Posted on 06/28/2010 8:13:07 AM PDT by Publius
At first it reads like a lesson in geometry, but Hamilton takes it down a different path, laying the background for the next five essays in response to Brutus.
1 To the People of the State of New York:
2 In disquisitions of every kind, there are certain primary truths or first principles upon which all subsequent reasonings must depend.
3 These contain an internal evidence which, antecedent to all reflection or combination, commands the assent of the mind.
4 Where it produces not this effect, it must proceed either from some defect or disorder in the organs of perception, or from the influence of some strong interest, or passion, or prejudice.
5 Of this nature are the maxims in geometry that “the whole is greater than its part; things equal to the same are equal to one another; two straight lines cannot enclose a space; and all right angles are equal to each other.”
6 Of the same nature are these other maxims in ethics and politics: that there cannot be an effect without a cause, that the means ought to be proportioned to the end, that every power ought to be commensurate with its object, that there ought to be no limitation of a power destined to effect a purpose which is itself incapable of limitation.
7 And there are other truths in the two latter sciences which, if they cannot pretend to rank in the class of axioms, are yet such direct inferences from them, and so obvious in themselves, and so agreeable to the natural and unsophisticated dictates of commonsense that they challenge the assent of a sound and unbiased mind with a degree of force and conviction almost equally irresistible.
8 The objects of geometrical inquiry are so entirely abstracted from those pursuits which stir up and put in motion the unruly passions of the human heart that mankind without difficulty adopt not only the more simple theorems of the science but even those abstruse paradoxes which, however they may appear susceptible of demonstration, are at variance with the natural conceptions which the mind without the aid of philosophy would be led to entertain upon the subject.
9 The infinite divisibility of matter, or in other words the infinite divisibility of a finite thing extending even to the minutest atom, is a point agreed among geometricians though not less incomprehensible to common sense than any of those mysteries in religion against which the batteries of infidelity have been so industriously leveled.
10 But in the sciences of morals and politics, men are found far less tractable.
11 To a certain degree, it is right and useful that this should be the case.
12 Caution and investigation are a necessary armor against error and imposition.
13 But this [intractability] may be carried too far and may degenerate into obstinacy, perverseness, or [disingenuousness].
14 Though it cannot be pretended that the principles of moral and political knowledge have in general the same degree of certainty with those of the mathematics, yet they have much better claims in this respect than, to judge from the conduct of men in particular situations, we should be disposed to allow them.
15 The obscurity is much oftener in the passions and prejudices of the reasoner than in the subject.
16 Men upon too many occasions do not give their own understandings fair play, but yielding to some untoward bias they entangle themselves in words and confound themselves in subtleties.
17 How else could it happen – if we admit the objectors to be sincere in their opposition – that positions so clear as those which manifest the necessity of a general power of taxation in the government of the Union should have to encounter any adversaries among men of discernment?
18 Though these positions have been elsewhere fully stated, they will perhaps not be improperly recapitulated in this place as introductory to an examination of what may have been offered by way of objection to them.
19 They are in substance as follows.
24 Did not experience evince the contrary, it would be natural to conclude that the propriety of a general power of taxation in the national government might safely be permitted to rest on the evidence of these propositions, unassisted by any additional arguments or illustrations.
25 But we find, in fact, that the antagonists of the proposed Constitution, so far from acquiescing in their justness or truth, seem to make their principal and most zealous effort against this part of the plan.
26 It may therefore be satisfactory to analyze the arguments with which they combat it.
27 Those of them which have been most labored with that view seem in substance to amount to this: “It is not true because the exigencies of the Union may not be susceptible of limitation that its power of laying taxes ought to be unconfined. Revenue is as requisite to the purposes of the local administrations as to those of the Union, and the former are at least of equal importance with the latter to the happiness of the people. It is therefore as necessary that the state governments should be able to command the means of supplying their wants as that the national government should possess the like faculty in respect to the wants of the Union. But an indefinite power of taxation in the latter might, and probably would in time, deprive the former of the means of providing for their own necessities and would subject them entirely to the mercy of the national legislature. As the laws of the Union are to become the supreme law of the land, as it is to have power to pass all laws that may be necessary for carrying into execution the authorities with which it is proposed to vest it, the national government might at any time abolish the taxes imposed for state objects upon the pretense of an interference with its own. It might allege a necessity of doing this in order to give efficacy to the national revenues. And thus all the resources of taxation might by degrees become the subjects of federal monopoly to the entire exclusion and destruction of the state governments.”
