Owens Rhetoric

The Federalist Diaries, collected.  To go to the original posts, and to comment, click the “Federalist” tag on the main page.

Reading the Federalist; Hello, Publius

We are taking up a project, tonight, to read and blog The Federalist. We will record at least a post to each of the columns that appeared in the New York papers to urge adoption of the newly written Constitution. The famous defense of the Philly convention’s product needs little more introduction.

So, starting with No.1, the introduction

Alexander Hamilton, the initiator of The Federalist, wrote an introduction to the columns to set a high-minded tone: we believe in dispassionate deliberation (so, trust us, we’re smart and came to our opinions through the best of reasoning). Federalist No. 1 is a quick discussion on the fallibility of human reasoning, the subsequent need for caution in political discussion, and an outline of what’s to come.

The intro’s main point is that it is impossible for folks to think on an issue without bias. I like this point, less startling as it is now by post-modern sensibility. Hamilton tees up the upcoming arguments by saying, look- there is no such thing as an objective point of view. And you all thought Stanley Fish came up with that?

Various arguments might be dismissed as coming from folks afraid of change, or coming from an opportunistic urge for change, or coming from this that or another wicked motivation. Truth is, says Hamilton, even the truth might be argued by someone with bad motives. So it is best to avoid distractions and stick to the substance.

This is a good point–as I read it, I overlooked it. Thinking back now, it is forward thinking and important to today’s distraction-prone political conversations.

Hamilton closes with an unsurprising admission that the authors favor adoption of the Constitution, and will adress all the criticisms they’ve so far heard from the cynics.

One more nice twist: Hamilton begins No.1 with an evocation of the momentous occasion before his audience–they will be proving to the world whether or not deliberative democracy is possible; and more pressing, whether it is possible to create a government “from reflection and choice, or

whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.

This passage is, I think, simply urging the audience to take up the question of ratification, or not, and to think it through with due consideration. I can’t help but wonder, though, if the rhetoric sends an undercurrent message as well: is the “wrong election” that will ruin mankind rejection of the Constitution? New slogan: Adopt the Constitution, save the world.

Calm and Mature Enquiries and Reflections:  Federalist # 2

Federalist # 2 is John Jay’s first appearance as “Publius.” He echoes several of Hamilton’s themes from Federalist # 1, not least Hamilton’s caution that “we are not always sure, that those who advocate the truth are influenced by purer principles than their antagonists.” As a logical consequence, Jay adds, “[L]et it be remembered, that [the Constitution] is neither recommended to blind approbation, nor to blind reprobation; but to that sedate and candid consideration, which the magnitude and importance of the subject demand, and which it certainly ought to receive.” (Emphasis original.)

What an extraordinary way to argue! They are effectively saying, we don’t want you to agree with us unless you’ve really thought hard about it. Don’t just follow the herd in endorsing our desired outcome (i.e. the ratification of the Constitution), and be done with it. Instead, agree with us for the right reasons (i.e. the reasons we are going to lay out for you in these papers).

These days we are pretty familiar with exhortations to civic engagement, but if you think about the historical context of Hamilton and Jay, you begin to see how groundbreaking and imaginative this is. A mere generation before Publius, the mass of the governed were not expected to participate in their government. They might get to send representatives to Parliament, but that was theoretically only because the king allowed it. Sovereignty ultimately rested in the Crown, not in the people. But Federalist # 2 is setting the bar higher by saying: “Look, you are free to accept or reject this, but at least give it some thought.” I think that is one reason why so much space is given throughout the Federalist Papers to arguing that the decision about whether to ratify is IMPORTANT. People were not yet in the habit of having to think about these things very hard. (In fact, we still might not be in that habit . . . )

The last few lines of Federalist #2 contain more evidence of Jay’s imagination and his effective use of emotional as well as logical argument. “Farewell! A long farewell, to all my greatness!” is a quotation from Shakespeare’s Henry VIII. The speaker is Cardinal Wolsey, reflecting on his fall from power. (Read the Cardinal’s full speech here.) But as of October 31, 1787, the date of Federalist # 2, America was a long way from achieving greatness! It was a ten-year-old, motley collection of squabbling colonies. But Jay has the foresight to see the huge potential of the new united nation. His patriotism, indeed is reflected throughout the paper, from his descriptions of America’s beauty and vast natural resources (“This country and this people seem to have been made for each other”), to his repeated praise of the Philadelphia delegates, who he describes as “highly distinguished by their patriotism, virtue, and wisdom, in times which tried the minds and hearts of men.”

Fewer chances to pick fights (Federalist No.3)

With his second ‘post,’ John Jay offers some specific arguments for the benefits of union when regards foreign policy. As an added bonus, he defines just causes for war:

1) broken treaties; or

2) direct violence.

Jay argues that a single government will better prevent war on both potential causes. And for both, the more convincing argument is that a national government would pick fewer fights than the several states or confederacies–legal or physical. More states = more treaties = more chances for breach. Also, inconsistency among the various treaties would lead to equally various interpretations and subsequent political action on the treaties (which I suppose to mean more chances for breach or, eek, managerial headaches).

Jay then argues that the states are more willing than the national government to pick fights. By way of example, he notes that not “a single Indian war has yet been produced by aggressions of the present federal government … but there are several instances of Indian hostilities having been provoked by the improper conduct of individual States, who, either unable or unwilling to restrain or punish offenses, have given occasion to the slaughter of many innocent inhabitants.”

Jay figures that the national government will be less prideful than State governments, and being more coolheaded, will be the better to dissolve conflicts. This seems right, but I would be interested in a book that examines this claim in light of U.S. history and compared to other balkanized governments that Jay figures would have been picking hot-headed little wars.

It is worth highlighting one of Jay’s key assumptions: the national government will draw wiser leaders. “When once the national government is established, the best men in the country will not only consent to serve, but also will generally be appointed to manage it ….”

His reasoning is that the bigger pool of contestants for the national government will produce the very best results. State and local governments may have fine folk, but the national government will require “more extensive reputation for talents and other qualifications.” Jay figures that an mediocre mayor that might reign in provincial backwoods would not stand up to the scrutiny of national government. I wonder whether this notion holds up.

Jay assumes the similar types of scrutiny and selection go on in local and national politics–so that a bigger pool of contestants simply means better quality in the ultimate selection. But isn’t it so that a national candidate will be much more unknowable to most selectors than those local candidates that towns and states choose? Except for the few powers-that-be that prop up national-scope leaders, we are not really aware of these interstate candidates until well-nigh election time.

It is only slightly possible today–with internets, medias, and so forth–to earnestly track and reasonably compare would-be national leaders. How, exactly, did Jay envision voters doing this in 1788? Assuming he envisioned State legislators tracking would-be Senators, or, Congress tracking would-be Presidents – how would these folks really elevate the best folks to National attention? It seems to me Jay is ignoring the role of chance, etc, in such things.

Pretended Causes of War:  Federalist # 4

Jay’s Federalist #4 is a follow-up to #3′s discussion of why a union of the States is safest for the people. F3 was about how a united America would give other nations less occasion to be angry with us — thus provoking fewer “just causes” for war. F4 supplements this argument by describing how the union would also give other countries fewer “unjust causes” for war — hence, fewer wars based on “jealousies and uneasinesses.” The main point is that a united group of states provides a stronger deterrence to unjust foreign invasion than thirteen nations, or even three or four “confederacies” of colonies. Jay argues that union is essential for military reasons, because that way any foreign attack on one colony’s soil becomes an attack on all 13 colonies. Further, he contends that a well-managed federal government with prosperous trade, established credit, organized militia, and “free, contented, and united” people, will cause foreign nations to be “much more disposed to cultivate our friendship, than provoke our resentment.”

To our modern eyes, F4 contains a haunting matter-of-factness about the risks of an invasion of America by foreign nations — an event that has been well-nigh inconceivable for the vast majority of American history.* Even the two most infamous encroachments of American soil, Pearl Harbor and 9/11, were essentially attacks — not invasions, by any stretch. This historical record of impregnability bears out the worthiness of Jay’s arguments. He’s right — America’s strength has ensured no nation, not even our worst enemies, seriously contemplates invading us. Almost no one has ever dared, not even the USSR during the Cold War. But as F4′s pragmatic discussion made me realize, that kind of security was not always something we could take for granted. F4 was addressed to an audience of people who had had to fight, in hand-to-hand combat, to defend their own hometowns and families.

