To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth of the whole number of souls or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, Federalist No. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist. This will not only lessen the call for military establishments, but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow citizens.
By thus circumscribing the plan, it will be possible to have an excellent body of well-trained militia ready to take the field whenever the defense of the state shall require it. The attention of the government ought particularly to be directed to the formation of a select corps of moderate size, upon such principles as will really fit it for service in case of need. But through the scheme of disciplining the whole nation must be abandoned as mischievous or impracticable yet it is a matter of the utmost importance that a well-digested plan should, as soon as possible, be adopted for the proper establishment of the militia. Little more can reasonably be aimed at with respect to the people at large than to have them properly armed and equipped and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year. To attempt a thing which would abridge the mass of labor and industry to so considerable extent would be unwise: and the experiment, if made, could not succeed, because it would not long be endured. It would form an annual deduction from the productive labor of this country to an amount which, calculating upon the present numbers of the people, would not fall far short of a million pounds. To oblige the great body of the yeomanry and of the other classes of citizens to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people and a serious public inconvenience and loss.
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