, a race of harpies, who are trained under it in all the arts of oppression and plunder. And to what good end? Does one . . . Read More