Posted on 06/10/2010 7:33:43 AM PDT by Publius
Hamilton explores the methods for keeping a standing army under control and preventing it from becoming the tool of the Executive.
1 To the People of the State of New York:
2 It was a thing hardly to be expected that in a popular revolution the minds of men should stop at that happy mean which marks the salutary boundary between power and privilege and combines the energy of government with the security of private rights.
3 A failure in this delicate and important point is the great source of the inconveniences we experience, and if we are not cautious to avoid a repetition of the error in our future attempts to rectify and ameliorate our system, we may travel from one chimerical project to another; we may try change after change, but we shall never be likely to make any material change for the better.
4 The idea of restraining the legislative authority in the means of providing for the national defense is one of those refinements which owe their origin to a zeal for liberty more ardent than enlightened.
5 We have seen, however, that it has not had thus far an extensive prevalence; that even in this country, where it made its first appearance, Pennsylvania and North Carolina are the only two states by which it has been in any degree patronized, and that all the others have refused to give it the least countenance, wisely judging that confidence must be placed somewhere; that the necessity of doing it is implied in the very act of delegating power, and that it is better to hazard the abuse of that confidence than to embarrass the government and endanger the public safety by impolitic restrictions on the legislative authority.
6 The opponents of the proposed Constitution combat, in this respect, the general decision of America, and instead of being taught by experience the propriety of correcting any extremes into which we may have heretofore run, they appear disposed to conduct us into others still more dangerous and more extravagant.
7 As if the tone of government had been found too high or too rigid, the doctrines they teach are calculated to induce us to depress or to relax it by expedients which upon other occasions have been condemned or forborne.
8 It may be affirmed without the imputation of invective that if the principles they inculcate on various points could so far obtain as to become the popular creed, they would utterly unfit the people of this country for any species of government whatever.
9 But a danger of this kind is not to be apprehended.
10 The citizens of America have too much discernment to be argued into anarchy.
11 And I am much mistaken if experience has not wrought a deep and solemn conviction in the public mind that greater energy of government is essential to the welfare and prosperity of the community.
12 It may not be amiss in this place concisely to remark the origin and progress of the idea which aims at the exclusion of military establishments in time of peace.
13 Though in speculative minds it may arise from a contemplation of the nature and tendency of such institutions, fortified by the events that have happened in other ages and countries, yet as a national sentiment it must be traced to those habits of thinking which we derive from the nation from whom the inhabitants of these states have in general sprung.
14 In England, for a long time after the Norman Conquest, the authority of the monarch was almost unlimited.
15 Inroads were gradually made upon the prerogative in favor of liberty, first by the barons and afterwards by the people, till the greatest part of its most formidable pretensions became extinct.
16 But it was not till the Revolution in 1688, which elevated the Prince of Orange to the throne of Great Britain, that English liberty was completely triumphant.
17 As incident to the undefined power of making war, an acknowledged prerogative of the Crown, Charles II had by his own authority kept on foot in time of peace a body of 5,000 regular troops.
18 And this number James II increased to 30,000, who were paid out of his civil list.
19 At the revolution, to abolish the exercise of so dangerous an authority, it became an article of the Bill of Rights then framed that “the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless with the consent of Parliament, was against law.”
20 In that kingdom, when the pulse of liberty was at its highest pitch, no security against the danger of standing armies was thought requisite beyond a prohibition of their being raised or kept up by the mere authority of the executive magistrate.
21 The patriots who effected that memorable revolution were too temperate, too well informed, to think of any restraint on the legislative discretion.
22 They were aware that a certain number of troops for guards and garrisons were indispensable, that no precise bounds could be set to the national exigencies, that a power equal to every possible contingency must exist somewhere in the government, and that when they referred the exercise of that power to the judgment of the legislature, they had arrived at the ultimate point of precaution which was reconcilable with the safety of the community.
23 From the same source, the people of America may be said to have derived an hereditary impression of danger to liberty from standing armies in time of peace.
24 The circumstances of a revolution quickened the public sensibility on every point connected with the security of popular rights and in some instances raise the warmth of our zeal beyond the degree which consisted with the due temperature of the body politic.
25 The attempts of two of the states to restrict the authority of the legislature in the article of military establishments are of the number of these instances.
26 The principles which had taught us to be jealous of the power of an hereditary monarch were by an injudicious excess extended to the representatives of the people in their popular assemblies.
27 Even in some of the states where this error was not adopted, we find unnecessary declarations that standing armies ought not to be kept up in time of peace without the consent of the legislature.
28 I call them unnecessary because the reason which had introduced a similar provision into the English Bill of Rights is not applicable to any of the state constitutions.
