FReeper Book Club: The Debate over the Constitution, Federalist #11

Hamilton’s experience in the West Indies as a businessman in the import-export trade showed him the importance of a navy in the successful projection of power. It should be no surprise that the examples he chose for his lesson were all based on his experiences in the islands.

² The importance of the Union in a commercial light is one of those points about which there is least room to entertain a difference of opinion and which has in fact commanded the most general assent of men who have any acquaintance with the subject.

³ This applies as well to our intercourse with foreign countries as with each other.

⁴ There are appearances to authorize a supposition that the adventurous spirit, which distinguishes the commercial character of America, has already excited uneasy sensations in several of the maritime powers of Europe.

⁵ They seem to be apprehensive of our too great interference in that carrying trade which is the support of their navigation and the foundation of their naval strength.

⁶ Those of them which have colonies in America look forward to what this country is capable of becoming with painful solicitude.

⁷ They foresee the dangers that may threaten their American dominions from the neighborhood of states which have all the dispositions and would possess all the means requisite to the creation of a powerful marine.

⁸ Impressions of this kind will naturally indicate the policy of fostering divisions among us and of depriving us as far as possible of an active commerce in our own bottoms.

⁹ This would answer the threefold purpose of preventing our interference in their navigation, of monopolizing the profits of our trade, and of clipping the wings by which we might soar to a dangerous greatness.

¹⁰ Did not prudence forbid the detail, it would not be difficult to trace, by facts, the workings of this policy to the cabinets of ministers.

¹¹ If we continue united, we may counteract a policy so unfriendly to our prosperity in a variety of ways.

¹² 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.

¹³ This assertion will not appear chimerical to those who are able to appreciate the importance of the markets of three millions of people, increasing in rapid progression, for the most part exclusively addicted to agriculture, and likely from local circumstances to remain so, to any manufacturing nation, and the immense difference there would be to the trade and navigation of such a nation between a direct communication in its own ships and an indirect conveyance of its products and returns to and from America in the ships of another country.

¹⁴ 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?

¹⁵ 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?

¹⁶ When these questions have been asked upon other occasions, they have received a plausible, but not a solid or satisfactory, answer.

¹⁷ It has been said that prohibitions on our part would produce no change in the system of Britain because she could prosecute her trade with us through the medium of the Dutch who would be her immediate customers and paymasters for those articles which were wanted for the supply of our markets.

¹⁸ But would not her navigation be materially injured by the loss of the important advantage of being her own carrier in that trade?

¹⁹ Would not the principal part of its profits be intercepted by the Dutch as a compensation for their agency and risk?

²⁰ Would not the mere circumstance of freight occasion a considerable deduction?

²¹ Would not so circuitous an intercourse facilitate the competitions of other nations by enhancing the price of British commodities in our markets and by transferring to other hands the management of this interesting branch of the British commerce?

²² A mature consideration of the objects suggested by these questions will justify a belief that the real disadvantages to Britain from such a state of things, conspiring with the pre-possessions of a great part of the nation in favor of the American trade, and with the importunities of the West India islands, would produce a relaxation in her present system and would let us into the enjoyment of privileges in the markets of those islands elsewhere from which our trade would derive the most substantial benefits.

²³ Such a point gained from the British government, and which could not be expected without an equivalent in exemptions and immunities in our markets, would be likely to have a correspondent effect on the conduct of other nations who would not be inclined to see themselves altogether supplanted in our trade.

²⁴ A further resource for influencing the conduct of European nations toward us in this respect would arise from the establishment of a federal navy.

²⁵ There can be no doubt that the continuance of the Union under an efficient government would put it in our power, at a period not very distant, to create a navy which, 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.

²⁶ This would be more peculiarly the case in relation to operations in the West Indies.

²⁷ 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.

²⁹ And if to this consideration we add that of the usefulness of supplies from this country in the prosecution of military operations in the West Indies, it will readily be perceived that a situation so favorable would enable us to bargain with great advantage for commercial privileges.

³⁰ A price would be set not only upon our friendship but upon our neutrality.

³¹ By a steady adherence to the Union we may hope [before] long to become the arbiter of Europe in America and to be able to incline the balance of European competitions in this part of the world as our interest may dictate.

³² But in the reverse of this eligible situation, we shall discover that the [rivalries] of the parts would make them checks upon each other and would frustrate all the tempting advantages which nature has kindly placed within our reach.

³³ In a state so insignificant, our commerce would be a prey to the wanton [meddling] of all nations at war with each other, who, having nothing to fear from us, would with little scruple or remorse supply their wants by depredations on our property as often as it fell in their way.

³⁴ The rights of neutrality will only be respected when they are defended by an adequate power.

³⁵ A nation despicable by its weakness forfeits even the privilege of being neutral.

