[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 59 (Friday, May 10, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E762-E763]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         SAY NO TO CONSCRIPTION

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                             HON. RON PAUL

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 9, 2002

  Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I hope my colleagues who believe that the 
current war on terrorism justifies violating the liberty of millions of 
young men by reinstating a military draft will consider the eloquent 
argument against conscription in the attached speech by Daniel Webster. 
Then-representative Webster delivered his remarks on the floor of the 
House in opposition to a proposal to institute a draft during the War 
of 1812. Webster's speech remains one of the best statements of the 
Constitutional and moral case against conscription.
  Despite the threat posed to the very existence of the young republic 
by the invading British Empire, Congress ultimately rejected the 
proposal to institute a draft. If the new nation of America could 
defeat what was then the most powerful military empire in the world 
without a draft, there is no reason why we cannot address our current 
military needs with a voluntary military.
  Webster was among the first of a long line of prominent Americans, 
including former President Ronald Reagan and Federal Reserve Chairman 
Alan Greenspan, to recognize that a draft violates the fundamental 
principles of liberty this country was founded upon.
  In order to reaffirm support for individual liberty and an effective 
military, I have introduced H. Con. Res. 368, which expresses the sense 
of Congress against reinstating a military draft. I urge my colleagues 
to read Daniel Webster's explanation of why the draft is incompatible 
with liberty government and cosponsor H. Con. Res. 368.

                            On--Conscription

                          (By Daniel Webster)

       During America's first great war, waged against Great 
     Britain, the Madison Administration tried to introduce a 
     conscription bill into Congress. This bill called forth one 
     of Daniel Webster's most eloquent efforts, in a powerful 
     opposition to conscription. The speech was delivered in the 
     House of Representatives on December 9, 1814; the following 
     is a condensation.
       This bill indeed is less undisguised in its object, and 
     less direct in its means, than some of the measures proposed. 
     It is an attempt to exercise the power of forcing the free 
     men of this country into the ranks of an army, for the 
     general purposes of war, under color of a military service. 
     It is a distinct system, introduced for new purposes, and not 
     connected with any power, which the Constitution has 
     conferred on Congress.
       But, Sir, there is another consideration. The services of 
     the men to be raised under this act are not limited to those 
     cases in which alone this Government is entitled to the aid 
     of the militia of the States. These cases are particularly 
     stated in the Constitution--``to repel invasion, suppress 
     insurrection, or execute the laws.''
       The question is nothing less, than whether the most 
     essential rights of personal liberty shall be surrendered, 
     and despotism embraced in its worst form. When the present 
     generation of men shall be swept away, and that this 
     Government ever existed shall be a matter of history only, I 
     desire that it may then be known, that you have not proceeded 
     in your course unadmonished and unforewarned. Let it then be 
     known, that there were those, who would have stopped you, in 
     the career of your measures, and held you back, as by the 
     skirts of your garments, from the precipice, over which you 
     are plunging, and drawing after you the Government of your 
     Country.
       Conscription is chosen as the most promising instrument, 
     both of overcoming reluctance to the Service, and of subduing 
     the difficulties which arise from the deficiencies of the 
     Exchequer. The administration asserts the right to fill the 
     ranks of the regular army by compulsion. It contends that it 
     may now take one out of every twenty-five men, and any part 
     or the whole of the rest, whenever its occasions require. 
     Persons thus

[[Page E763]]

