We left off a few months ago* with F18, F19, & F20’s romp through world history, which served to explain how weak federations of small sovereigns always tend fail as effective governments. The next two Papers are Publius’s gripe list about the United States as constituted under the Articles of Confederation (AoC). As my colleague Andrew discussed assiduously in our last Federalist post, F21 contains three complaints: (1) the AoC provides no way for the federal government to enforce its laws against the states; (2) in the case of either homegrown insurrection or foreign invasion, the AoC does not oblige, or indeed permit, other states to come to the assistance of the beleaguered state; and (3) there is simply no efficient or fair way to split up the costs of governing among the existing states, so the AoC necessarily fails at it.

F22 lists the following additional gripes: (4) the USA under the AoC lacks the power to regulate commerce, so no foreign countries want to enter into trade agreements with us; (5) the power to raise a federal army exists in theory but is way too weak; (6) the states have equal suffrage even though they are very different in size, wealth, and power; (7) there is no federal judicial power, leaving the country subject to the vagaries of 13 state supreme courts; and (8) the AoC was approved by the states, but never by the people directly. It is on this final point that F22 waxes most eloquent:

“[There is a] necessity of laying the foundations of our national government deeper than in the mere sanction of delegated authority. The fabric of American Empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure original fountain of all legitimate authority.”

Here we have the strongest statement yet of a major (maybe even the major) Federalist theme: that sovereignty should flow directly from the people — not from the people to the states, and only then on to the federal government. This was the whole point of F18-F20, which discussed examples from both ancient and modern history in which attempts to form a coalition of governments failed miserably. (Incidentally, I think it is really funny that, in four of the last five Federalist Papers we’ve discussed on here, Publius uses the word “imbecility” to describe governments of governments.)

Wonder what Publius would think about the United Nations? Or the World Trade Organization? NATO? The EU? The list goes on . . . . Certainly these bodies suffer from many, many, many of the defects Publius deplores. But arguably, they are not all TOTAL disasters. Has the world changed so much since Publius’s time, that his concerns no longer encompass the whole story . . . or has he just been wrong all along?

* One cross-country move, one job change, and one bar exam later, Lily is finally jumping back into blogging The Federalist! Thanks to APO for keeping the flame alive!