Posted on 05/27/2010 8:04:01 AM PDT by Publius
In this short paper, Hamilton breaks down the proper arenas for the federal government activities and builds the case for a vigorous government to handle the assigned tasks.
1 To the People of the State of New York:
2 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.
3 This inquiry will naturally divide itself into three branches:
4 Its distribution and organization will more properly claim our attention under the succeeding head.
5 The principal purposes to be answered by union are these:
6 The authorities essential to the common defense are these:
7 These powers ought to exist without limitation, because it is impossible to foresee or define the extent and variety of national exigencies, or the correspondent extent and variety of the means which may be necessary to satisfy them.
8 The circumstances that endanger the safety of nations are infinite, and for this reason no constitutional shackles can wisely be imposed on the power to which the care of it is committed.
9 This power ought to be coextensive with all the possible combinations of such circumstances, and ought to be under the direction of the same councils which are appointed to preside over the common defense.
10 This is one of those truths which, to a correct and unprejudiced mind, carries its own evidence along with it, and may be obscured, but cannot be made plainer by argument or reasoning.
11 It rests upon axioms as simple as they are universal:
12 Whether there ought to be a federal government entrusted with the care of the common defense is a question, in the first instance, open for discussion, but the moment it is decided in the affirmative, it will follow that that government ought to be clothed with all the powers requisite to complete execution of its trust.
13 And unless it can be shown that the circumstances which may affect the public safety are reducible within certain determinate limits. unless the contrary of this position can be fairly and rationally disputed, it must be admitted as a necessary consequence that there can be no limitation of that authority which is to provide for the defense and protection of the community in any matter essential to its efficacy, that is, in any matter essential to the formation, direction, or support of the national forces.
14 Defective as the present Confederation has been proved to be, this principle appears to have been fully recognized by the framers of it, though they have not made proper or adequate provision for its exercise.
15 Congress have an unlimited discretion to make requisitions of men and money, to govern the army and navy, to direct their operations.
16 As their requisitions are made constitutionally binding upon the states, who are in fact under the most solemn obligations to furnish the supplies required of them, the intention evidently was that the United States should command whatever resources were by them judged requisite to the “common defense and general welfare.”
17 It was presumed that a sense of their true interests and a regard to the dictates of good faith would be found sufficient pledges for the punctual performance of the duty of the members to the federal head.
18 The experiment has, however, demonstrated that this expectation was ill founded and illusory, and the observations made under the last head will, I imagine, have sufficed to convince the impartial and discerning that there is an absolute necessity for an entire change in the first principles of the system; that if we are in earnest about giving the Union energy and duration, we must abandon the vain project of legislating upon the states in their collective capacities; we must extend the laws of the federal government to the individual citizens of America; we must discard the fallacious scheme of quotas and requisitions as equally impracticable and unjust.
19 The result from all this is that the Union ought to be invested with full power to levy troops, to build and equip fleets, and to raise the revenues which will be required for the formation and support of an army and navy in the customary and ordinary modes practiced in other governments.
20 If the circumstances of our country are such as to demand a compound instead of a simple, a confederate instead of a sole, government, the essential point which will remain to be adjusted will be to discriminate the objects, as far as it can be done, which shall appertain to the different provinces or departments of power, allowing to each the most ample authority for fulfilling the objects committed to its charge.
21 Shall the Union be constituted the guardian of the common safety?
22 Are fleets and armies and revenues necessary to this purpose?
23 The government of the Union must be empowered to pass all laws and to make all regulations which have relation to them.
24 The same must be the case in respect to commerce and to every other matter to which its jurisdiction is permitted to extend.
25 Is the administration of justice between the citizens of the same state the proper department of the local governments?
26 These must possess all the authorities which are connected with this object and with every other that may be allotted to their particular cognizance and direction.
27 Not to confer in each case a degree of power commensurate to the end would be to violate the most obvious rules of prudence and propriety, and improvidently to trust the great interests of the nation to hands which are disabled from managing them with vigor and success.
28 Who is likely to make suitable provisions for the public defense, as that body to which the guardianship of the public safety is confided, which as the center of information will best understand the extent and urgency of the dangers that threaten, as the representative of the whole will feel itself most deeply interested in the preservation of every part, which from the responsibility implied in the duty assigned to it will be most sensibly impressed with the necessity of proper exertions, and which by the extension of its authority throughout the states can alone establish uniformity and concert in the plans and measures by which the common safety is to be secured?
