Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson were both a bit fanciful; and, reading Federalist 27 along with some contemporaneous Jefferson letters, I saw two idealistic pictures indeed; but painted with very different presuppositions.

Hamilton’s two main points in F27 are that people will love (really, love) the federal government; and, if not, the federal government will be better than regional governments in quelling rebellions.  He begins by refuting the “presupposition that the people will be disinclined to the exercise of federal authority in any matter of an internal nature.”  But why would folks be so disinclined towards federal government? “Unless we presume at the same time that the powers of the general government will be worse administered than those of the State government, there seems to be no room for the presumption of ill-will, disaffection, or opposition in the people.”

In other words, the federal government will work so smoothly that folks will naturally regard it fondly.  Hamilton reminds us why, summarizing the ways that the papers have argued the “general [federal] government will be better administered than the particular [state] governments”: (1) of the larger national selection pool from which federal politicians can be selected; (2) state legislatures will choose able Senators; and (3) the national forum of leaders will be more free from faction than local politics.

So, “until satisfactory reasons can be assigned to justify an opinion, that the federal government is likely to be administered in such a manner as to render it odious or contemptible to the people, there can be no reasonable foundation for the supposition that the laws of the Union will meet with any greater obstruction from them, or will stand in need of any other methods to enforce their execution, than the laws of the particular members.”

A charming aspect to Hamilton’s F27 is his notion that the more entrenched the federal government becomes in the daily life of Americans, the more they will love the government.  I’ll quote at length, as this is Hamiltonian idealism at its most poignant.

I will, in this place, hazard an observation, which will not be the less just because to some it may appear new; which is, that the more the operations of the national authority are intermingled in the ordinary exercise of government, the more the citizens are accustomed to meet with it in the common occurrences of their political life, the more it is familiarized to their sight and to their feelings, the further it enters into those objects which touch the most sensible chords and put in motion the most active springs of the human heart, the greater will be the probability that it will conciliate the respect and attachment of the community. …The inference is, that the authority of the Union, and the affections of the citizens towards it, will be strengthened, rather than weakened, by its extension to what are called matters of internal concern; and will have less occasion to recur to force, in proportion to the familiarity and comprehensiveness of its agency. The more it circulates through those channls and currents in which the passions of mankind naturally flow, the less will it require the aid of the violent and perilous expedients of compulsion.

But, what if the springs of the human heart ossify and the communities of America fall out of affection with the federal government?  If rebellions do arise, a strong federal government will be best in preventing and disarming them.

The hope of impunity is a strong incitement to sedition; the dread of punishment, a proportionably strong discouragement to it. Will not the government of the Union, which, if possessed of a due degree of power, can call to its aid the collective resources of the whole Confederacy, be more likely to repress the former sentiment and to inspire the latter, than that of a single State, which can only command the resources within itself? …If this reflection be just, there is less danger of resistance from irregular combinations of individuals to the authority of the Confederacy than to that of a single member.

It is interesting that Hamilton is using the insurmountability of the federal government as a factor in favor of the new Constitution. The argument stems from quite a different set of assumptions from those that formed the dream of, say, Jefferson’s blood-fed tree of liberty.  Jefferson penned the letter to William Smith that gives us the tree of liberty, by the way, about one month before the New York Packet published Hamilton’s 27th Federalist. He had just received a copy of the proposed Constitution.

I do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave through you to place them where due. It will be yet three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There are very good articles in it: & very bad. I do not know which preponderate.

The oft-quoted bit in Jefferson’s letter, about the tree of liberty, comes in his response to world-wide rumors about America being in a state of anarchy; stemming, according to Jefferson, from an overreaction to Shay’s Rebellion - the “single instance of Massachusetts.”    That uprising, consisting mainly of poor farmers angry with their debts and taxes, became the National centerpiece for those that wanted to chat up a stronger centralized government than the Articles of Confederacy provided.  Jefferson saw that talking-point developing, and worried that the rebellion would be blown out of proportion and manipulated.

Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusetts? And can history produce an instance of rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it’s motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, & always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independent 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it’s natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusetts: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen-yard in order. I hope in God this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted.

Earlier in 1787, Jefferson remarked similarly in a letter to James Madison:

I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, & as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions indeed generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.

And a month later, in a letter to Abigail Adams: “I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the Atmosphere.”

Abigail had been updating Jefferson on the Shay’s happenings.  Apparently the updates left Jefferson cliff-hung:

They were the latest I had seen or have yet seen. They left off too in a critical moment; just at the point where the Malcontents make their submission on condition of pardon, and before the answer of government was known. I hope they pardoned them.

Jefferson’s seat-edged excitement feels to me a bit like a child awaiting the end to a bedtime story; and that’s a point I take away from this exchange: Jefferson was distanced from the actual rebellion  he praised.  Would he have been so happy with uprisings if they unsettled Monticello while he was home?

By the way, and to conclude with a return to F27, I think Hamilton’s best argument is in his final two paragraphs.  In a league of state-entities such as that under the Articles of Confederation, legal enforcement relies, really, only on force.  It is analogous to international law, where shame and force are the only bindings to the “law.”  In a unified government as proposed in the Constitution, the states and citizens are bound to a legal structure with several mechanisms apart from force with which to enforce laws.