A couple of additional points about F4 that intrigue me:

1) In the first three Federalist papers, there are lots of references to the “people,” but none to “the People.” But right here in paragraph two of F4, Jay discusses “the safety of the People of America” . He follows up on that zinger with about a million references to “we” and “us” and “our” — almost like he is working to create a sense of American unity subliminally within his prose. By the time you’re finished reading, you can’t help but feel like an American, instead of a New Yorker. Kinda cool.

2) In further demonstration of Jay’s willingness to appeal to his audience’s emotions as well as their intellect, F4′s closing paragraph is a description of how all the other nations will scorn America as “a poor, pitiful figure” if it splinters into 13 colonies or 3-4 “confederacies.” He’s not above making people feel embarrassed to vote against union!

On a more general note, I applaud Andrew’s prescience in starting up this examination of The Federalist. These issues about union are SO alive and well today, and not just in America. Ryan Crocker, US Ambassador to Iraq,testified to Congress last week that Iraq’s recent passage of a crucial law defining the relationship between the central government and the Iraqi provinces followed a debate “similar in its complexity to our own lengthy and difficult debate over states’ rights.”

* When was the last time we were truly invaded? War of 1812? Did the Spanish technically invade us via Mexico a few times?

F5 and the Northern Hive

Future Chief Justice Jay, you had to leave us with this?

The North is generally the region of strength, and many local circumstances render it probable that the most Northern of the proposed confederacies would, at a period not very distant, be unquestionably more formidable than any of the others. No sooner would this become evident than the NORTHERN HIVE would excite the same ideas and sensations in the more southern parts of America which it formerly did in the southern parts of Europe. Nor does it appear to be a rash conjecture that its young swarms might often be tempted to gather honey in the more blooming fields and milder air of their luxurious and more delicate neighbors.

F5 is the last (except one more, much later) of Jay’s posts to the Federalist team nlog (newspaper log?). Jay’s posts seem to have been in the theme of what we’d now call the politics of fear…you want a union, not several factious confederacies, answering that red phone.

Having dealt with just, and unjust, against America from abroad, Jay notes in F5 that non-united states or confederacies would suffer with in-fighting.

I noticed in this post the frequency with which Jay discusses confederations as the alternative to union. Apparently, during the decision to adopt or not the Constitution, groups of states joining together was more (?) of an alternative than the states remaining autonomous. It is a spooky thing to read thinking, some 70 years down the road, of the looming Confederacy.

With a handful of confederacies bunched up against each other, Jay argues, some will prospers, others will be jealous, and they’ll tend to maintain different alliances with foreign nations. This last makes particular sense, given that fondness for France or England seems to’ve played as much a part as anything else in forming the first political parties.

Apparently Jay thought the northern confederacy would naturally be stronger than the southern. What he means by gathering honey I can only imagine.

The celebrated Pericles, the ambitious Cardinal, and the bigotry of one female:  Federalist # 6

F6 is Hamilton’s turn to weigh in on the dangers of disunity. He does this by trotting out a veritable parade of horribles from ancient and modern history — everything from the Pelopponesian War (431 BC) to the War of Jenkins’ Ear (1739 AD). His overall point is that disputes between nations have always been jealous, bigoted, petulant, and perverse, and men are inevitably “ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious.” All this Hobbesian pessimism leaves me feeling pretty depressed — which is exactly how Hamilton wanted his readers to react. Why?* Because he is trying to use shock and horror to WAKE US UP. He repeatedly uses dream metaphors to describe Antifederalist arguments, which he claims are “endeavor[ing] to lull asleep our apprehensions of discord and hostility between the States.” He implores the reader to “awake from the deceitful dream of a golden age” in which thirteen happy colonies exist harmoniously side by side and engage in peaceful commerce and mutual defense. Instead, he argues that thirteen such nations would squabble over their commercial interests, their power inequities, and — when they ran out of those — they would be constantly led to war by leaders seeking to vindicate their own personal feuds and rivalries. He also uses historical examples to pooh-pooh the Antifederalist notion that the thirteen putative nations would be less inclined to war because they had elected leadership instead of monarchy.

Cynicism — realism? — about human nature and human history is the overall touchstone of F6. Hamilton does not hesitate to remove his readers’ rose-colored spectacles. Andrew, does this low opinion of human nature fit with what you have read in Hamilton’s biography?

* Hamilton piles on the rhetorical questions in F6.**

** Also there are lots of footnotes.

The Young and the Restless States, F7

With Federalist 7, Hamilton offers four more inducements that the states, without a unifying Constitution, would have to make war on each other:

1. The states will fight over the unsettled and not-fully-claimed lands out west
2. Commercial competition will spur the states to break loose trade regulations, which “would naturally lead to outrages, and these to reprisals and wars”
3. The differing attitudes toward the public debt held by the states will yield an inward and outward pressure from creditors, those anxious to pay up, those without a sense of obligation…and
4. A loose pact amongst the otherwise independent states would result in a fickle law of contract, subsequent breaches, and subsequent aggressions.

It’s interesting that the Constitution, adoption of which might stiff-arm these threats, does not really say much directly on these issues. I think the commerce powers given to Congress are most directly on point; but, the Constitution does not establish contract law nor much in the way of trade regulation. So this is not so much an argument for the charter as for the powers that the charter grants to the federal government. And most relevant to point number to is the dormant commerce clause, for which we have the Judiciary to thank.

The potential inducements that Hamilton raises each became major, and divisive, issues in American policy. I wonder if Hamilton would respond, today, that while these issues drove some passionate debates and solidified political factions, they did not lead to war. It is particularly interesting to red Hamilton predicting the debate over a public debt – a glowing issue during his coming tenure at Treasury. Did he think back, when arguing the case for federal assumption, that

There is, perhaps, nothing more likely to disturb the tranquillity of nations than their being bound to mutual contributions for any common object that does not yield an equal and coincident benefit. For it is an observation, as true as it is trite, that there is nothing men differ so readily about as the payment of money.

I’d be interested to read F7 against some commerce clause cases. Also, F7 inspired me to take a peek at the US map and notice how the northern states like to bend up towards Canada. Interesting to think how, back when, they must have been clamoring to reach Canada for trade purposes.

These were New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. New Jersey and Rhode Island, upon all occasions, discovered a warm zeal for the independence of Vermont; and Maryland, till alarmed by the appearance of a connection between Canada and that State, entered deeply into the same [negative] views.

F7 Concerns:  Still Viable Today?

Some of those conflicts among the young states, which are foretold by F7, continue to hang around now that the states are no longer quite so young (though still pretty restless!)

Boundary disputes? Still around. Georgia v. Tennessee: in this time of drought, who owns the river?

Commercial competition between states? Look at the lengths to which North Carolina is willing to go, in order to lure companies to set up shop here instead of somewhere else: NC gave Dell Computers $300 million in tax breaks to get the company to agree to build a plant in Winston-Salem. NC is even getting sued over it. You bet the states are still competing with each other for economic advantage.

States and local governments in debt? Of course! New Jersey is struggling under a mountain of debt created by increased pensions for public employees, and Vallejo has just achieved the dubious distinction of becoming the largest city in California to declare bankruptcy.

PLUNDER:  Federalist No. 8

F8 is a chilling depiction of the horrors of a War Between the States. It is even more chilling to read it nowadays, with the benefit of hindsight. Hamilton’s purpose is to paint a stark picture of what life would be like if the states, or confederacies thereof, were constantly battling each other.

Hamilton’s worst fears — and then some — came to pass only 75 years after F8 was published. Hamilton bleakly describes the likely tactics of two standing armies going at it on American soil:

The want of fortifications leaving the frontiers of one State open to another, would facilitate inroads. . . . Conquests would be as easy to be made, as difficult to be retained. War therefore would be desultory and predatory. PLUNDER* and devastation ever march in the train of irregulars. The calamities of individuals would make the principal figure in the events[.]

Ken Burns’s unparalleled documentary on the Civil War describes the reality even more vividly:

American homes became headquarters, American churches and schoolhouses sheltered the dying, and huge foraging armies swept across American farms and burned American towns. Americans slaughtered one another wholesale, right here in America in their own cornfields and peach orchards, along familiar roads and by waters with old American names.

