a government by a plurality, as of temporary trusts of power in a single hand rendered permanent by usurpation.  I do not believe, therefore, that this danger is lessened in the hands of a plural executive.  Perhaps it is greatly increased, by the state of inefficiency to which they are liable from feuds and divisions among themselves.  The conservative body you propose might be so constituted, as, while it would be an admirable sedative in a variety of smaller cases, might also be a valuable sentinel and check on the liberticide views of an ambitious individual.  I am friendly to this idea.  But the true barriers of our liberty in this country are our State governments:  and the wisest conservative power ever contrived by man, is that of which our Revolution and present government found us possessed.  Seventeen distinct States, amalgamated into one as to their foreign concerns, but single and independent as to their internal administration, regularly organized with a legislature and governor resting on the choice of the people, and enlightened by a free press, can never be so fascinated by the arts of one man, as to submit voluntarily to his usurpation.  Nor can they be constrained to it by any force he can possess.  While that may paralyze the single State in which it happens to be encamped, sixteen others, spread over a country of two thousand miles diameter, rise up on every side, ready organized for deliberation by a constitutional legislature, and for action by their governor, constitutionally the commander of the militia of the State, that is to say, of every man in it, able to bear arms; and that militia, too, regularly formed into regiments and battalions, into infantry, cavalry, and artillery, trained under officers general and subordinate, legally appointed, always in readiness, and to whom they are already in habits of obedience.  The republican government of France was lost without a struggle, because the party of ‘un et indivisible’ had prevailed:  no provincial organizations existed to which the people might rally under authority of the laws, the seats of the directory were virtually vacant, and a small force sufficed to turn the legislature out of their chamber and to salute its leader chief of the nation.  But with us, sixteen out of seventeen States rising in mass, under regular organization and legal commanders, united in object and action by their Congress, or, if that be in duresse, by a special convention, present such obstacles to an usurper as for ever to stifle ambition in the first conception of that object.

Dangers of another kind might more reasonably be apprehended from this perfect and distinct organization, civil and military, of the States; to wit, that certain States, from local and occasional discontents, might attempt to secede from the Union.  This is certainly possible; and would be befriended by this regular organization.  But it is not probable that local discontents can spread to such an extent, as to be