“A standing army is like a standing member. It's an excellent assurance of domestic tranquility, but a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure.”

— Elbridge Gerry

Constitutional Convention (1787)

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Elbridge Gerry 3

US diplomat and vice president; Massachusetts governor 1744–1814

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Speech, Constitutional Convention (29 June 1787), from Max Farrand's Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, Vol. I http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llfr&fileName=001/llfr001.db&recNum=494&itemLink=D?hlaw:5:./temp/~ammem_kmli::%230010495&linkText=1 (1911), p. 465
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Letter to John Taylor (28 May 1816) ME 15:23 http://www.britannica.com/presidents/article-9116907
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Context: We may say with truth and meaning that governments are more or less republican, as they have more or less of the element of popular election and control in their composition; and believing, as I do, that the mass of the citizens is the safest depository of their own rights, and especially, that the evils flowing from the duperies of the people are less injurious than those from the egoism of their agents, I am a friend to that composition of government which has in it the most of this ingredient. And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.