As soon as I got over being chilled by Hamilton’s prescience regarding the Civil War, I became spooked by these lines, in light of events since 2001:

Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates. . . . [T]he continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty, to resort for repose and security, to institutions, which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe they, at length, become willing to run the risk of being less free.

Or, as a favorite songster of Andrew’s and mine wrote after 9/11:

I’m just trying to survive.
What if what you do to survive
Kills the things you love?
Fear’s a dangerous thing.
It can turn your heart black, you can trust.
It’ll take your God-filled soul
And fill it with devils and dust.

Freaked out yet? Wait till you hear Hamilton get specific about those “institutions which have a tendency to destroy rights.” He means, of course, a strong executive power with absolute control over the military. “It is the nature of war to increase the executive at the expence [sic] of the legislative authority.”

Sigh.

* As if to underscore the brutality of the author’s vision, this is the single word that appears in all caps in F8.

Monte…who? (F9)

Hamilton writes F9 as a reflection on ancient, and more recent, history. My hunch is that the structure intentionally works as part of his argument – which, here, is to address the opponents’ argument, based on some “observations of Montesquieu[,] on the necessity of a contracted territory for a republican government.” Or, a response to the “America is too big to be a republic” argument.

The anti-Federalists were apparently arguing that Montesquieu, the Enlightenment political-thinker hero, declared that states as big as those now in America could not unite in a republican government. Hamilton’s response is to trump up Montesquieu’s general sanction of the “utility of a Confederacy.” Notes Hamilton: “So far are the suggestions of Montesquieu from standing in opposition to a general Union of the States, that he explicitly treats of a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC as the expedient for extending the sphere of popular government, and reconciling the advantages of monarchy with those of republicanism.”

But the structure of F9 confused me at first. Hamilton begins, more or less, by saying the early republics of which we read, while giving some bright moments, weren’t, we all must admit, all that great (lots of “distractions” in their day).All the same…

The science of politics, however, like most other sciences, has received great improvement. The efficacy of various principles is now well understood, which were either not known at all, or imperfectly known to the ancients. The regular distribution of power into distinct departments; the introduction of legislative balances and checks; the institution of courts composed of judges holding their offices during good behavior; the representation of the people in the legislature by deputies of their own election: these are wholly new discoveries, or have made their principal progress towards perfection in modern times. They are means, and powerful means, by which the excellences of republican government may be retained and its imperfections lessened or avoided.

I wonder if all this is to say, in effect, ‘hey, Montesquieu can be a little wrong sometimes…we have moved on and learned a bit.’

After going from this into the Montesquieu discussion, Hamilton returns to ancient government, mentioning that the central government in the Lycian Confederacy chose local magistrates. Surely, Hamilton writes, this is folly – as local governments ought to choose local officials. But, Hamilton notes, the “enlightened civilian” Montesquieu thought this was a fine plan. If the structure provides a gentle urge that maybe Montesquieu can be improved upon, this ending reveals that, maybe, Hamilton couldn’t resist the more school-boy dig at the Enlightenment hero.

The Republic as Guardian Against Improper and Wicked Projects: Federalist No. 10

Publius started off the Federalist with a discussion of the international dangers associated with rejecting the Constitution; then he moved to national – that is, continent-wide – dangers; now, in F10, his focus is on localities. Specifically, the dangers of localized factionalism.

Madison, the author of F10, apparently shares in the Founding Fathers’ famous dislike of political faction. F10 defines a faction as “a number of citizens . . . who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” Madison describes such groups as “sinister.” In listing examples of their “improper and wicked project[s],” he comes up with:

(1) “An abolition of debts.” 2008 mortgage lenders might agree this is improper, wicked, and sinister.

(2) “An equal division of property.” Whether you like the extreme version (communism) or the mild version (socialism) – this faction has had a lot of staying power.

(3) “A rage for paper money.” Horrors! Presumably Madison fears the type of reckless money printing that would devalue the currency and cause 24,000% inflation, like in Zimbabwe.*

Most of F10 is a discussion about why a large Republic – as opposed to a small Republic or, worse, a pure Democracy – is best suited to keep a lid on the evils of faction.

Why is a republic better than pure democracy? Because a republic has a body of elected representatives, whose job is to “refine and enlarge the public views” by serving as a body “whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice, will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.” I guess Congress could be said to do this . . . sometimes . . .

Why is a large republic better than a small republic? “Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens.” Madison also revives Jay’s argument from F3 that the greater your pool of citizens, the higher the quality of people who will rise to the top through popular elections. (We’re skeptical of that, since it is not clear that the qualities it takes to become massively popular are the same as the qualities it takes to be a good holder of power.)

This latter discussion raises an interesting question – the kind of myriad of political factions envisioned in F10 seems to match up more closely with the type of system that has evolved in Italy or Israel, where there are tons of little parties, and they always have to cobble together a coalition to get anything done at all. Is this kind of political system more true to the Founders’ vision than the two-party system that has evolved in America? If so, does this mean the Founders were getting it wrong – or, conversely, are Israel and Italy just better governed than America?

* Zimbabwe’s inflation is the worst in the world. The second worst, Myanmar, is 40%, which sounds fantastic by comparison. Clickhere for a description of how that crazy inflation rate translates on the ground.

short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths

I’m wondering whether F10’s “factions” are so closely synonymous to political parties as folks sometimes presume.Reading through F10, faction seems to be something closer to something within our human nature (like bias, interestedness) than a term for groups.

The overwhelming point of F10 is: to overcome inevitable human self-interestedness while maintaining liberty (manifested by having some say in governance), you need to get at least one step removed from direct democracy to avoid a tyranny of the majority. Madison then tells us, as Lily describes below, why representatives fit the bill.

Madison’s description of self-governance’s problem is pretty good:

No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time; yet what are many of the most important acts of legislation, but so many judicial determinations, not indeed concerning the rights of single persons, but concerning the rights of large bodies of citizens? And what are the different classes of legislators but advocates and parties to the causes which they determine? … Justice ought to hold the balance between them. Yet the parties are, and must be, themselves the judges; and the most numerous party, or, in other words, the most powerful faction must be expected to prevail.

…

Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.

But, back to factions and parties. It’s clear in Madison’s argument that he believes faction is inevitable and we’ve got to check it. I don’t get, from this, that Madison fears partisanship. It is hard to imagine that the founders and delegates did not imagine something like political parties forming in America. Madison does not, in F10, claim that the Constitution will prevent like-minded people from joining into a coalition to pass desired legislation. With Lily, I’d be interested to see if they imagined smaller several groups forming coalitions, or something more akin to the two-party system. One must remember, though, that we have little coalitions too: think of the blue dog dems, the libertarians that go either Repub or Dem based on the rights to which they cling, and etc. It seems that “factions,” for F10 purposes, is actually a bit like these interests – which form groups within our major parties, or parties within governments like the UK. And, as F10 says, on the national level these factions are diluted to more theoretical interests than pure self interest.

My hunch is that our initial leaders accepted partisanship as much as we do now. Given, “parties” didn’t exist; but, what we now call partisanship existed since the Continental Congresses. Some famously denied partisanship, but then, some folks do that today too.

Some additional quotes:

Shout out to local autonomy

It must be confessed that in this, as in most other cases, there is a mean, on both sides of which inconveniences will be found to lie. By enlarging too much the number of electors, you render the representatives too little acquainted with all their local circumstances and lesser interests; as by reducing it too much, you render him unduly attached to these, and too little fit to comprehend and pursue great and national objects. The federal Constitution forms a happy combination in this respect; the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular to the State legislatures.

Nice sentence, James

While teeing up the product of the Philly convention, Madison gives us this gem of a line:

Let me add that it is the great desideratum by which this form of government can be rescued from the opprobrium under which it has so long labored, and be recommended to the esteem and adoption of mankind.

dread the passive commerce (F11)

Hamilton, back behind the pen in F11, describes the benefits of a unified trade policy and a federal navy. The piece is really an argument that unification will prevent a kind of passiveness in the American states or confederacies. Unification would allow the new country certain leverages unavailable to smaller states.