29 The power of raising armies at all under those constitutions can by no construction be deemed to reside anywhere else than in the legislatures themselves, and it was superfluous, if not absurd, to declare that a matter should not be done without the consent of a body which alone had the power of doing it.
30 Accordingly, in some of these constitutions and among others, in that of this state of New York which has been justly celebrated both in Europe and America as one of the best of the forms of government established in this country, there is a total silence upon the subject.
31 It is remarkable that even in the two states which seem to have meditated an interdiction of military establishments in time of peace, the mode of expression made use of is rather cautionary than prohibitory.
32 It is not said that standing armies shall not be kept up, but that they ought not to be kept up in time of peace.
33 This ambiguity of terms appears to have been the result of a conflict between jealousy and conviction, between the desire of excluding such establishments at all events and the persuasion that an absolute exclusion would be unwise and unsafe.
34 Can it be doubted that such a provision, whenever the situation of public affairs was understood to require a departure from it, would be interpreted by the legislature into a mere admonition and would be made to yield to the necessities or supposed necessities of the state?
35 Let the fact already mentioned with respect to Pennsylvania decide.
36 What then, it may be asked, is the use of such a provision if it cease to operate the moment there is an inclination to disregard it?
37 Let us examine whether there be any comparison in point of efficacy between the provision alluded to and that which is contained in the new Constitution for restraining the appropriations of money for military purposes to the period of two years.
38 The former, by aiming at too much, is calculated to effect nothing; the latter, by steering clear of an imprudent extreme and by being perfectly compatible with a proper provision for the exigencies of the nation, will have a salutary and powerful operation.
39 The Legislature of the United States will be obliged by this provision, once at least in every two years, to deliberate upon the propriety of keeping a military force on foot, to come to a new resolution on the point, and to declare their sense of the matter by a formal vote in the face of their constituents.
40 They are not at liberty to vest in the Executive department permanent funds for the support of an army if they were even incautious enough to be willing to repose in it so improper a confidence.
41 As the spirit of party in different degrees must be expected to infect all political bodies, there will be, no doubt, persons in the National Legislature willing enough to arraign the measures and criminate the views of the majority.
42 The provision for the support of a military force will always be a favorable topic for declamation.
43 As often as the question comes forward, the public attention will be roused and attracted to the subject by the party in opposition, and if the majority should be really disposed to exceed the proper limits, the community will be warned of the danger and will have an opportunity of taking measures to guard against it.
44 Independent of parties in the National Legislature itself as often as the period of discussion arrived, the state legislatures, who will always be not only vigilant but suspicious and jealous guardians of the rights of the citizens against encroachments from the federal government, will constantly have their attention awake to the conduct of the national rulers and will be ready enough, if any thing improper appears, to sound the alarm to the people and not only to be the voice, but if necessary the arm of their discontent.
45 Schemes to subvert the liberties of a great community require time to mature them for execution.
46 An army so large as seriously to menace those liberties could only be formed by progressive augmentations, which would suppose, not merely a temporary combination between the Legislature and Executive, but a continued conspiracy for a series of time.
47 Is it probable that such a combination would exist at all?
48 Is it probable that it would be persevered in and transmitted along through all the successive variations in a representative body which biennial elections would naturally produce in both houses?
49 Is it presumable that every man, the instant he took his seat in the national Senate or House of Representatives, would commence a traitor to his constituents and to his country?
50 Can it be supposed that there would not be found one man discerning enough to detect so atrocious a conspiracy or bold or honest enough to apprise his constituents of their danger?
51 If such presumptions can fairly be made, there ought at once to be an end of all delegated authority.
52 The people should resolve to recall all the powers they have heretofore parted with out of their own hands and to divide themselves into as many states as there are counties in order that they may be able to manage their own concerns in person.
53 If such suppositions could even be reasonably made, still the concealment of the design for any duration would be impracticable.
54 It would be announced by the very circumstance of augmenting the army to so great an extent in time of profound peace.
55 What colorable reason could be assigned in a country so situated for such vast augmentations of the military force?
56 It is impossible that the people could be long deceived, and the destruction of the project and of the projectors would quickly follow the discovery.
57 It has been said that the provision which limits the appropriation of money for the support of an army to the period of two years would be unavailing because the Executive, when once possessed of a force large enough to awe the people into submission, would find resources in that very force sufficient to enable him to dispense with supplies from the acts of the Legislature.
58 But the question again recurs, upon what pretense could he be put in possession of a force of that magnitude in time of peace?