29 Is there not a manifest inconsistency in devolving upon the federal government the care of the general defense, and leaving in the state governments the effective powers by which it is to be provided for?
30 Is not a want of cooperation the infallible consequence of such a system?
31 And will not weakness, disorder, an undue distribution of the burdens and calamities of war, an unnecessary and intolerable increase of expense, be its natural and inevitable concomitants?
32 Have we not had unequivocal experience of its effects in the course of the revolution which we have just accomplished?
33 Every view we may take of the subject as candid inquirers after truth will serve to convince us that it is both unwise and dangerous to deny the federal government an unconfined authority as to all those objects which are entrusted to its management.
34 It will indeed deserve the most vigilant and careful attention of the people to see that it be modeled in such a manner as to admit of its being safely vested with the requisite powers.
35 If any plan which has been, or may be, offered to our consideration should not upon a dispassionate inspection be found to answer this description, it ought to be rejected.
36 A government, the constitution of which renders it unfit to be trusted with all the powers which a free people ought to delegate to any government, would be an unsafe and improper depositary of the national interests.
37 Wherever these can with propriety be confided, the coincident powers may safely accompany them.
38 This is the true result of all just reasoning upon the subject.
39 And the adversaries of the plan promulgated by the Convention ought to have confined themselves to showing that the internal structure of the proposed government was such as to render it unworthy of the confidence of the people.
40 They ought not to have wandered into inflammatory declamations and unmeaning cavils about the extent of the powers.
41 The powers are not too extensive for the objects of federal administration, or in other words, for the management of our national interests, nor can any satisfactory argument be framed to show that they are chargeable with such an excess.
42 If it be true, as has been insinuated by some of the writers on the other side, that the difficulty arises from the nature of the thing, and that the extent of the country will not permit us to form a government in which such ample powers can safely be reposed, it would prove that we ought to contract our views and resort to the expedient of separate confederacies which will move within more practicable spheres.
43 For the absurdity must continually stare us in the face of confiding to a government the direction of the most essential national interests without daring to trust it to the authorities which are indispensable to their proper and efficient management.
44 Let us not attempt to reconcile contradictions, but firmly embrace a rational alternative.
45 I trust, however, that the impracticability of one general system cannot be shown.
46 I am greatly mistaken if any thing of weight has yet been advanced of this tendency, and I flatter myself that the observations which have been made in the course of these papers have served to place the reverse of that position in as clear a light as any matter still in the womb of time and experience can be susceptible of.
47 This, at all events, must be evident, that the very difficulty itself, drawn from the extent of the country, is the strongest argument in favor of an energetic government, for any other can certainly never preserve the Union of so large an empire.
48 If we embrace the tenets of those who oppose the adoption of the proposed Constitution as the standard of our political creed, we cannot fail to verify the gloomy doctrines which predict the impracticability of a national system pervading entire limits of the present Confederacy.
Hamilton’s Critique
One almost wishes for clarity’s sake that Hamilton had chosen to begin his Federalist series with this piece – it is concise, organized and to the point. It is not, unfortunately, quite complete, but it is clear from the text what he next has to develop (4).
The overall topic is an “energetic” government, meaning one invested with powers sufficient to achieve its assigned objectives (3), and a discussion of the perils of a government that is not sufficiently invested with those powers. So what, in brief, are those objectives?
5 The principal purposes to be answered by union are these:
It is the first two of these points that will compose the principal emphasis of this piece. They relate to the employment of power on behalf of existing institutions against threats both external and internal, and Hamilton is making a plea that the power granted be sufficient to the demand, as in his view, it has not been to date.
One sees the employment of the phrase “common defense” in the Preamble to the Constitution, describing one of the root functions of the very government itself. To Hamilton this required the ability to raise armies, build fleets, delineate their behaviors, direct their operations, and provide for their support (6). In Federalist #22, there is the complaint that the existing federation was deficient in all of these particulars, either through difficulties in the funding mechanisms, central command, or the inability to force the states to pay their allotted share.
The question, then, was how much power ought to be granted the new government to effect these ends? And what limits must be placed on it to prevent abuse? Hamilton’s answer shocks the reader even now.
7 These powers ought to exist without limitation, because it is impossible to foresee or define the extent and variety of national exigencies, or the correspondent extent and variety of the means which may be necessary to satisfy them.