First, trade:

By prohibitory regulations, extending, at the same time, throughout the States, we may oblige foreign countries to bid against each other, for the privileges of our markets. … Suppose, for instance, we had a government in America, capable of excluding Great Britain (with whom we have at present no treaty of commerce) from all our ports; what would be the probable operation of this step upon her politics? Would it not enable us to negotiate, with the fairest prospect of success, for commercial privileges of the most valuable and extensive kind, in the dominions of that kingdom?

Hamilton argues, yes.

Next, a navy:

“A further resource for influencing the conduct of European nations toward us, in this respect, would arise from the establishment of a federal navy.” The navy might not initially be a might on it’s own, admits Hamilton, but it could tip the scales in other folks’ battles:

…if it could not vie with those of the great maritime powers, would at least be of respectable weight if thrown into the scale of either of two contending parties. This would be more peculiarly the case in relation to operations in the West Indies. A few ships of the line, sent opportunely to the reinforcement of either side, would often be sufficient to decide the fate of a campaign, on the event of which interests of the greatest magnitude were suspended.

Surely enough, Hamilton further argues that the navy will benefit from union, pulling into it the best wood, iron, tar, and seamen “from the Northern hive” (we must address more fully this Northern hive sometime).

The navy sort-of backs up the unified trade policy that Hamilton envisions acting as the new Nation’s lever in global politics. Without it, the Nation, smaller confederacies, or autonomous states would surrender to those with sufficient power.

But in a state of disunion, these combinations might exist and might operate with success. It would be in the power of the maritime nations, availing themselves of our universal impotence, to prescribe the conditions of our political existence; and as they have a common interest in being our carriers, and still more in preventing our becoming theirs, they would in all probability combine to embarrass our navigation in such a manner as would in effect destroy it, and confine us to a PASSIVE COMMERCE.

While Hamilton argues that several American governments would lack the power to remain free from outside conflicts, he offers this interesting line: “The rights of neutrality will only be respected when they are defended by an adequate power. A nation, despicable by its weakness, forfeits even the privilege of being neutral.” Has history generally upheld that axiom?

And once more to the general theme of the Federalist:

Some argue that the states could sufficiently work together to acheive all these great things without forming a national governmnet; but, “this intercourse would be fettered, interrupted, and narrowed by a multiplicity of causes, which in the course of these papers have been amply detailed. A unity of commercial, as well as political, interests, can only result from a unity of government.”

Publius the Macroeconomist:  Federalist No. 12

This Paper is about that most exciting of subjects: tax. Admittedly, tax classes weren’t my favorite ones in law school (yes, while Andrew was off taking great stuff like “Congress and the Presidency,” I was suffering through “Income Tax” and – worse – “Estate & Gift Tax”). Despite the boring-sounding intro,* though, the stark contrast between the primitive economy Hamilton had to deal with, versus the modern American economy, actually makes F12 a pretty interesting read.

So, what do economists do when they start out to make an argument? They make an assumption. (Example of a common macroeconomic assumption: the economy is composed of rational actors.**) Hamilton’s threshold assumption in F12 is: the American government has zero chance of raising good money through income taxes. Based on his descriptions of the state of the American economy in 1787, that actually sounds like a pretty good assumption. He describes the states’ futile attempts to directly tax their citizens. Basically, he says, Americans hate paying their taxes; they are always trying to evade the Tax Man; and the record of compliance is so low, we may as well not even bother to try and collect direct tax. He also suggests that the main reason Americans resist paying through the nose is that most of them simply don’t have the liquidity to do it. We have to remember, he’s dealing with an economy made of, principally, subsistence farmers. Whatever assets most Americans have (if they have any at all) are tied up in their land. So making them pay the government in liquid currency just doesn’t make sense.

Consequently, The Ham says, the government’s gotta get revenue from elsewhere. Like where? Answer: taxes on commerce. Especially “duties on imported articles” – i.e., tariffs. How do we increase revenue from tariffs? Increase commerce. How do we increase commerce? You guessed it – union! In Publius’s words: “It is therefore evident, that one national government would be able, at much less expence, to extend the duties on imports, beyond comparison further, than would be practicable to the States separately, or to any partial confederacies.”

To back up this argument, The Ham, like any good economist, supplies some statistics: the States individually have not been able to enforce tariffs at any more than 3% of purchase price; but the government of France is raking it in at 15%, and Britain is even higher. Ham offers the conservative estimate of a 9% tariff for a federal American government. He also includes some interesting asides on the taxation of “the single article of ardent spirits,” which he describes as the ultimate in “national extravagance” and which, if properly taxed, would not only raise lots of cash but also improve “the morals and health of society” by discouraging consumption. (This argument, of course, conveniently overlooks the fact that the more we discourage consumption of liquor, the less cash liquor tariffs will actually raise for the government . . . .)

F12 ends – as so many of the Federalist Papers do – with a parade of the horribles that will inevitably result from a failure to form a union. With no union, we’ll have no commerce (see F11). Thus all the burden of taxation will fall on the wretched landowners, who won’t (or can’t) pay up. Consequently, the state governments will be routinely broke if left to their own devices.

One other interesting note about F12: Publius, as always, uses lots of analogies to existing European geopolitical realities to illustrate his points. F12 has a discussion of German government’s total inability to raise money, even though that country is blessed with superior natural resources including the best gold mines in Europe. Why no cash? No union, of course. Germany was still pre-Bismarck in 1787, and was really no more than a loose confederacy of squabbling duchies. It’s such a perfect example of the perils of disunion, I’m surprised it hasn’t come up before now.***

So, takeaway discussion points from F11-F12: Do these practical macroeconomic considerations like commerce and taxation have the same rhetorical force as the other, more political, arguments made in F1-F10? I speculate that Publius might have worried about this, because F11, at least, contains some of the grandest rhetorical flourishes we’ve seen so far: “The superiority, [Europe] has long maintained, has tempted her to plume herself as the Mistress of the World [note sarcastic capitalization], and to consider the rest of mankind as created for her benefit. . . . Facts have too long supported these arrogant pretensions of the European. It belongs to us to vindicate the honor of the human race [jeeesh], and to teach that assuming brother moderation.” We’ll see how future Federalist Papers deal with this – flipping ahead, looks like F13 also deals with the economy, or “oeconomy,” as Publius spells it. Maybe the Federalist Papers’ emphasis on money will prove Publius’s recognition of the same argument famously made by Bill Clinton – namely that the economy is far from being a boring aside; in fact it’s the ONLY motivator of people’s votes, in the end.

* Opening words: “[T]he tendency [of the Union] to promote the interests of revenue will be the subject of our present enquiry.” Oh boy!

** The nihilist in me is always skeptical of this one! Humans as rational actors? Puh-leeze. Don’t economists ever readDostoyevsky?

*** Before you get impressed with my knowledge of European history, I should mention that the only reason I’m all beefed up on German unification at the moment is because I’m reading this great biography of Richard Wagner, whose compositions were strongly influenced by, and reactionary to, the political realities of Otto von Bismarck’s mid-nineteenth century German unification project.)

Before the Whiskey Rebellion

Damned if you do and don’t, Ham (thanks Lily) must have reckoned one day in the new 19th century. As Lily points out below, the Cato Institute’s ancestor organization was apparently chock full of early American members not much wanting to toss coin to the government’s perception of the common good.

F12 appeared just as the skirmishes of Shays’ Rebellion were ending. Shays led the rebellion against the Massachusetts’s attempt at paying off war debts with a direct tax that most notably hurt subsistence farmers. Lesson learned, Ham notes, “from the experience we have had on the point itself, … it is impracticable to raise any very considerable sums by direct taxation.” And figuring he has the proper alternative, “far the greatest part of the national revenue is derived from taxes of the indirect kind, from imposts, and from excises.”

As Lily pointed out, Ham offers an item on which the government could levy a duty:

The single article of ardent spirits, under federal regulation, might be made to furnish a considerable revenue. Upon a ratio to the importation into this State, the whole quantity imported into the United States may be estimated at four millions of gallons; which, at a shilling per gallon, would produce two hundred thousand pounds. That article would well bear this rate of duty; and if it should tend to diminish the consumption of it, such an effect would be equally favorable to the agriculture, to the economy, to the morals, and to the health of the society. There is, perhaps, nothing so much a subject of national extravagance as these spirits.

