Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded

From the excellent Perilous Fight by Stephen Budiansky, an account of the naval aspects of the War of 1812. Page 89.

It was not just Madison’s personality that was deceptive; everything about his political ideology seemed to point to a man who disparaged strong leadership and bold action. Madison had been the single strongest proponent of the embargo as an alternative to military confrontation; as secretary of state he had talked Jefferson into it, clung to it through all its inconsistencies, defended it even when the tide of Republican party feeling rose against it and repeal became inevitable. Even when Albert Gallatin had concluded that all America had accomplished with its weakly enforced trade restrictions was to parade its pusillanimity before the world—“I had rather encounter war itself than to display our impotence to enforce our laws,” he had conceded to Madison in 1808—Madison clung to a belief that his policy of peaceful coercion would ultimately bring Britain to relent. In his public writings he had always been true to the Jeffersonian article of faith on the inherent evil of war, not so much because of the destruction and killing that war entailed but because of the threat it posed to liberty at home. “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded,” Madison wrote in 1795 in his Political Observations. “War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”