     taken by force, and put into an army, may be compelled to 
     serve there, during the war, or for life. They may be put on 
     any service, at home or abroad, for defence or for invasion, 
     according to the will and pleasure of Government. This power 
     does not grow out of any invasion of the country, or even out 
     of a state of war. It belongs to Government at all times, in 
     peace as well as in war, and is to be exercised under all 
     circumstances, according to its mere discretion. This, Sir, 
     is the amount of the principle contended for by the Secretary 
     of War (James Monroe).
       Is this, Sir, consistent with the character of a free 
     Government? Is this civil liberty? Is this the real character 
     of our Constitution? No, Sir, indeed it is not. The 
     Constitution is libelled, foully libelled. The people of this 
     country have not established for themselves such a fabric of 
     despotism. They have not purchased at a vast expense of their 
     own treasure and their own blood a Magna Carta to be slaves. 
     Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or 
     section is it contained, that you may take children from 
     their parents, and parents from their children, and compel 
     them to fight the battles of any war, in which the folly or 
     the wickedness of Government may engage it? Under what 
     concealment has this power lain hidden, which now for the 
     first time comes forth, with a tremendous and baleful aspect, 
     to trample down and destroy the dearest rights of personal 
     liberty? Sir, I almost disdain to go to quotations and 
     references to prove that such an abominable doctrine has no 
     foundation in the Constitution of the country. It is enough 
     to know that that instrument was intended as the basis of a 
     free Government, and that the power contended for is 
     incompatible with any notion of personal liberty. An attempt 
     to maintain this doctrine upon the provisions of the 
     Constitution is an exercise of perverse ingenuity to extract 
     slavery from the substance of a free Government. It is an 
     attempt to show, by proof and argument, that we ourselves are 
     subjects of despotism, and that we have a right to chains and 
     bondage, firmly secured to us and our children, by the 
     provisions of our Government.
       The supporters of the measures before us act on the 
     principle that it is their task to raise arbitrary powers, by 
     construction, out of a plain written charter of National 
     Liberty. It is their pleasing duty to free us of the 
     delusion, which we have fondly cherished, that we are the 
     subjects of a mild, free and limited Government, and to 
     demonstrate by a regular chain of premises and conclusions, 
     that Government possesses over us a power more tyrannical, 
     more arbitrary, more dangerous, more allied to blood and 
     murder, more full of every form of mischief, more productive 
     of every sort and degree of misery, than has been exercised 
     by any civilized Government in modern times.
       But it is said, that it might happen that any army would 
     not be raised by voluntary enlistment, in which case the 
     power to raise armies would be granted in vain, unless they 
     might be raised by compulsion. If this reasoning could prove 
     any thing, it would equally show, that whenever the 
     legitimate powers of the Constitution should be so badly 
     administered as to cease to answer the great ends intended by 
     them, such new powers may be assumed or usurped, as any 
     existing administration may deem expedient. This is a result 
     of his own reasoning, to which the Secretary does not profess 
     to go. But it is a true result. For if it is to be assumed, 
     that all powers were granted, which might by possibility 
     become necessary, and that Government itself is the judge of 
     this possible necessity, then the powers of Government are 
     precisely what it chooses they should be.
       The tyranny of Arbitrary Government consists as much in its 
     means as in its end; and it would be a ridiculous and absurd 
     constitution which should be less cautious to guard against 
     abuses in the one case than in the other. All the means and 
     instruments which a free Government exercises, as well as the 
     ends and objects which it pursues, are to partake of its own 
     essential character, and to be conformed to its genuine 
     spirit. A free Government with arbitrary means to administer 
     it is a contradiction; a free Government without adequate 
     provision for personal security is an absurdity; a free 
     Government, with an, uncontrolled power of military 
     conscription, is a solecism, at once the most ridiculous and 
     abominable that ever entered into the head of man.
       Into the paradise of domestic life you enter, not indeed by 
     temptations and sorceries, but by open force and violence.
       Nor is it, Sir, for the defense of his own house and home, 
     that he who is the subject of military draft is to perform 
     the task allotted to him. You will put him upon a service 
     equally foreign to his interests and abhorrent to his 
     feelings. With his aid you are to push your purposes of 
     conquest. The battles which he is to fight are the battles of 
     invasion; battles which he detests perhaps and abhors, less 
     from the danger and the death that gather over them, and the 
     blood with which they drench the plain, than from the 
     principles in which they have their origin. If, Sir, in this 
     strife he fall--if, while ready to obey every rightful 
     command of Government, he is forced from home against right, 
     not to contend for the defense of his country, but to 
     prosecute a miserable and detestable project of invasion, and 
     in that strife he fall, 'tis murder. It may stalk above the 
     cognizance of human law, but in the sight of Heaven it is 
     murder; and though millions of years may roll away, while his 
     ashes and yours lie mingled together in the earth, the day 
     will yet come, when his spirit and the spirits of his 
     children must be met at the bar of ominipotent justice. May 
     God, in his compassion, shield me from any participation in 
     the enormity of this guilt.
       A military force cannot be raised, in this manner, but by 
     the means of a military force. If administration has found 
     that it can not form an army without conscription, it will 
     find, if it venture on these experiments, that it can not 
     enforce conscription without an army. The Government was not 
     constituted for such purposes. Framed in the spirit of 
     liberty, and in the love of peace, it has no powers which 
     render it able to enforce such laws. The attempt, if we 
     rashly make it, will fail; and having already thrown away our 
     peace, we may thereby throw away our Government.
       I express these sentiments here, Sir, because I shall 
     express them to my constituents. Both they and myself live 
     under a Constitution which teaches us, that ``the doctrine of 
     non-resistance against arbitrary power and oppression, is 
     absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of 
     mankind.'' With the same earnestness with which I now exhort 
     you to forbear from these measures, I shall exhort them to 
     exercise their unquestionable right of providing for the 
     security of their own liberties.

     

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