³⁶ Under a vigorous national government, the natural strength and resources of the country, directed to a common interest, would baffle all the combinations of European jealousy to restrain our growth.

³⁷ This situation would even take away the motive to such combinations by inducing an impracticability of success.

³⁸ An active commerce, an extensive navigation and a flourishing marine would then be the offspring of moral and physical necessity.

³⁹ We might defy the little arts of the little politicians to control or vary the irresistible and unchangeable course of nature.

⁴⁰ But in a state of disunion, these combinations might exist and might operate with success.

⁴¹ 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.

⁴² We should then be compelled to content ourselves with the first price of our commodities and to see the profits of our trade snatched from us to enrich our enemies and persecutors.

⁴³ That unequaled spirit of enterprise, which signalizes the genius of the American merchants and navigators and which is in itself an inexhaustible mine of national wealth, would be stifled and lost, and poverty and disgrace would overspread a country which with wisdom might make herself the admiration and envy of the world.

⁴⁴ There are rights of great moment to the trade of America which are rights of the Union – I allude to the fisheries, to the navigation of the western lakes, and to that of the Mississippi.

⁴⁵ The dissolution of the Confederacy would give room for delicate questions concerning the future existence of these rights, which the interest of more powerful partners would hardly fail to solve to our disadvantage.

⁴⁶ The disposition of Spain with regard to the Mississippi needs no comment.

⁴⁷ France and Britain are concerned with us in the fisheries and view them as of the utmost moment to their navigation.

⁴⁸ They of course would hardly remain long indifferent to that decided mastery of which experience has shown us to be possessed in this valuable branch of traffic and by which we are able to undersell those nations in their own markets.

⁴⁹ What more natural than that they should be disposed to exclude from the lists such dangerous competitors?

⁵¹ All the navigating states may in different degrees advantageously participate in it and under circumstances of a greater extension of mercantile capital would not be unlikely to do it.

⁵² As a nursery of seamen, it now is, or when time shall have more nearly assimilated the principles of navigation in the several states will become, a universal resource.

⁵⁴ To this great national object, a navy, union will contribute in various ways.

⁵⁵ Every institution will grow and flourish in proportion to the quantity and extent of the means concentered towards its formation and support.

⁵⁶ A navy of the United States, as it would embrace the resources of all, is an object far less remote than a navy of any single state or partial confederacy, which would only embrace the resources of a single part.

⁵⁷ It happens indeed that different portions of confederated America possess each some peculiar advantage for this essential establishment.

⁵⁸ The more southern states furnish in greater abundance certain kinds of naval stores – tar, pitch and turpentine.

⁵⁹ Their wood for the construction of ships is also of a more solid and lasting texture.

⁶⁰ The difference in the duration of the ships of which the navy might be composed, if chiefly constructed of southern wood, would be of signal importance, either in the view of naval strength or of national economy.

⁶¹ Some of the southern and of the middle states yield a greater plenty of iron and of better quality.

⁶³ The necessity of naval protection to external or maritime commerce does not require a particular elucidation, no more than the conduciveness of that species of commerce to the prosperity of a navy.

⁶⁴ An unrestrained intercourse between the states themselves will advance the trade of each by an interchange of their respective productions, not only for the supply of reciprocal wants at home, but for exportation to foreign markets.

⁶⁵ The veins of commerce in every part will be replenished and will acquire additional motion and vigor from a free circulation of the commodities of every part.

⁶⁶ Commercial enterprise will have much greater scope from the diversity in the productions of different states.

⁶⁷ When the staple of one fails from a bad harvest or unproductive crop, it can call to its aid the staple of another.

⁶⁸ The variety, not less than the value, of products for exportation contributes to the activity of foreign commerce.

⁶⁹ It can be conducted upon much better terms with a large number of materials of a given value than with a small number of materials of the same value, arising from the competitions of trade and from the fluctuations of markets.

⁷⁰ Particular articles may be in great demand at certain periods and unsalable at others, but if there be a variety of articles, it can scarcely happen that they should all be at one time in the latter predicament, and on this account the operations of the merchant would be less liable to any considerable obstruction or stagnation.

⁷¹ The speculative trader will at once perceive the force of these observations and will acknowledge that the aggregate balance of the commerce of the United States would bid fair to be much more favorable than that of the thirteen states without union or with partial unions.

⁷² It may perhaps be replied to this, that whether the states are united or disunited, there would still be an intimate intercourse between them which would answer the same ends; this intercourse would be fettered, interrupted and narrowed by a multiplicity of causes, which in the course of these papers have been amply detailed.

⁷³ A unity of commercial, as well as political, interests can only result from a unity of government.

⁷⁴ There are other points of view in which this subject might be placed of a striking and animating kind.

⁷⁵ But they would lead us too far into the regions of futurity and would involve topics not proper for a newspaper discussion.

