From: [d--ar--y] at [indirect.com] (David T. Hardy)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.guns,misc.legal,alt.politics.org.batf,az.politics
Subject: William Rawle on the Second Amendment
Date: 17 Nov 1995 00:26:07 GMT

William Rawle was a quaker, who during the Revolution zipped off to
England to study law. [Shades of a later president!]. After the war,
tho, the Federalists came to appreciate his legal talent; Washington
offered him the post of first Attorney General of the U.S., which he
declined for personal reasons. (D. Brown, Eulogium Upon Wm. Rawle at
8-9 (1837)). He was friend of Ben Franklin, and like Washington was a
member of Franklin's "Society for Political Inquiries" which met during
the Constitutional Convention.
    In 1825, he published his "View of the Constitution," which
remained the standard con law text at Harvard until 1845, and at
Dartmouth until 1860.
     Rawle discusses the two portions of the second amendment as
separate commands, with separate purposes. His discussion of the "right
to arms" portion clearly treats it as an individual right, and scoffs
at British game laws (which permitted arms of persons with less than a
hundred pds worth of realty to be confiscated):

    "In the Second Article, it is declared, that a well regulated
militia is necessary to the security of a free state; a proposition
from which few will dissent. Although in actual war, the services of
regular troops are confessedly more valuable, yet while peace prevails,
and in the commencement of a war before a regular force can be raised,
the militia form the palladium of the country. ..."

     "The corollary from the first position is, that the right of the
people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The prohibition is
general. No clause in the constitution could by any rule of
construction be conceived to give the Congress a power to disarm the
people. Such a flagitious attempt could only be made, under some
general pretence, by a state legislature. But if in any blind pursuit
of inordinate power either should attempt it, this amendment may be
appealed to as a restraint on both."

     "In most of the countries of Europe, this right does not seem to
be denied, although it is allowed more or less sparingly, according to
the circumstances. In England, a country which boasts so much of its
freedom, the right was assured to protestant subjects only, and it is
cautiously described to be that of bearing arms for the defense
'suitable to their conditions, and as allowed by law.' An arbitrary
code for the preservation of game has long disgraced them."

Wm Rawle, A View of the Constitution p. 125 (2d ed. 1829).

__________________________________________________________________
"Deed and thought, reality and) [d--ar--y] at [indirect.com] <David T. Hardy>
ideal, success and redemption,)  http://www.indirect.com/www/dhardy
these are forces that will    )_____________________________________
never come to grips with each other. Yet in historical reality it is
not the ideal, goodness, or morality that prevails--their kingdom is
not of this world--but rather decisiveness, energy, presence of mind,
practical skill." Oswald Spengler, Neitzsche and his Century.