28 This mode of reasoning appears sometimes to turn upon the supposition of usurpation in the national government; at other times it seems to be designed only as a deduction from the constitutional operation of its intended powers.
29 It is only in the latter light that it can be admitted to have any pretensions to fairness.
30 The moment we launch into conjectures about the usurpations of the federal government, we get into an unfathomable abyss and fairly put ourselves out of the reach of all reasoning.
31 Imagination may range at pleasure till it gets bewildered amidst the labyrinths of an enchanted castle and knows not on which side to turn to extricate itself from the perplexities into which it has so rashly adventured.
32 Whatever may be the limits or modifications of the powers of the Union, it is easy to imagine an endless train of possible dangers, and by indulging an excess of jealousy and timidity, we may bring ourselves to a state of absolute scepticism and irresolution.
33 I repeat here what I have observed in substance in another place: that all observations founded upon the danger of usurpation ought to be referred to the composition and structure of the government, not to the nature or extent of its powers.
34 The state governments, by their original constitutions, are invested with complete sovereignty.
35 In what does our security consist against usurpation from that quarter?
36 Doubtless in the manner of their formation and in a due dependence of those who are to administer them upon the people.
37 If the proposed construction of the federal government be found, upon an impartial examination of it, to be such as to afford to a proper extent the same species of security, all apprehensions on the score of usurpation ought to be discarded.
38 It should not be forgotten that a disposition in the state governments to encroach upon the rights of the Union is quite as probable as a disposition in the Union to encroach upon the rights of the state governments.
39 What side would be likely to prevail in such a conflict must depend on the means which the contending parties could employ toward insuring success.
40 As in republics strength is always on the side of the people, and as there are weighty reasons to induce a belief that the state governments will commonly possess most influence over them, the natural conclusion is that such contests will be most apt to end to the disadvantage of the Union, and that there is greater probability of encroachments by the members upon the federal head than by the federal head upon the members.
41 But it is evident that all conjectures of this kind must be extremely vague and fallible, and that it is by far the safest course to lay them altogether aside and to confine our attention wholly to the nature and extent of the powers as they are delineated in the Constitution.
42 Everything beyond this must be left to the prudence and firmness of the people who, as they will hold the scales in their own hands, it is to be hoped will always take care to preserve the constitutional equilibrium between the general and the state governments.
43 Upon this ground, which is evidently the true one, it will not be difficult to obviate the objections which have been made to an indefinite power of taxation in the United States.
Hamilton’s Critique
It is New Year’s Day, 1788, and while the streets of New York echo with the cries of revelers, Hamilton is furiously at work penning his defense of the proposed federal government. Brutus’ blast has goaded him into a direction he would certainly have had to travel at some point anyway, far away from the safe and defensible ground of national defense and into the more challenging arena of how best, if not necessarily how safest, to provide for it.
It is possible a bit of holiday cheer inspired his approach in this essay, for it is questionable how seriously one is supposed to take the bit of pseudo-scientific bluster that begins it. Political philosophy is likened, if you please, to the clean certitudes of Euclidian geometry, its founding premises crowned with the same laurel of rigor earned by the latter’s fundamental axioms. The modern reader might smile at this; Hamilton’s friends must have received it with grins of delight, and his opponents with clenched teeth of fury at its sheer presumption. For bluster it most certainly is.
5 Of this nature are the maxims in geometry that “the whole is greater than its part; things equal to the same are equal to one another; two straight lines cannot enclose a space; and all right angles are equal to each other.”
6 Of the same nature are these other maxims in ethics and politics: that there cannot be an effect without a cause, that the means ought to be proportioned to the end, that every power ought to be commensurate with its object, that there ought to be no limitation of a power destined to effect a purpose which is itself incapable of limitation.
The reader recognizes the latter two of these propositions not as axioms at all, but as two of Hamilton’s pet justifications for unlimited power granted to the federal government in the field of taxation. Geometric axioms constitute foundational principles that are subject neither to further reduction nor to debate. As political axioms, Hamilton’s attempt to exempt these propositions from debate was the very worst form of begging a question.
It was also unlikely to succeed. Where the elements of geometric axioms are defined with exquisite precision – there is no gray area, for example, in what “line” and “right angle” mean – the elements of these political propositions were themselves masterpieces of rhetorical nebulosity. One might be tempted to agree with the tautological nature of “power ought to be commensurate with its object” were one the beneficiary of precise definitions of either. It is the debate of those that kept Hamilton at his desk through the festive holiday season.