⁷⁶ I shall briefly observe that our situation invites, and our interests prompt, us to aim at an ascendant in the system of American affairs.

⁷⁷ The world may politically, as well as geographically, be divided into four parts, each having a distinct set of interests.

⁷⁸ Unhappily for the other three, Europe, by her arms and by her negotiations, by force and by fraud, has in different degrees extended her dominion over them all.

⁸⁰ The superiority she has long maintained has tempted her to plume herself as the Mistress of the World and to consider the rest of mankind as created for her benefit.

⁸¹ Men admired as profound philosophers have in direct terms attributed to her inhabitants a physical superiority and have gravely asserted that all animals, and with them the human species, degenerate in America – that even dogs cease to bark after having breathed awhile in our atmosphere.

⁸² Facts have too long supported these arrogant pretensions of the Europeans.

⁸³ It belongs to us to vindicate the honor of the human race and to teach that assuming brother, moderation.

⁸⁷ Let the thirteen states, bound together in a strict and indissoluble Union, concur in erecting one great American system, superior to the control of all transatlantic force or influence and able to dictate the terms of the connection between the old and the new world!

Hamilton states that America needs a navy to protect her commercial interests, and that a federal government would provide this navy in a more cost efficient manner than the individual states, especially in view of the potential for conflicting interests to which he alluded in Federalist #9. From the perspective of the 21st Century, it may not be clear why he felt it necessary to devote an entire essay to this effect, and so the reader must remind himself of the context in which Hamilton wrote.

America was a net importer of everything from the salt pork that sustained the Plymouth Colony in its first days to the manufactured goods that were Great Britain’s specialty, nearly to the point of monopoly in the late 18th Century. Britain’s was an empire not predominantly military but commercial, and the Royal Navy’s primary mission was to guarantee the sea lanes for British trade, a role at which it excelled – and a role in which it might choke off the lifeblood of any overseas colony at will.

The reader will recall that in an earlier Anti-Federalist paper – DeWitt #2 – it was taken for granted that the principle source of funding for the new government would be imposts, taxes on imported goods. America was to be a net importer of foreign goods for nearly another century. It would not be until the 1870’s that industrialization would transform the country into a net exporter, a situation that would continue for another century, until in 1987 America would once again lapse into the status of net importer. One sees this in Hamilton’s plea for a united front in trade with developed nations.

¹² 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.

Here the economic focus is clear: America is an agricultural nation that is to provide raw materials to industrialized nations in return for manufactured goods. America already exported timber, furs and precious metals, and in the South sugar cane and other warm weather plantation products that were the focus of Hamilton’s antecedents as a young Caribbean trader. The South had already developed an immense cotton trade that fed the great British textile mills at a price that made Britain’s other colonies shout in protest – and Hamilton had noticed.

The British had noticed as well. That treaty of commerce was not long in coming, negotiated by none other than Hamilton’s co-author, John Jay. One major stipulation of the Jay Treaty of 1794 was a negotiated restriction on the export of American cotton.

Here Hamilton is suggesting a sort of “straw purchase” arrangement, and he cleverly suggests that the Dutch might act as intermediaries. Great Britain had been at war with the Dutch over commercial interests off and on since 1652, and as Hamilton wrote, the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War had only been over for three years. One wonders if this particular essay weren’t written as much for British eyes as for those of New Yorkers.

Hamilton has an experienced trader’s vision of what a united country might offer in terms of naval assets.

⁵⁶ A navy of the United States, as it would embrace the resources of all, is an object far less remote than a navy of any single state or partial confederacy...

⁵⁷ It happens indeed that different portions of confederated America possess each some peculiar advantage for this essential establishment.

⁵⁸ The more southern states furnish in greater abundance certain kinds of naval stores – tar, pitch and turpentine…

⁶¹ Some of the southern and of the middle states yield a greater plenty of iron and of better quality.

His message is simply that the whole might be so very much more than the sum of its parts. Yet Hamilton’s focus was on more than strictly commercial affairs.

He is suggesting openly that an American navy might intervene in disputes between other nations to America’s advantage, and in 1823 James Monroe would up the ante to nothing less than the exclusion of European colonialist influence in all the New World, a doctrine that Britain would not only assent to, but actually help plan in collusion with Monroe’s Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams. By then Monroe would have Hamilton’s navy to back him up. But the echo of realpolitik was already resounding.

³⁰ A price would be set not only upon our friendship but upon our neutrality.

³⁴ The rights of neutrality will only be respected when they are defended by an adequate power.

³⁵ A nation despicable by its weakness forfeits even the privilege of being neutral.

Suddenly the reader bursts out of the arena of the commercial and into the geo-strategic. Not only do France and Britain have well-known interests, but:

⁴⁶ The disposition of Spain with regard to the Mississippi needs no comment.