A couple years after Publius smiled on the ratified Constitution, Treasure Secretary Hamilton (shed momentarily from Latin pseudonyms) persuaded Congress to take up the war debt. And to help pay it, Congress approved a tax on spirits, as more-or-less suggested in F12. As in the tax that spurred the Shays Rebellion, though, this one hit the small boys; while the big boy producers enjoyed a flat rate, small time producers paid by the gallon, and, frequently using the spirits as a bartering item, had little cash to actually pay anyway. So, eight years after Shays, the Whiskey Rebellion popped up to provide America some notable trivia answers: the first sitting president (an old Washington) leading first American use of military force against its own citizens, and accompanied by Hamilton and Robert E. Lee’s daddy; all of this forcing the Whiskey rebels from western Pennsylvania into Kentucky and Tennessee (outside the scope of the spirits tax) where the easy corn growth spurred corn whiskey, which in turn developed into America’s brown entry into the world of distinctive whiskeys: bourbon.

So, Hamilton must have wondered after the lessons of Shays and Whiskey: what kind of taxes can we slip passed these wee Catos?

Who wants to be Flanders (F13)

Perhaps because of the unlucky number, Hamilton produced a relatively short F13 looking, I think, at the governance (as a managerial exercise) of several confederacies as compared to the Constitutional plan.

No well-informed man will suppose that the affairs of such a confederacy can be properly regulated by a government less comprehensive in its organs or institutions than that which has been proposed by the convention.

If Hamilton is saying what I think he is saying (that the work of government would be more (or at least as) complex and invasive on everyday life as the Philly’s Constitutional plan), he has produced an unexpected and strong argument for national government relevant to his peers and today’s thinkers.

Federalist 13 brings Publius’ attention to the economy in America.  It seems to me he is using “economy” in the old sense of the word – from the Greek meaning of, basically, ‘the management of the household.’  I wonder what “economy” meant in the late 18th century – I’m not sure.  Was it linked to the flow of money, as it is today?  F13 seems more a discussion of the complexity of government than revenue and monetary flexibility, etc.  This seems to be the gist, as the essay ends with

Nothing can be more evident than that the thirteen States will be able to support a national government better than one half, or one third, or any number less than the whole. This reflection must have great weight in obviating that objection to the proposed plan, which is founded on the principle of expense; an objection, however, which, when we come to take a nearer view of it, will appear in every light to stand on mistaken ground.

If, in addition to the consideration of a plurality of civil lists, we take into view the number of persons who must necessarily be employed to guard the inland communication between the different confederacies against illicit trade, and who in time will infallibly spring up out of the necessities of revenue; and if we also take into view the military establishments which it has been shown would unavoidably result from the jealousies and conflicts of the several nations into which the States would be divided, we shall clearly discover that a separation would be not less injurious to the economy, than to the tranquillity, commerce, revenue, and liberty of every part.

Some interesting notes from Hamilton’s discussion of the paths that states may take in absence of union:

Pennsylvania may not choose to confound her interests in a connection so adverse to her policy. As she must at all events be a frontier, she may deem it most consistent with her safety to have her exposed side turned towards the weaker power of the Southern, rather than towards the stronger power of the Northern, Confederacy. This would give her the fairest chance to avoid being the Flanders of America. Whatever may be the determination of Pennsylvania, if the Northern Confederacy includes New Jersey, there is no likelihood of more than one confederacy to the south of that State.

Lily mentioned the relevance of Germany as a contemporary comparative tool for the founders.  Here, we see that Flanders was in the public conscious too.  I wonder how often Flanders got trodded as an exemplar of the negative.

A Revolution That Has No Parallel:  Federalist No. 14

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.

Why Not to Govern Governments:  Federalist No. 16

F16 is Publius’s opportunity to muse about the mechanics of the principle he introduced in F15:  the fact that governing people is a piece of cake compared to governing other governments.  Making laws for other sovereignties to follow is an invitation to anarchy.  As I was reading Hamilton’s description of the difficulties a central governing body incurs when it tries to regulate its sovereign members, I couldn’t help wondering what he would have thought of today’s vast alphabet soup of intergovernmental governing bodies.  UN, WTO, EU, AU, NATO . . . etc.  And President Sarkozy has just started up yet another big one, centered on the Mediterranean (take that, Brits!).

Today’s alphabet soup grapples constantly with all the same problems F16 describes:

– “There would in fact be an insuperable difficulty in ascertaining when force could with propriety be employed.”  No s***, echo the poor wretched residents of Darfur.

– “In the article of pecuniary contribution, which would be the most usual source of delinquency, it would often be impossible to decide whether it had proceeded from disinclination, or inability.”  Has the USA bothered to get up to snuff on its UN dues these days?  For a while there — when Jesse Helms was in charge of Foreign Relations — we NEVER paid.

– “[There would be] a wide field for the exercise of factious views, of partiality and of oppression, in the majority that happened to prevail in the national council.”  Why, oh, why, did Russia and China have to veto the sanctions against Zimbabwe’s government?  You stinkers!!  Partiality and oppression is right.

So, what’s the alternate universe?  To let the people stand as the “natural guardians of the constitution.”  I swore to uphold and protect the Constitution when I took my oath as an attorney, but I think it’s cool to expand that idea of guardianship to all Americans.  Wish we all (myself included) took our duties in that regard more seriously.

so you wanna be governed? (F17)

Federalist 17 expands on Hamilton’s defense of the Constitution’s ‘direct jurisdiction over individuals (rather than maintaining a buffer of state and local governments between you and the feds).

Hamilton’s initial response to the objection that federal government types will want to gobble up those powers held by state government betrays his static repose in history. Regardless of one’s views on federal powers, no modern defender of the federal government would repeat Hamilton’s being “at a loss to discover what temptation” federal officials would have to take up the “administration of private justice between the citizens of the same State, the supervision of agriculture and of other concerns of a similar nature, all those things, in short, which are proper to be provided for by local legislation ….” In short, Hamilton just doesn’t think federal officials would be interested in usurping the powers left to the states (note: he writes before the 10th amendment’s adoption). It is possible to understand Hamilton’s gut feeling here, but impossible to agree in light of federal history.

So response # 1 is: I just don’t see it happening. Response # 2 is structural: states hold greater influence over people, and are thus more likely to encroach upon federal prerogatives rather than the opposite. Hamilton believed that state and local governments would remain superior to federal partly because of the national government’s diffuse nature and more because of the greater attention folks would pay to the near-at-hand governments (note, though, that last wee nugget in the passages below).

It is a known fact in human nature, that its affections are commonly weak in proportion to the distance or diffusiveness of the object …

…the people of each State would be apt to feel a stronger bias towards their local governments than towards the government of the Union; unless the force of that principle should be destroyed by a much better administration of the latter

The overwhelming “source of popular obedience and attachment” between individuals and their state governments, believes Hamilton, is “the ordinary administration of criminal and civil justice.” One ponders the present allocation of powers among federal, state, and local governments when reading:

[The ordinary administration of criminal and civil justice], being the immediate and visible guardian of life and property, having its benefits and its terrors in constant activity before the public eye, regulating all those personal interests and familiar concerns to which the sensibility of individuals is more immediately awake, contributes, more than any other circumstance, to impressing upon the minds of the people, affection, esteem, and reverence towards the government.

…national government, on the other hand, falling less immediately under the observation of the mass of the citizens, the benefits derived from it will chiefly be perceived and attended to by speculative men. Relating to more general interests, they will be less apt to come home to the feelings of the people; and, in proportion, less likely to inspire an habitual sense of obligation, and an active sentiment of attachment.

Because we see our district attorneys prosecuting the crimes that we have defined as voters, because we appeal to our town zoning boards to allow some new land use, and because we petition our town councils to adopt or strike new ordinances, we “revere” our nearby governments. But has this borne out?

It may be we are not so far from Hamilton’s view of generalized national government and particularized local government. Often, the federal government merely suggests that states take up federal initiatives and offers money in return for assent. A history of accepting such a system, rather than the Constitution’s structure, is what really yokes state governments to federal policy. And it remains true that a good deal of the rules that really affect us day-to-day are decided upon by state and local leaders. The problem is that most of us don’t know their names.

Hamilton’s prediction that folks will pay more attention to local rather than federal government, though, is clearly wrong.