Without limitation. Even with the qualification that the powers Hamilton is describing are apparently – at least at the moment – restricted to the confines of national defense, this seems a rather sweeping demand. Nor are these the reckless words of a theorist unaccustomed to their application on the field of battle. Hamilton had lived through the prosecution of a war in the presence of crippling limitations on the abilities of the government to support that effort, and he had seen a victory tainted by penury and ingratitude for the soldiers who had delivered it. Hence the uncompromising demand: one central command, not thirteen, one war chest, one set of strategic objectives.
13 And unless it can be shown that the circumstances which may affect the public safety are reducible within certain determinate limits. unless the contrary of this position can be fairly and rationally disputed, it must be admitted as a necessary consequence that there can be no limitation of that authority which is to provide for the defense and protection of the community in any matter essential to its efficacy, that is, in any matter essential to the formation, direction, or support of the national forces.
But is Hamilton speaking only of time of war? He is not. It is clear from 7 that placing any such stipulation is an impossibility.
7 These powers ought to exist without limitation, because it is impossible to foresee or define the extent and variety of national exigencies, or the correspondent extent and variety of the means which may be necessary to satisfy them.
It is essentially a blank check written to the federal government on behalf of the common defense, once it is decided (12) that the common defense is a legitimate concern of the federal government. The problem Hamilton is addressing turns out to be larger than the demonstrable failures (16, 17) of the existing government in that function during the War of Independence. His opponents would be justifiably alarmed that the cure might be worse than the disease. It is, however, the most cogent application of Hamilton's general principle that an effective federal government must be empowered to deal directly with the citizen.
18 ...if we are in earnest about giving the Union energy and duration, we must abandon the vain project of legislating upon the states in their collective capacities; we must extend the laws of the federal government to the individual citizens of America; we must discard the fallacious scheme of quotas and requisitions as equally impracticable and unjust.
In 20 through 28 Hamilton employs the Socratic Method to lead the reader by successive questions to the conclusion that the proper repository of national interests is in fact in the national government, and that at least in the matter of the common defense, the failure to grant sufficient power to the governing body led nearly to its ruination. Suddenly in 33 there is an expansion of this argument into a scope that his opponents would insist had been Hamilton's real aim from the beginning.
33 Every view we may take of the subject as candid inquirers after truth will serve to convince us that it is both unwise and dangerous to deny the federal government an unconfined authority as to all those objects which are entrusted to its management.
Hamilton is no longer speaking strictly of the common defense. The term is quite specific and bears repetition: “ those objects which are entrusted to its management.” Whatever the object is, if the federal government is entrusted to manage it, it is to be given unrestricted authority over it. It is a clear and unequivocal demand for a wholesale transfer of unlimited power to the central authority, and the guardians of the authority of the states, Patrick Henry in particular, would feel themselves fully vindicated to read it.
The attentive reader recalls the opening paragraph where Hamilton delineated other necessary concerns of such a union, specifically with respect to commerce and political intercourse between states, and between them and foreign countries (5). Hamilton considered this a proper placement of national interest, logically enough, because it allowed for one set of policies instead of thirteen, one strong voice with a single message instead of thirteen with conflicting ones. Where else to place mediation between states of any sort but in the national interest? In fact, this is precisely what the proposed Constitution stated in Article I, Section 8:
[The Congress shall have power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes...
But this, coupled with the broad Hamiltonian principle that any object placed under federal authority must be subject to unlimited federal authority, provided not merely an avenue for abuse but a freeway. Who is to state that regulation of commerce within a state is not a necessary adjunct of the power to regulate interstate commerce? Could federal law possibly find its way into the commercial intercourse between common citizens? Could it possibly interfere with a farmer selling wood to his neighbor, his wife’s eggs to the ladies of the town?
It could and it did. But in Hamilton's view it would be impossible, as it clearly oversteps the restrictions in the Commerce Clause above. In any commonsense view, it does. But the granting of unlimited federal authority does not recognize common sense; it is a force that recognizes only other force in its limitation. It was not yet established that such a force might be found through judicial review in the Supreme Court, as it has since Marbury v. Madison (1803), but in fact even this means that the only limitation on federal authority in any matter in which it might claim jurisdiction is the federal government itself in one form or another.
The refusal on Hamilton's part to acknowledge the expansionist tendencies of unchecked authority would be a principal theme of his opponents in the days to come. Those tendencies would lead in time to a slow but steady encroachment on the part of government authority over the ostensibly inviolable rights of its citizens, a struggle that has been a signal characteristic of American government from the very beginning.
Discussion Topics
A BTT for the afternoon crowd.
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