F26 continues Publius’s argument against restraining the federal government’s ability to provide for the national defense (principally by means of maintaining a standing army). He focuses in this essay on how the Constitution provides checks and balances within the federal government itself, which he argues are sufficient in and of themselves to restrain the army’s power—thus, no need to restrict such power by tipping the balance of federalism more towards the states.
I haven’t thought a lot about the connection between the Constitution’s checks and balances and the Aristotleian concept of the Golden Mean, but F26 draws the parallel pretty explicitly. The first paragraph mentions that war (specifically, in this case, the Revolutionary War) rarely gives rise to moderation in the public mind. “That happy mean” between “the energy of government” and the “security of private rights” is a “delicate and important point.” And war is a blunt instrument. It is bound to land us too far on one side or the other of the delicate balance. Publius offers a scary anti-vision where the USA bounces from one failed Articles-of-Confederation-like governmental structure to another, and then to another (as he puts it, “one chimerical project to another”), never actually settling in the felicitous middle.
Aristotle says that the virtues are those qualities which are warped by either deficiency or excess. E.g. courage: someone who lacks all courage and constantly runs away is a coward, while someone who fears nothing is rash. In this way the virtue of courage depends on a “mean” between two extremes. (See Nichomachean Ethics, Chapter 2.) Similarly, F26 seems to argue that if we have too little governmental power on the one hand, our social contract breaks down, and we may as well dispense with the states and nations completely and govern on the county level. The evils of the other extreme, too much governmental power, hardly need to be described, since the audience has only recently emerged from a war against what they perceived to be absolute monarchy. Constitutionally forcing Congress to re-evaluate military funding every two years, Publius argues at length, strikes the perfect balance in the standing army debate, because “it is impossible that the people could be long deceived; and the destruction of [a project to undermine the civil government] would quickly follow the discovery.”
It’ll be fun to watch future Federalist Papers for other instances of such “golden means” being struck by the proposed Constitution. No question the ancient Greeks were a big influence on the Founding.
December 12, 2009 at 8:58 pm
I look forward to finding further instances of the Constitution leaving us not full nor hungry, but happily satiated. The Aristotilian balance strikes me as a particularly useful insight into the type of ancient wisdom tha the late Enlightenment would embrace.
In F26, I was also interested that England served as a sort-of model – in that the Parliament had power to maintain a standing army, as opposed to the King. While Hamilton may have been more eager than the most to make models from England, he was writing to persuade; so, one figures, the audience was receptive to an English model. Which makes sense, many of them being not far back, English. To make connections to the English system, while pointing to the new improvements, actually makes for a more comfortable proposition to embrace than a total reworking.
December 12, 2009 at 9:02 pm
I was also interested in Hamilton’s use of the constitutions that states drafted after the Revolution. I’m accustomed to thinking of the Constitutional debates being about the new charter versus the Articles of Confederation. That ignores, though, the deep association that civic-minded folks had, at that time, with their state constitutions. One of the tidbits I remember reading about Jefferson was his preoccupation with the Virginia constitution. So, making comparisons with provisions in those was helpful, for Hamilton, in painting his picture of the federal constitution.
December 13, 2009 at 3:19 am
State constitutions are kind of an interesting animal. In my lifetime I have lived in Michigan, North Carolina, and Virginia and during my sojourns in those places I very, very rarely gave any thought to the state constitutions. Even having gone to law school in NC and worked in state government in Raleigh, I could only name a couple of clauses in the NC Constitution that stand out to me. Now that I am a Californian, though, I think about the California Constitution all the time — it is constantly in the news, continually being amended through referenda and whatnot. Which is better for democracy — (1) to have state constitutions operating quietly in the background to give state governments their structure, rarely if ever amended; or (2) to have the state constitution a living, organic document, ever-evolving, constantly in the media and in the public consciousness, and a document in whose shaping the public constantly gets to participate? I don’t know.
December 16, 2009 at 8:10 pm
Great point! I wonder what the breakout is of states following one of those two approaches? It’s always a good (federal) Constitutional discussion: should we easily amend our Constitution or go, basically, as we go – with few amendments? Could states provide us some test cases of the alternatives?