Lest, by the 23rd installment of pro-Constitution newsprint, the reader grow dull-eyed, Hamilton awakes any sleepers with a new title urging an energetic government. The Necessity of a Government as Energetic as the One Proposed to the Preservation of the Union.
I like that adjective. Civics classes echo with “powerful” and “centralized,” but I don’t remember hearing “energetic” to describe federal government, in a good light nor dimly. Indeed, the government staff employee union’s PR rep would do well to pick up the moniker in defense against the paradigm of bureaucratic do-nothing laziness.
In any event, Hamilton focuses the essays, with F23, on government power, and proposes three clear questions for deliberation on the subject: (1) what ought the federal government provide (2) how much power is needed to provide it, and (3) upon whom ought that power operate?
Federal government, writes Hamilton, provides for defense, peace (ie, stability against internal riots and revolts, and against external attacks), interstate and foreign commercial regulation, and foreign relations.
Hamilton frames the question of power as he does because he wants the answer to #2 to flow from #1. Rightly, it seems to me, he stresses throughout the essay that the allowed extent of power ought relate to the goal for which power is granted. So, I initially thought Hamilton would urge a spectrum of power relative to the nature of the particular goal.
For the goal of common defense, the federal government needs power to raise armies, build fleets, and govern and provide for both. To do this, the federal government needs, writes Hamilton, limitless power. Also, the government needs that power to operate over individuals, rather than state and local governments; … “we must discard the fallacious scheme of quotas and requisitions as equally impracticable and unjust.”
So, in my notes I drew a two-sided arrow that I figured would represent the sliding scale of power-quantity, with “limitless” at one pole.
But, all of Hamilton’s goals of federal government turned out to require limitless power. “The government of the Union must be empowered to pass all laws, and to make all regulations which have relation to them. The same must be the case in respect to commerce, and to every other matter to which its jurisdiction is permitted to extend.
So much for my power diagram.
August 18, 2009 at 2:58 am
I thought F23 was the most overtly Socratic of all the Fs we have read so far. Like Socrates, Ham’s approach seems to be along the lines of “Let’s all reason together as ‘impartial and discerning’ citizens.” And his mode of proceeding is very didactic; he reasons logically from premises that he claims are patently obvious.
I laughed at your point that the Federal Government requires limitless power in order to do anything
So true. Many of the words of F23 have resonance with the modern ongoing debate about civil liberties vs. national security in our post 9/11 world: e.g. “These [military] powers ought to exist without limitation: Because it is impossible to foresee or define the extent and variety of national exigencies, or the corresponding extent & variety of the means which may be necessary to satisfy them.” Even more bluntly: “The circumstances that endanger the safety of nations are infinite; and for this reason no constitutional shackles can wisely be imposed on the power to which the care of it is committed.” Really?? NO constitutional shackles????