It does today. The Louisiana Purchase was yet nearly two decades away, and at the time Hamilton wrote, the claims of Spain to the navigation of the Mississippi constituted a major barrier to westward expansion. That claim would vanish utterly with the incorporation of the territory sold to the United States by France, and Hamilton, had he lived to see it, would have found this essay validated by no less a strategic thinker than Napoleon Bonaparte.

“This accession of territory affirms forever the power of the United States, and I have given England a maritime rival who sooner or later will humble her pride.”

A maritime rival indeed. In a country that had not yet a unified government, that threatened to default on the pay of the very troops that had freed it, Hamilton was already thinking forward to playing the Great Game on a world level. It is a vision ridiculous from the point of view of the time, but breathtaking when it slowly materialized from wild fiction to cold fact. One might suspect that even Hamilton would have been astounded. Nor was he done – his description of his own geopolitical world anticipates anti-colonialist historical doctrine by a century and a half.

⁷⁷ The world may politically, as well as geographically, be divided into four parts, each having a distinct set of interests.

⁷⁸ Unhappily for the other three, Europe, by her arms and by her negotiations, by force and by fraud, has in different degrees extended her dominion over them all.

He is clearly no longer talking about selling sugar cane to the Belgians. The cargo is freedom, and the customer is the world.

⁸³ It belongs to us to vindicate the honor of the human race and to teach that assuming brother, moderation.

One may criticize Hamilton for a great deal, but one thing he did not lack was vision. His readers in the New York newspapers in which the Federalist Papers were printed must have smiled at this wild speculation. What they, or he, would have thought of the present day United States Navy is hard to imagine.

In The Young Hamilton, James Thomas Flexner delves into the shady past of Hamilton’s forbears. His mother Rachel took the modern attitude that her body was her own and she would grant her favors to whom she pleased – which got her thrown in jail when her husband didn’t appreciate that line of thought. Upon her release, she quickly ran off and shacked up with James Hamilton, to whom she bore two sons.

Alexander found himself at a tender age running his mother’s general store, and he showed an aptitude for business. Upon her death in an epidemic, he found work with two men from New York, David Beekman and Nicholas Cruger, who had established a large import-export business in the islands. The Cruger family had connections in London, including a relative who was a close associate of Edmund Burke. Young Hamilton worked as a clerk in the accounting department, and at 14 he ran Cruger’s business when the boss went off to London for medical attention.

Grizzled old sea captains took orders from this stripling, as did the other employees of the firm. They may not have liked it, but Alexander Hamilton spoke with Nicholas Cruger’s authority. Thus did the young boy learn the profits and hazards of the island trade. His most astonishing act during Cruger’s absence was his firing of the company attorney and the hiring of a new one. When Cruger returned from London, he found his firm running like a well oiled machine.

Hamilton’s friendship with the Presbyterian minister Hugh Knox led to the scholarship, funded by the villagers and the Cruger family, that sent the young prodigy to Kings College, now Columbia University. As soon as the teenage businessman stepped off the boat in New York, it was love at first sight. Alexander Hamilton knew he was finally home.

In 1786, Thomas Jefferson, then the ambassador to France, and John Adams, ambassador to Britain, met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, a visiting ambassador from Tripoli. The Americans asked Adja why his government was hostile to American ships, even though there had been no provocation. They reported to the Continental Congress that the ambassador had told them “it was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave,” but he also told them that for what they considered outrageous sums of money they could make peace.[22]

American ships sailing in the Mediterranean chose to travel close to larger convoys of other European powers who had paid tribute to the pirates. Payments in ransom and tribute to the Barbary states amounted to 20% of United States government annual expenditures in 1800.[23] In the early nineteenth century, President Thomas Jefferson proposed a league of smaller nations to patrol the area, but the United States could not contribute. For the prisoners, Algeria wanted $60,000 (equivalent to millions in 2009 dollars), while America offered only $4,000. Jefferson said a million dollars would buy them off, but Congress would only appropriate $80,000. For eleven years, Americans who lived in Algeria lived as slaves to Algerian Moors. For a while, Portugal was patrolling the Straits of Gibraltar and preventing Barbary Pirates from entering the Atlantic. But they made a cash deal with the pirates, and they were again sailing into the Atlantic and engaging in piracy. By late 1793, a dozen American ships had been captured, goods stripped and everyone enslaved. Portugal had offered some armed patrols, but American merchants needed an armed American presence to sail near Europe. After some serious debate, the United States Navy was born in March 1794. Six frigates were authorized, and so began the construction of the United States, the Constellation, the Constitution and three other frigates.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_corsairs

And we have been paying tribute ever since. We should have used our right and duty to crush them back then.

Thus began the habit of businesses in America shifting their costs (security) on to the taxpayer. They should have paid for their own security and then built that cost into the price of their products. If you wonder where the precedent started that allowed politicians to cover the banks losses in 2009, here it is.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.