To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free

“To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free” names a political reversal at the heart of the argument: the pursuit of security can lead a people to accept institutions that put liberty at risk. The expression links the violence and instability expected under disunion to the growth of standing armies and executive power, while the wider essay’s historical examples and constitutional proposals show how private passions and weak accountability can turn public danger into political subordination.

Insecurity and the Price of Safety

The expression appears as the culmination of a warning about war among separate states. With few fortifications and frontiers open to neighboring states, populous states could overrun less populous ones. The resulting warfare, the argument predicts, would be irregular and predatory, with plunder and devastation affecting individuals as well as governments. Such a condition would not remain merely a military problem: continuous danger and alarm would make security an overriding national concern.

The reasoning turns on a gradual exchange rather than a sudden declaration against liberty. Even people strongly attached to freedom, the essay argues, may eventually accept institutions that compromise civil and political rights if those institutions promise repose and protection. The expression’s tension lies in that choice: the people seek greater safety, yet their response to fear exposes the very freedom they mean to preserve.

From War to Standing Armies

The essay identifies standing armies and related military establishments as the institutions most directly implied by this danger. Critics argued that the proposed Constitution did not expressly prevent standing armies and therefore might permit them. The response distinguishes that disputed possibility from the essay’s prediction about disunion: frequent wars and constant apprehension would make military preparation unavoidable, especially for weaker states seeking to offset their neighbors’ greater population and resources.

That preparation would change more than defense. Weaker states would turn to disciplined troops and fortifications, and would also strengthen their executive authority. The essay describes war as enlarging the executive at the legislature’s expense, a shift that would direct constitutions progressively toward monarchy. The phrase therefore marks a causal sequence: insecurity invites military institutions; military institutions increase executive power; and the pursuit of safety can narrow political liberty.

Historical Warnings About Private Ambition

The essay’s broader case for political union also rests on examples in which private passions shape public policy. It attributes the attack on the Samians to Pericles’ response to a private resentment, and presents his hostility toward the Megareans, possible exposure to prosecution, or a combination of motives as contributing to the Peloponnesian War. That war, after changing fortunes and renewed hostilities, ended in the ruin of the Athenian commonwealth. The example shows how a leader’s personal interests can be presented as public motives, with consequences borne by a whole community.

A later account of the Greek states develops a related warning. After their success against the Persians, Athens and Sparta became rivals and then enemies; their mutual jealousies and injuries culminated in the Peloponnesian War, which brought ruin and enslavement to the Athenians who had begun it. The essay contrasts their failure to use the peace after victory to establish closer union with the harm they later inflicted on each other. In this account, a shared external danger did not produce durable cooperation, and the absence of a stronger political bond left rivalry free to grow.

The argument also describes a weak union as vulnerable to internal conflict exploited from abroad. In the Greek example, a dispute over a fine imposed for ploughing consecrated ground divided cities; Philip of Macedon used the conflict, intrigue, and bribery to gain influence in the Amphictyonic council and mastery of the confederacy. The episode broadens the warning beyond private ambition: divided members can invite an outside power to turn their disputes into a route to control.

Union, Reform, and Political Accountability

The expression belongs to a larger argument against trusting idealized expectations of peace among independent states. The essay points to weakened national dignity and credit, lax government, disturbances in Pennsylvania, and insurrections in Massachusetts as reasons to reject a promised golden age. It invokes the political maxim that neighboring nations tend toward enmity unless common weakness compels them to form a confederate republic whose constitution can restrain the jealousies generated by proximity. Union is presented as a remedy for the danger, not as proof that human passions have disappeared.

The Dutch example supplies a further institutional warning. Patriots there made four attempts, through extraordinary assemblies, to reform acknowledged constitutional defects, but could not unite the public councils to do so; a proposed general tax administered by federal authority also failed. The essay describes the country as facing popular convulsions, disputes among states, and foreign invasion. Its lesson is that recognizing a danger is not enough when the institutions charged with reform cannot act together.

The proposed constitutional design answers these recurring failures by treating human motives as a permanent condition of government. To prevent powers from concentrating in one department, those who administer each department must have constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachment. The argument calls for ambition to counteract ambition and connects individual interests to the constitutional rights of office. Public dependence on the people remains the primary control, but the essay says experience requires auxiliary precautions as well.

The same concern with responsibility appears in the defense of a single executive rather than a plurality. A plural executive could obscure who was responsible for a harmful decision: blame might pass among its members until public judgment could not identify the author of a failure. By contrast, sole responsibility, the essay argues, would sharpen a person’s sense of duty and concern for reputation. In its account of appointments, it likewise favors a publicly visible division of responsibility: the executive nominates, while the Senate judges each nomination, allowing the public to distinguish a bad nomination from the rejection of a good one. These mechanisms address the danger named by the expression not by promising perfect virtue, but by making power answerable when fear and ambition shape political choices.