59 If we suppose it to have been created in consequence of some domestic insurrection or foreign war, then it becomes a case not within the principles of the objection, for this is leveled against the power of keeping up troops in time of peace.
60 Few persons will be so visionary as seriously to contend that military forces ought not to be raised to quell a rebellion or resist an invasion, and if the defense of the community under such circumstances should make it necessary to have an army so numerous as to hazard its liberty, this is one of those calamities for which there is neither preventative nor cure.
61 It cannot be provided against by any possible form of government; it might even result from a simple league offensive and defensive if it should ever be necessary for the confederates or allies to form an army for common defense.
62 But it is an evil infinitely less likely to attend us in a united than in a disunited state; nay, it may be safely asserted that it is an evil altogether unlikely to attend us in the latter situation.
63 It is not easy to conceive a possibility that dangers so formidable can assail the whole Union as to demand a force considerable enough to place our liberties in the least jeopardy, especially if we take into our view the aid to be derived from the militia, which ought always to be counted upon as a valuable and powerful auxiliary.
64 But in a state of disunion, as has been fully shown in another place, the contrary of this supposition would become not only probable but almost unavoidable.
Hamilton’s Critique
For sheer gall, Hamilton’s opening statement is scarcely to be matched in the debate surrounding the Constitution.
2 It was a thing hardly to be expected that in a popular revolution the minds of men should stop at that happy mean which marks the salutary boundary between power and privilege and combines the energy of government with the security of private rights.
Finding that happy mean was, after all, the point of the debate from the very beginning. Hamilton is clearly of the opinion that he has found it. His opponents, to the contrary, believe that their own interpretation is closer to that imaginary point of equilibrium than this business of a federal giant imbued with all the oppressive powers its acolyte Hamilton could conjure on its behalf. It is, pace Hamilton, quite to be expected that all of the parties in the debate were interested in that happy mean. The question was, where was it?
With respect to the establishment of a standing army, the mean lay between the position that the anti-Federalists took, that a standing army was under no circumstances to be permitted outside of a state of war, and the diametric opposite position that a standing army was necessary in time of peace and that its control should be strictly under the Executive, a position that the objective reader must suspect was a bit of a straw man inasmuch as nobody seemed actually to have proposed it, certainly not within the new Constitution, which is Hamilton’s main point. That was, however, the position that many European countries were in. Some, such as Great Britain, were not, and it is to their experience that Hamilton will appeal in an attempt to occupy that middle ground in the debate.
It is a position that translates the chain of command within the military to civilian terms. The Chief Executive was, after all, to be the Commander in Chief of the military according to the proposed Constitution. In fact, a number of Presidents beginning with Washington found the transition from general officer to Chief Executive the culmination of their professional careers: Grant and Eisenhower from General of the Army, Jackson, Taylor, Harrison, Pierce, Garfield, Hayes, Arthur and Andrew Johnson from lower in the chain of command, generals all.
The list composes fully one-fourth of all of the Presidents of the United States, and yet within it one finds men making a case that is far more American than military: Grant, with his terse contempt for the Mexican War as a case of outrageous injustice, and Eisenhower warning darkly against the Military Industrial Complex. Washington, for his part, warned with equal emphasis against entangling alliances. These three men had, in a literal sense, command of standing armies during their respective administrations, and yet their presidencies tended to correspond with times of peace, although with regard to Grant, the Sioux and Cheyenne might disagree.
What Hamilton means by “restraining the legislative authority” (4) is at first a bit opaque. What he actually means is the prohibition of a standing army to all branches of the federal government. The reason he couches it in those terms is first, that it is the more extreme position, as extreme as any of the anti-Federalists had suggested to date, and second, that the terms in which the latter had couched it had resulted in the general impression that such policies were common within the states. Hamilton points out that the contrary is the case.
5 We have seen, however, that it has not had thus far an extensive prevalence; that even in this country, where it made its first appearance, Pennsylvania and North Carolina are the only two states by which it has been in any degree patronized, and that all the others have refused to give it the least countenance…
Further, even in those states, there was no prohibition of standing armies in peacetime, merely a caution against their existence.
31 It is remarkable that even in the two states which seem to have meditated an interdiction of military establishments in time of peace, the mode of expression made use of is rather cautionary than prohibitory.
32 It is not said that standing armies shall not be kept up, but that they ought not to be kept up in time of peace.
Hamilton’s next step is to argue that the placement of control of a standing army properly resides in the Legislative branch in Article I. To this end he cites historical precedent, specifically that of Britain. There, since Norman times, the control of the standing army was in the hands of the Executive, i.e. the King (14). At 15 he refers to the Magna Carta as the first of the inroads by the barons against absolute power on the part of the monarch, and at 16-19, to the result of the English Civil Wars that placed the control of that arm in the hands of Parliament.