For this, though, Hamilton is half forgiven for not foreseeing the future of television. My hunch is that we are more attuned to national elections and Congressional play-byy than to our town councils precisely because the former are more generalized. It is easier to latch onto the broad brush opinions surfacing federally than onto the specificity of local zoning decisions. More to the point, national media companies cannot cover the details of local governments, but can certainly report from Washington. On that note, Hamilton perhaps could have predicted (he did know of a B. Franklin) a press ambitious for a national audience.

The major stick in the hub of this essay’s wheel is the power that federal agencies have absorbed. For the most part, state and local governments really do affect more day-to-day activities of people. What you can do on public streets and sidewalks, on your yard, with your yard; the income you donate to the greater good; the portion you pay beyond the actual price of food or goods—are all largely state and local decisions. Even where Congress attaches conditions to funding, the federal law is not often prescriptive, and allows some wiggle room for state and local adjustments. If that is the paradigm Hamilton imagined, though, federal agencies confuse things quite a bit. Now, most often, agencies take on the role of specifying what Congress left vague, stripping some of that discretion from states. We need to flesh out the details to find out whether Hamilton would be dismayed at the role of agencies—maybe in another post.

Madisonian History (F18)

At long last, we’re back to the Federalist.  Last we heard, Hamilton was predicting that Americans would pay vastly more attention and naturally ascribe power to local and state governments.

Madison tags in with F18, pleasing his classical studies professor right off the bat with an allusion to the Delphic amphictyonic council, the  religious-event-planning-committee cum political confederation of ancient Greek city states.  With a few exceptions, Madison thinks the amphictyonic council is a fitting analogy to the U.S. under the Articles of Confederation.  I’d be obliged to hear thoughts from my old professors and old brother.

The members retained the character of independent and sovereign states, and had equal votes in the federal council. This council had a general authority to propose and resolve whatever it judged necessary for the common welfare of Greece; to declare and carry on war; to decide, in the last resort, all controversies between the members; to fine the aggressing party; to employ the whole force of the confederacy against the disobedient; to admit new members. The Amphictyons were the guardians of religion, and of the immense riches belonging to the temple of Delphos, where they had the right of jurisdiction in controversies between the inhabitants and those who came to consult the oracle. As a further provision for the efficacy of the federal powers, they took an oath mutually to defend and protect the united cities, to punish the violators of this oath, and to inflict vengeance on sacrilegious despoilers of the temple.

Works in theory.  But, says Madison, “Very different, nevertheless, was the experiment from the theory.”  The larger siblings, the wranglings between Lacedaemonians and Athenians exposed “the ambition and jealousy of its most powerful members, and the dependent and degraded condition of the rest.”  Hence in-fighting, the Peloponnesian war, Phocians plowing up consecrated grounds and refusing any international demands, Alexander’s dad taking over, and so forth.

Madison then compares the previous to the Achaean league, a union “far more intimate, and its organization much wiser, than in the preceding instance.”

The cities composing this league retained their municipal jurisdiction, appointed their own officers, and enjoyed a perfect equality. The senate, in which they were represented, had the sole and exclusive right of peace and war; of sending and receiving ambassadors; of entering into treaties and alliances; of appointing a chief magistrate or praetor, as he was called, who commanded their armies, and who, with the advice and consent of ten of the senators, not only administered the government in the recess of the senate, but had a great share in its deliberations, when assembled. According to the primitive constitution, there were two praetors associated in the administration; but on trial a single one was preferred. It appears that the cities had all the same laws and customs, the same weights and measures, and the same money. But how far this effect proceeded from the authority of the federal council is left in uncertainty. It is said only that the cities were in a manner compelled to receive the same laws and usages.

And so on.  Madison, in fact, does not reach in the entire essay the “thus, you see by anology, our current confederation does not work” that you expect while reading F18. Rather, he lets History speak for itself.

I have thought it not superfluous to give the outlines of this important portion of history; both because it teaches more than one lesson, and because, as a supplement to the outlines of the Achaean constitution, it emphatically illustrates the tendency of federal bodies rather to anarchy among the members, than to tyranny in the head.

I wonder, then, what a liberally educated reader in 1787 conclude from this?  To know, we need to know the extent to which readers of the New York Packet were inclined to connect anaologies between their government and those of ancient Greece.  My sense is: more than now, but not most.  F18 is interesting in it’s own right as a description of ancient Greek history written in 1787 America.  How does the account compare to those of 2008 historians?  I’m curious how my hisorian-brother would respond to Madson’s essay.

Coming back to that point on Madison’s contemporaneous readers – it is interesting that F18 seems to make the lest reference thus far to the subject mater of these essays, the new Constitution.  Nor does it describe the Articles of Confederation.  Rather, Madison lets history speak for itself, suggesting his belief that the intended audience could indeed link classical history to the present day.

Federalist 19 and the nerveless body; or, The Original Originalist

James Madison offered a walking tour of ancient greek government associations in F18, and fast forwards to his contemporary germanic empire in F19.  I see, here, the clear evidence for a historiographical 400 level college course titled “The Federalist Papers and the Role of History in Late 18th Century America.”

One immediate takeaway is Madison’s letting history speak for itself.  A good essay question for that college course would ask whether this is strictly Madisonian, or was his audience inclined to make the connection between history (and current events abroad) and the present controversy in America: the Constitution’s proposed structure of government.

That said, I suppose Madison isn’t really letting history speak for itself.  It is true that he makes no direct “this-thus-this” analogy with the early American situation; but, his telling of history (his interpretation of history) betrays his point.  For instance, speaking of the germanic empire:

The fundamental principle on which it rests, that the empire is a community of sovereigns, that the diet is a representation of sovereigns and that the laws are addressed to sovereigns, renders the empire a nerveless body, incapable of regulating its own members, insecure against external dangers, and agitated with unceasing fermentations in its own bowels.

One can see in Madison’s telling of history and his interpretation of current events the roots of current Originalist jurisprudence.  And in both, the two (in my mind) dominant themes exist: (1) the earnest attempt to use historical and existing events to add knowledge to one’s present decision; and (2) the fallacy that one can evoke and discuss those events without fundamentally interpreting them.

The trilogy ends at The Hague (F20)

I’ve long been fascinated with city (or borough) names that contain “The” before the more descriptive moniker.  What other ‘the’ towns join The Hague (or The Bronx)?  I suppose I could start saying I live in The D.C., but that sounds pompous, while people will correct you if you mention traveling to Hague – much as a mention of traveling to southern France will solicit the dependable “ah, The South of France?”

That aside, Madison and Hamilton finished the trilogy of unsuccessful confederacies with The Netherlands.  I call F18 – F20 a trilogy (despite their being part of a longer “The Same Subject Continued” series) because these past three involved observations of the ghosts of confederacies ancient, medieval, and present (with apologies to Chuck).   (Also interesting: these past three, according to my copy, have been written by Madison in collaboration with Hamilton – I’m curious how many more essays involve both set of hands.)

While the past several essays addressed the inadequacy of the American Confederation existing prior to the Constitution, these past three attempt to draw lessons from prior examples.  F20 sort-of hammers in the point that a structure of cooperating governments – like the states after the Revolutionary War – is prone to work in theory but not in practice. More than likely, according to Pubius’ examples, one or two states will out-muscle the lesser states.  In F18, we saw that Athens used the Persian defense league to form an Empire.  In F20, we see that the structure at The Hague engendered greater and lesser powers among the supposedly equal provinces.

How, then, do we prevent “The Insufficiencies of the Present Union” resulting in another example of failed confederacy?  These essays don’t yet bring us to the details, other than to note the problem of a weak constitution (“A weak constitution must necessarily terminate in dissolution, for want of proper powers, or the usurpation of powers requisite for the public safety”) and this moral of the stories:

The important truth, which it unequivocally pronounces in the present case, is that a sovereignty over sovereigns, a government over governments, a legislation for communities, as contradistinguished from individuals, as it is a solecism in theory, so in practice it is subversive of the order and ends of civil polity, by substituting violence in place of law, or the destructive coercion of the sword in place of the mild and salutary coercion of the magistracy.

(a solecism, not being in my immediate vocabulary, is a blunder, or a deviation from normal order)

Publius is building the foundation of a structural argument for the Constitution – we now know that we must avoid government over governments and legislation for communities.  But, without peeking at the forthcoming essays, what does this mean?  Am I off in finding it weird that the structural argument for a Constitution that pronounces itself “the supreme Law of the Land” warns against a government over governments?

