And more summing up of the first movement…Federalist 15

F15 is Hamilton’s take at what Madison did in F14 – a quick recap and segue into the next essays, which as Hamilton informs: “the point next in order to be examined is the ‘insufficiency of the present Confederation to the preservation of the Union.’” Sneak peek: “The great and radical vice in the construction of the existing Confederation is in the principle of LEGISLATION for STATES or GOVERNMENTS, in their CORPORATE or COLLECTIVE CAPACITIES, and as contradistinguished from the INDIVIDUALS of which they consist.” From what I can tell, he structured that sentence as such so that it would be required to read the essays that will flesh the idea out.

To bring home the problems of turning our collective back on union, Hamilton notes that “[w]e may indeed with propriety be said to have reached almost the last stage of national humiliation.” Not only will we be invaded and rub violently against each other, we are already in a tight spot. We owe debts to foreign governments and our vets, we can’t freely navigate down the Mississippi, we have foreigners posted at forts in our territory…and we can’t do a dang think about it.

And so the essay goes. But a few points:

To what sacred knot does Hamilton refer while introducing his summary of the horribles that he and the gang paraded F1 through F13?

I have unfolded to you a complication of dangers to which you would be exposed, should you permit that sacred knot which binds the people of America together be severed or dissolved by ambition or by avarice, by jealousy or by misrepresentation.

Somewhere in high school or college, a teacher honored Lincoln’s transition of our history by noting that, before the Civil War and Lincoln’s tenure, we would have said the “United States are…” – then we said “the United States is….” Hamilton confounds this twinkle of history by pulling off both. Was he a man of ante- and post-bellum sensibilities?

Except as to the rule of appointment, the United States has an indefinite discretion to make requisitions for men and money; but they have no authority to raise either, by regulations extending to the individual citizens of America.

(emphasis mine)

Most of the essay deals with the (in)ability to make and enforce domestic laws and gain international respect (and saftey). Let’s wait for the following essays to flesh out the ideas…I look forward to them.

Lily Says:

July 25, 2008 at 11:43 pm

F15 strikes me as one of the gloomiest Federalist Papers yet . . . . Our “frail and tottering edifice” of a nation “seems ready to fall upon our heads and to crush us beneath its ruins”! Eek! Run for cover!

Andrew’s post very rightly emphasizes F15′s major theme — that the federal government has to be able to govern individual Americans, without state governments acting as intermediaries or buffers. I think one of the smartest points F15 makes is its reasoning for this point: you can govern individuals using a peaceful judicial system; but you can only govern sovereign bodies with the sword.

Is this still true? In our more sophisticated global economy, the UN and other international bodies try to use economic sanctions to govern sovereignties today, but these don’t always work well (e.g. the UN oil-for-food program). Even today, centuries after F15, it still seems to be saber-rattling that gets the best results — look how Libya ponied up its nuclear program because it didn’t want to be the next Iraq.

July 25, 2008 at 11:44 pm

The current state of politics in the EU is a good example of what the Federalists were up against in 1787. It is awfully hard to give up your right to be shielded from the biggest world powers by your friendly local/regional intermediary government. The controversy surrounding the EU Constitution is a perfect example — Europeans appear to have grave reservations about subjecting themselves directly, as individuals, to the power wielded from Brussels. (The recent Irish referendum rejecting the EU constitution was only the tip of the iceberg of public sentiment, in my opinion … no other EU country even had the courage to submit the EU constitution to a referendum back home!) And there aren’t any Publiuses around to convince the European public to think otherwise.