This was not quite the oversimplification it appears today. Hamilton’s readers were well aware that the disposition of forces that resulted from the English Civil Wars came not from any decision of a council of wise men, but was the result of prolonged bloodshed between the Roundheads and the Cavaliers that constituted the respective armies of Parliament and King. It was no act of political philosophy, but the fruit of war, not yet quite a hundred years in the past.
Yet it did seem by Hamilton’s writing a firmly entrenched solution whose effectiveness might be judged more on the basis of performance than theory. It was a matter largely settled by the time that the English Civil Wars gave way to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Whether it was British liberty that gained was a matter in which the few remaining Catholic clergy in Great Britain might find cause to demur.
Nevertheless, a Parliament firmly in control of the army’s purse strings was a safeguard to be emulated, although it did not in fact prevent Parliament from sending that army to America to rein in their refractory colonies, nor did it prevent George III from catching the blame for it. The Executive was, even there, at least nominally in command.
Thus too under the proposed Constitution. For not only is there the condition that Congress control the funding of any standing army, but the mandate that it formally reconsider that funding every two years (37, 39). It seems a cautious enough approach, but Hamilton overstates the case in the next sentence.
40 They are not at liberty to vest in the Executive department permanent funds for the support of an army if they were even incautious enough to be willing to repose in it so improper a confidence.
That depends on what the word “permanent” means in this context. An established army actively engaged in matters of national security would provide a considerable pressure on Congress to continue that two-year funding. In practice, that limit guaranteed only debate – and Hamilton knew it.
42 The provision for the support of a military force will always be a favorable topic for declamation.
One might prefer the term “demagoguery,” but in fact that periodic review did provide a means to check the growth of the military, sometimes at an awkward moment, as the cutoff of funding for the support of the Vietnamese effort was to demonstrate. However awkward, it was proof that even after two centuries the constitutional safeguards were in place, if not always wisely applied.
Hamilton devotes his next effort to arguing that the control of the army by the many in the persons of the Legislature is safer from the point of view of liberty than the control by the few, the Executive (44-52). So then is the potential hazard to liberty of a standing army completely addressed by the arrangements within the proposed Constitution? Hamilton is honest enough to answer that it is not.
60 Few persons will be so visionary as seriously to contend that military forces ought not to be raised to quell a rebellion or resist an invasion, and if the defense of the community under such circumstances should make it necessary to have an army so numerous as to hazard its liberty, this is one of those calamities for which there is neither preventative nor cure.
In short, it is a necessary danger, ameliorated by the vigilance of the citizens and the states (44). The prospects, both for the states and for the Union, were likely to be grim without it (64).
Discussion Topics
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
27 Oct 1787, John DeWitt #2
27 Oct 1787, Federalist #1
31 Oct 1787, Federalist #2
3 Nov 1787, Federalist #3
5 Nov 1787, John DeWitt #3
7 Nov 1787, Federalist #4
10 Nov 1787, Federalist #5
14 Nov 1787, Federalist #6
15 Nov 1787, Federalist #7
20 Nov 1787, Federalist #8
21 Nov 1787, Federalist #9
23 Nov 1787, Federalist #10
24 Nov 1787, Federalist #11
27 Nov 1787, Federalist #12
27 Nov 1787, Cato #5
28 Nov 1787, Federalist #13
29 Nov 1787, Brutus #4
30 Nov 1787, Federalist #14
1 Dec 1787, Federalist #15
4 Dec 1787, Federalist #16
5 Dec 1787, Federalist #17
7 Dec 1787, Federalist #18
8 Dec 1787, Federalist #19
11 Dec 1787, Federalist #20
12 Dec 1787, Federalist #21
14 Dec 1787, Federalist #22
18 Dec 1787, Federalist #23
18 Dec 1787, Address of the Pennsylvania Minority
19 Dec 1787, Federalist #24
21 Dec 1787, Federalist #25
A BTT for the morning crowd. Can you feel the love? ;-)
(Eight hours without FR. I thought I would go nuts. But I'm not addicted. I can quit any time I want.)
We can't tell how many people are reading these threads, so I'm not feeling love. I'm feeling lonely.
Glenn Beck is doing a show on Madison tomorrow. Want to bet he doesn't mention this project?
Thank you for your magnificent efforts to educate us re: Tne Federalist Papers.
I have not been able to keep up with you as much as I would like to as an active poster, but have thoroughly enjoyed lurking and learning.
FReegards,
FRank
PS How is your Atlas Shrugged project coming along?
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