Or, is Pubius arguing that, without a Federal referee, the confederated states will devolve into unequal powers?

Sanction-monious Hamilton; F21

Federalist 21 provides our first (or one of the first) direct attack(s) on the Articles of Confederation; namely, the Articles’ failures to establish sanctions against disobedient states or a federal guaranty, and the Articles’ system of states’ contributions to the treasury via quotas.  Perhaps we’ll come back to the guaranty and tax issues.  For now, though, let’s think about sanctions and Article 2 of the Articles of Confederation.

With the buildup to the direct attacks on the present system, I wondered how the Articles would be introduced to the Federalists audience.  It’s interesting, then, that Hamilton unceremoniously brings AoC Article 2 without a general introduction to the Articles.  To be sure, his readers lived under the Articles and needed an introduction as much as we do to the Constitution.  Still, with the history lesson that preceeded this essay, I thought we might get something.   Rather, Hamilton slides in this quote:

Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.

Hamilton brings out Article 2 while bemoaning the inability of states to sanction other states that rang on agreements.  Indeed, he suggests, without mapping it out, that this passage is the sole potential source (“by inference and construction”) of authority for states to “use force against delinquent members.”  On a hunch, the argument goes like this: the Articles of Confederation do not delegate authority to the United States (central government) to sanction disobedient states; thus, the “power, jurisdiction, and right” to enforce interstate agreements lies with each state.  Hamilton, though, presents the notion in order to dismiss it – apparently states were not  sanctioning each other pursuant to the AoC.

The Articles’ have an image problem of being chili without heat – that is the basic setup to any Constitutional history of law course.  Apart from the truth of the presumption, I’m curious if it was a given for Hamilton’s audience.  Or, did the Federalists win a PR battle that set the paradigm for US history courses to come.

Putting aside F21′s argument, I appreciate the essay for reminding me of the similarity between the above noted the Article 2 of Confederacy and the 10th Amendment.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Hamilton’s quick, albeit dismissive, evocation of Article 2–that it can be interpreted, that an important power or right can be teased out–is familiar to today’s reader.  We are quite used to agreeing or disagreeing with the Court’s expansive or restrictive interpretations, often of the initial amendments capped with Number 10.  As such, Hamilton allusion to what I suppose was an existing debate about the boundaries of Article 2′s scope has me wondering: how much pre-Constitutional debate did we have that mirrored Constitutional debate (scope, interpretation, textualism…was there debate over a ‘living’ Articles of Confederation)?

Federalist Paper # 22: Ten Things I Hate About the Articles of Confederation, Part II

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!

The Maniac, Maniac on the Convention Floor (Federalist 23)

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.

more jumping jacks for the energetic government

A few days after posting on Hamilton’s vision of an energetic government in F23, I listened to an archived debate from the Constitution Center in Philly. John C. Bogle and Peter J. Wallison offered opposing views on financial industry regulation; and in the mix, Bogle quoted a David Brook’s column from the Times that, in turn, evoked our energetic government. So I’ll do the same; perhaps these segments from Brooks’ column can help us get at what Hamilton envisions in F23:

There are two major political parties in America, but there are at least three major political tendencies. The first is orthodox liberalism, a belief in using government to maximize equality. The second is free-market conservatism, the belief in limiting government to maximize freedom.

But there is a third tendency, which floats between. It is for using limited but energetic government to enhance social mobility. This tendency began with Alexander Hamilton, who created a vibrant national economy so more people could rise and succeed. It matured with Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War Republicans, who created the Land Grant College Act and the Homestead Act to give people the tools to pursue their ambitions. It continued with Theodore Roosevelt, who busted the trusts to give more Americans a square deal.

…

Members of this tradition are Americanized Burkeans, or to put it another way, progressive conservatives.

…

The Hamiltonian-Bull Moose tendency is the great, moderate strain in American politics. In some sense this whole campaign was a contest to see which party could reach out from its base and occupy that centrist ground. The Democratic Party did that. Senitor Democrats like Robert Rubin, Larry Summers and Jason Furman actually created something called The Hamilton Project to lay out a Hamiltonian approach for our day.

F23 is about the minimum power that government needs in order to do those things that it appropriately ought to do: the “necessity of a Constitution, at least equally energetic with the one proposed, to the preservation of the Union, is the point at the examination of which we are now arrived.”

So Brooks ties together energy and limitation in his third (and, to his sadness, unheard) political tendency.

I don’t get that pairing out of Hamilton’s F23; indeed the essay seemed quite removed from a call to limits. To be fair, though, I doubt Brooks is basing his Hamiltonian-Bull Moose 3rd stream on F23. So we shall have see whether Brooks rightly describes Hamilton’s understanding of an energetic government as we go through future Federalists.

I wonder if Hamilton’s governmental energy is more synonymous with action or vigor. Action, as in activity, doing things, taking on responsibilities. Or vigor, as in a quick jolt, an ability to act quickly, effectiveness. I can imagine the former weeding out, and swallowing up jurisdictions; while I can imagine the latter possibly pairing with limits.

Federalist Paper 24:  Nothing More Than an Experiment Upon the Public Credulity

This Paper is intended to answer a specific objection advanced by the Anti-Federalists:  that the 1787 Constitution did not provide adequate safeguards against the existence of a standing army in peacetime (an outdated objection in our day and age).  Hamilton’s counter-argument, in a nutshell, is that we don’t have to worry about the President using the army to undermine the remainder of the government and to usurp kingly power, because it is thelegislative branch who keeps the military’s purse strings.

What I found most interesting about F24 was Publius’s sizeable digression into what he saw as the Anti-Federalists’ dishonesty in advancing this objection to the Constitution.  In some of the strongest language we’ve seen yet, he wrote that the Anti-Feds’ argument regarding the standing army “was nothing more than an experiment upon the public credulity, dictated either by a deliberate intention to deceive or by the overflowings of a zeal too intemperate to be ingenuous.”  Later, he rants that the Anti-Federalist position results from “the dishonest artifices of a sinister and unprincipled opposition to a plan which ought at least to receive a fair and candid examination from all sincere lovers of their country!” (exclamation point original!)

222 years later, these bitter criticisms seem equally applicable to much of the public discourse.  Sarah Palin has been offering rhetoric about “death panels” in connection with the current health care debate – and her stance is being condemned even by her fellow Republicans.  Are her remarks the result of “a deliberate intention to deceive” or “the overflowing of a zeal too intemperate to be ingenuous”?  And the nonsensical flap over President Obama’s citizenship and religious persuasion – seems like a great example of  “an experiment upon the public credulity.”

Certainly both the 2009 rhetoric and the 1787 rhetoric appear to be directed at manipulating the public’s fears (although it is not always obvious to what end – accumulating more power, I guess?).  The Anti-Feds in 1787 were, according to Hamilton, trying to get the public to freak out by insinuating that the President would have sole command of a standing army on American soil, which he would likely use to oppress the people and bend them to his will.  Similarly, Palin has been trying to get folks to believe the Democrats’ health plan would force doctors to engage in triage and ultimately refuse to give health care to the very weakest, most helpless members of our society (everybody has two grandmas, after all, and no one wants the government to pull the plug on them!).  Likewise, those who constantly repeat their refrains about the President’s citizenship and alleged Muslim ties are trying to take advantage of the fears created by 9/11 and people’s general fear of other people unlike themselves.

“A Fatal Instrument to Overturn the Public Liberties”:  The Anti-Federalist View of the Standing Army

“The man who reproves another for a fault, should be careful that he himself be not guilty of it.”  — Brutus,  Essay IX, 17 January 1788, in a rebuttal of Federalist Paper 24

Some off-blog discussions with Andrew got me curious about whether the Anti-Federalists truly deserved F24’s bile.  Purely as rhetoric for its own sake, the Paper’s strong language could serve as a check to current political discourse – but if Publius’s criticism was actually warranted, it would pack even more of a punch.  So I dusted off my copy of The Anti-Federalist, which is actually an abridged version of The Complete Anti-Federalist, edited by Herbert J. Strong.  Even within the constraints of the abridged version, the Anti-Federalists have lots and lots to say about the evil of standing armies!  Interestingly enough, the majority of anti-standing army essays seem to have been written afterF24.  Apparently Publius’s angry expostulations set off quite the firestorm of reaction on this particular topic.

