Spain

Spain is presented as a European power with a direct bearing on the security of the United States: its American colonies and establishments extend toward British settlements, while its West Indies possessions bring it into a shared regional context with Britain. This geography, together with the possibility of cooperation between the two maritime powers, serves as evidence against assuming that distance or an ocean guarantees safety.

Position in the American security argument

The discussion places Spain on the southern side of the United States, with Spanish-controlled colonies and establishments extending to meet British settlements. The West Indies, belonging to Britain and Spain, add another point of proximity. Taken together, these possessions create common interests between the two powers in the Americas and in their relations with the United States. The passage therefore treats Spain not as a distant abstraction but as one element in a neighboring strategic environment.

The argument also revises the meaning of distance. Improvements in navigation have made faraway nations, in practical terms, much like neighbors. Since Britain and Spain are among Europe’s principal maritime powers, their ability to act across the ocean matters to American security. The ocean remains a geographical separation, but it no longer warrants confidence that danger cannot reach the United States.

Possible coordination and frontier pressures

The text warns that a future alignment of British and Spanish interests should not be considered improbable. It also observes that the weakening ties of kinship between France and Spain make the old family compact less dependable as a political connection; ties of blood, the argument insists, are precarious foundations for lasting alliances. These considerations make it unsafe to presume that Spain’s relations with other powers will reliably protect the United States from danger.

Spain is also connected to the security problem along the western frontier. The passage describes Native tribes there as natural enemies of the United States and as natural allies of Britain and Spain, reasoning that they have more to fear from the United States and more to hope from those powers. This is the argument’s characterization of a strategic alignment: Spain’s regional presence contributes to the external circumstances that make frontier defense a continuing concern.

Implications for defense and government

The prospect of danger associated with Spain helps explain why the text rejects an absolute constitutional bar on maintaining small peacetime garrisons. Such posts had been necessary before the Revolution and after peace, and the argument expects them to remain indispensable, even if only to guard against frontier depredations. Militia rotations, it contends, would disrupt citizens’ work and family lives and impose public expense; permanent government-paid troops would amount to a small standing army. The choice is thus framed as a practical defense requirement, not as a claim that every feared danger is certain to occur.

The same reasoning answers the possibility that rulers might exploit external threats to enlarge their power. The text acknowledges that a hypothetical executive-legislative combination could manufacture pretexts for retaining troops, including hostilities supposedly instigated by Spain or Britain. Yet a ban extending to the raising of armies in peacetime would leave the United States unable to prepare before an invasion. Spain consequently occupies both sides of the constitutional argument: its possible role in external danger demonstrates why defensive preparation is needed, while the possibility of fabricated danger illustrates why government power must remain subject to judgment and restraint.