Posted on 02/22/2010 7:42:21 AM PST by Publius
Ping! The thread has been posted.
Earlier threads:
FReeper Book Club: The Debate over the Constitution
5 Oct 1787, Centinel #1
6 Oct 1787, James Wilson’s Speech at the State House
8 Oct 1787, Federal Farmer #1
9 Oct 1787, Federal Farmer #2
18 Oct 1787, Brutus #1
22 Oct 1787, John DeWitt #1
Are you using the ‘Library of America’ edition?
Woops! It’s Federalist #1, not the other one. My bad.
Liberty Online after editing to our format.
My personal distaste for Hamilton the man make any objective reading of his writing quite difficult for me but I WILL try!
marked for later study
Thank you.
You and me both, Bigun.
I’d like to see Brutus and Hamilton’s commentary on the Judiciary put side by side. Brutus 78-84 vs. Hamilton 70-something-80 something. I think Brutus nails that whole section, and to me, it should have been decisive. Fatal defects in Article 3.
I consider Hamilton to be a thoroughly dishonest and loathsome individual but that’s just me.
bttt
Would that have anything to do with his support of unconstitutional central banks?
Take your time. The trend I’ve discovered is that these threads will generate discussion for a week or more for those students who really take this material seriously.
Put yourself in his position. For three weeks, the States' Men had control of the debate with only a short speech from James Wilson of Pennsylvania to support the Constitution.
Meanwhile, a Pennsylvania jurist's son has fired an artillery barrage and has hit some targets. An anonymous writer from New York has dissected the document like a surgeon and exposed significant flaws. A learned and respected jurist from New York has torn Hamilton a new one. An anonymous lawyer from Massachusetts has played the prosecutor and -- come Thursday -- will issue a detailed bill of indictment against Hamilton's project.
Hamilton needed to get the debate back into his court, and the only way to do this was to hit back first and lay out his course of action as superior.
It's interesting to note that the next four Federalist Papers were about foreign affairs and were written by his fellow New York lawyer, John Jay. They will come up next week and the week after.
Under the treaty, pre-war debt of former colonists were to be paid. Since there was no judiciary under the Articles, British creditors could not sue in court.
In retaliation, the Brits continued to occupy frontier forts and lands that should have been transferred to the US. The Brits also incited indian raids on American frontiersmen and their families.
Most of these prewar debts were owed by southern planters and most of them were owed by Virginians. So yes, there was a self serving interest among some powerful people to retain a fundamentally weak government.
Then, as today there were people who put their narrow self interest ahead of their country.
Under the Constitution the terms of the treaty were honored and America could expand westward.
In my view EVERYTHING Hamilton did was for one purpose only and that purpose is to further the personal interests of Mr. Hamilton!
He was, IMHO, the original (at least in so far as the United States is concerned) “what’s in it for me” fellow.
How has that affected your view of Washington, post-war? What is your opinion of Washington, post-war?
Hamilton clears the High Road with a whiff of patronizing declarations.
10 Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every state to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument and consequence of the offices they hold under the state establishments, and the perverted ambition of another class of men, who will either hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of their country or will flatter themselves with fairer prospects of elevation from the subdivision of the empire into several partial confederacies than from its union under one government.
Then...
19 For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword.
What the ???? He just fought in a revolution to throw off an oppressive government. He had threatened to resign his commission had he not been given the opportunity to draw blood. Just as a lack of Judicial effectiveness will spawn vigilantism, the lack of an effective government will result in an armed revolution. Perhaps he was all too aware of the power of an armed opponent. Can't we all just play nice?
25 An over scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good.
Although the sentence is rather convoluted I think the gist is that it's faulty logic to put individual rights above those of the 'public good', however that might be defined. Erring on the side of our God given Rights is admonished. With no direct reference to 'public good' maintaining or strengthening those Rights I must assume he intended the public good to trump.
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