But I’m getting ahead of myself:  first, as to whether the cold rage of F24 fell upon deserving heads:  I would say, in the end, no.  Of the Anti-Fed writings that predate F24’s 12/21/87 publication, consider the following:

In despotic governments, as well as in all the monarchies of Europe, standing armies are kept up to execute the commands of the prince or the magistrate, and are employed for this purpose when occasion requires:  But they have always proved the destruction of liberty, and [are] abhorrent to the spirit of a free republic. . . .  A free republic will never keep a standing army to execute its laws.  It must depend upon the support of its citizens.

– Brutus, Essay I, 18 October 1787, writing, as Publius does, “To the Citizens of the State of New-York”

Patrick Henry also weighed in, somewhat less coherently (but we forgive him, since this is only the transcription of a speech rather than a considered piece of writing):

Did you ever read of any revolution in any nation, brought about by the punishment of those in power, inflicted by those who had no power at all?  You read of a riot act in a country which is called one of the freest in the world, where a few neighbours cannot assemble without the risk of being shot by a hired soldiery, the engines of despotism.  We may see such an act in America.  A standing army we shall have also, to execute the execrable demands of tyranny:  And how are you to punish them?  Will you order them to be punished?  Who shall obey these orders?

– Speech to the Virginia State Ratifying Convention, 5 June 1788

There is anger and fear here, but both Brutus (whoever he was) and P. Henry also appeal to reason and to a sober consideration of the examples of history, as Publius himself loves to do in his more didactic moments.  Even more tellingly, the United States has historically always refused (and continues to refuse to this very day) to deploy its military on American soil.  So in that sense, the Anti-Feds have won out.  In short, Brutus and Henry voice entirely legitimate objections, and it is hardly fair of Publius to label them unprincipled or disingenuous or sinister.

Brutus was apparently of the same opinion, because in a mid-January 1788 address to the New York citizenry, he devotes a good bit of space to laying out a blow-by-blow refutation of F24, which he prefaces with the following:

A writer, who is the boast of the advocates of this new constitution [take that, Hamilton!], has taken great pains to shew, that this power [of maintaining a standing army] was proper and necessary to be vested in the general government.  He sets out with calling in question the candour and integrity of those who advance the objection, and with insinuating, that it is their intention to mislead the people, by alarming their passions, rather than to convince them by arguments addressed to their understandings.  The man who reproves another for a fault, should be careful that he himself be not guilty of it.  How far this writer has manifested a spirit of candour, and has pursued fair reasoning on this subject, the impartial public will judge, when his arguments pass before them in review.

– Brutus, Essay IX

Hamilton, unlike the Anti-Feds, pretty much deserved this kind of dressing down.  And what is more, Publius really set himself up for a hypocrite’s fall with F24’s over-reaction.

All that said, The Ham still can’t be beat for pure rhetorical beauty.  And even if the words of F24 weren’t entirely disingenuous, I still wish more of today’s politicians and talking heads would take them to heart.

little, cold wars (F25)

Hamilton continues the national army argument with F25.  Perhaps it is his romantic attachment to arms (see, below, the last lines of his letter, at age 15, to his buddy Ned), but he really brings out the gems when arguing for the army, beginning with some projections on the lack of a national army.

As some states, facing threats in greater proportion, would ramp up defenses; other states might ramp up simply not to be outdone by their neighbors.  I imagined a cold war of muskets and canons among the early American states while reading Hamilton’s column:

The States, to whose lot it might fall to support the necessary establishments, would be as little able as willing, for a considerable time to come, to bear the burden of competent provisions. The security of all would thus be subjected to the parsimony, improvidence, or inability of a part. If the resources of such part becoming more abundant and extensive, its provisions should be proportionally enlarged, the other States would quickly take the alarm at seeing the whole military force of the Union in the hands of two or three of its members, and those probably amongst the most powerful. They would each choose to have some counterpoise, and pretenses could easily be contrived. In this situation, military establishments, nourished by mutual jealousy, would be apt to swell beyond their natural or proper size; and being at the separate disposal of the members, they would be engines for the abridgment or demolition of the national authority.

On the notion that a national army is preferable to several state forces, the following is exemplary of Hamilton’s rhetoric of what would seem common sense (I’m reminded of Lincoln, here).  Isn’t it better to have an army against which we are guarded?

As far as an army may be considered as a dangerous weapon of power, it had better be in those hands of which the people are most likely to be jealous than in those of which they are least likely to be jealous. For it is a truth, which the experience of ages has attested, that the people are always most in danger when the means of injuring their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion.

Apparently the anti-feds argued that we should perhaps only allow a standing army in time of conflict; or to not allow the Nation to raise an army during peace.  To the former, Hamilton figures it will always be possible to plead conflict (Hamilton: “Indian hostilities, instigated by Spain or Britain, would always be at hand.” He’s probably right – think of post-WWII defense-spending rhetoric.)  To the latter, Hamilton wonders why America ought to be the only nation “incapacitated by its Constitution to prepare for defense.”

—

I was interested to read the following bit about a standing army as opposed to the militia.  Still a novice in American history, I didn’t know much about the revolutionary-period militias.  I reckoned they were what made up our army.  Nope.

I’m about through with another Modern Scholar lecture series – this one is Joseph Ellis’ lectures on “founding brothers,” riffing from his well-regarded book.  Just this morning, I listened to Ellis’ lecture on the war.  One of his takeaway points was that we didn’t need to win, we just needed the British lose (the lecture also analogizes the strategic character of the Revolutionary War to that of Vietnam); and the British lost because they didn’t realize soon enough what they needed to go after.  Rather than seize any geographical spot, they needed to destroy the revolutionary army.  And, perhaps because Howe didn’t pursue Washington across New Jersey, the British lost their chance to really crush the American army.

Ellis urges that it is a myth (and was an early developed myth) that rag-tag militias won the war.  The specifics of military history and strategic lessons aside, it was interesting to learn that there was a politics to the militia/army distinction; and to whom the credit for winning belonged.  Connecting the dots, it makes sense: the army was national, the militias were state-mustered.  I suppose I should have been a bit more on top of that history afterHeller.

In any event, Ellis argues that Washington and Hamilton certainly embraced the conclusion that the army, not the militia, won the war (by not getting crushed; thus, by existing).

Which all makes this fit right in:

Here I expect we shall be told that the militia of the country is its natural bulwark, and would be at all times equal to the national defense. This doctrine, in substance, had like to have lost us our independence. It cost millions to the United States that might have been saved. The facts which, from our own experience, forbid a reliance of this kind, are too recent to permit us to be the dupes of such a suggestion. The steady operations of war against a regular and disciplined army can only be successfully conducted by a force of the same kind.

—

Finally, Hamilton argues that it does not matter what we put down as rules.  Pointing to Shays’ Rebellion, he figures that the states will produce armed forces regardless of processes dictated by law: “how unequal parchment provisions are to a struggle with public necessity.”

Perhaps I’m feeling easily moved, but Hamilton seems to have really put out some solid rhetoric with F25.

–

…I’m confident, Ned that my Youth excludes me from any hopes of immediate Perferment, nor do I desire it, but I mean to prepare the way for futurity, I’m no Philosopher you see and may be justly said to Build Castles in the Air, my Folly makes me ashamed and beg youll conceal it, yet Neddy we have seen such schemes successful when the Projector is Constant. I shall Conclude saying I wish there was a war.

(note to the future)

Eventually we will get to Federalist 77. When we do, we ought come back to this point and counterpoint from Seth Tillman and Jeremy Bailey.

On first glance of F77, Hamilton seems to be urging the Senate’s role in decommissioning executive appointees.  That’s a bit of a puzzle, as a student of Hamilton’s wouldn’t presume him to make such a case.  Tillman urges a re-reading, focusing on the word “displace,” and the contemporary meanings of the term.  That Hamilton argues for the Senate’s advisory role in displacing an appointee is not so strange if that word means “replacing.”

Bailey responds with support of the standing notion that Hamilton really did argue for limits on executive removal powers.

That said, we’ll likely hold our blogging tongues until we reach that conundrum.

F26 and the Golden Mean

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.

the federal government pulling our heartstrings (F27)

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.