However, to oppose these propositions is, by Hamilton’s sly implication, to oppose logic itself. Some caution is justified, he allows at 11 and 12, but carried too far, it is intractability, obstinacy and perverseness (13). The reader is, in Greek terms, in a field the diametrical opposite of geometry – he is in the grip of rhetoric, and Hamilton knows it.
14 Though it cannot be pretended that the principles of moral and political knowledge have in general the same degree of certainty with those of the mathematics, yet they have much better claims in this respect than, to judge from the conduct of men in particular situations, we should be disposed to allow them.
Giving his opponents one more kick in the ribs with respect to insincerity (17), Hamilton proceeds to delineate these principles at 20 through 23. They are the very core of his case. At 20 is a recapitulation of the principle that a government ought to “contain within itself” sufficient power to achieve its assigned trusts. At 21, however, he takes this to the level of absolutism that does remind one of a geometric axiom.
21 As the duties of superintending the national defense and of securing the public peace against foreign or domestic violence involve a provision for casualties and dangers to which no possible limits can be assigned, the power of making that provision ought to know no other bounds than the exigencies of the nation and the resources of the community.
Recall that Hamilton got to this point through the examination of times of emergency, but there is no provision for emergency here, no definition, merely the stark boundaries of a nation’s need in the estimation of its government and its ability to provide revenue to meet it. There is nothing playful about this foundational principle. There is no hint of limitation that Hamilton regarded as artificial.
At 22, he restates his belief that the only practical method for gathering this revenue was for the federal government to deal directly with the people, not through the states as intermediaries. At 24, he again pretends that this is so clearly established that resistance is unreasonable.
By 27 Hamilton drops the rhetorical excess for a concise and not entirely unfair summation of his opponents’ position, specifically with respect to their conviction that the plan would impel the federal government to swallow those of the states whole. This he dismisses as a usurpation, which it certainly would be, and as such, impossible to guard against.
30 The moment we launch into conjectures about the usurpations of the federal government, we get into an unfathomable abyss and fairly put ourselves out of the reach of all reasoning.
Again, Hamilton is attempting either to define or to bluster his way out of the consideration of the topic. This, he claims, is a highly unlikely case, because the various state governments had, in fact, powers considered sufficient to their assigned objectives, and none of them had to date showed any signs of despotism (34, 37-38).
It is not a strong case. Hamilton has already ceded the point that the federal government will have powers that will dwarf those of any individual state, powers he insists should be limited only by the federal government’s assessment of the situation and the ability of the people to pay because there was no way to predict what threat might present itself. It is unlimited power to meet unknown challenges in its purest formulation.
Hamilton may have realized that the extremity of his position was likely to stiffen resistance. Was there a means of controlling a rapacious and out of control government? Suddenly Hamilton dons the costume of the democratic populist, a costume that never quite properly fits, and his answer is an uncharacteristically idealistic invocation of the ultimate guardian of the people’s welfare – the people themselves.
42 Everything beyond this must be left to the prudence and firmness of the people who, as they will hold the scales in their own hands, it is to be hoped will always take care to preserve the constitutional equilibrium between the general and the state governments.
The reader has come a long way in this essay, from geometrical certitude to a vague acknowledgment of the true source of government and a pious hope that they can get themselves out of anything the government can get them into. It is not a strong case.
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
22 Dec 1787, Federalist #26
25 Dec 1787, Federalist #27
26 Dec 1787, Federalist #28
27 Dec 1787, Brutus #6
28 Dec 1787, Federalist #30
And once implied powers doctrine took hold, Hamilton pretty much got what he wanted.
It is indeed. One of the great things about American system of government is the maintenance of freedom, specifically, the freedom of government at every level to tax the citizen until his eyes bleed. ;-)
Where was the implied power under the Articles for the states to ignore the taxes levied, or anything else decided by Congress?
” As theory and practice conspire to prove that the power of procuring revenue is unavailing when exercised over the states in their collective capacities, the federal government must of necessity be invested with an unqualified power of taxation in the ordinary modes.”
Had the states complied with tax levies under the Articles, would a Constitutional Convention have occurred? Probably. But, if this method of collecting revenue was successful, perhaps it would have remained the method of taxation under the Constitution. The superiority of the states in all things under the Articles, their bold disobedience to the document they created, brought on the system of taxation under the Constitution.
BTW, under that system, let’s not forget that the US flourished. From a near subsistence agricultural economy in 1800 we were an emerging world power by 1900.
I recall in a colloquoy with a fellow FReeper some years ago that the federal government levied taxes against the states, but there was no enforcement mechanism. I think someone mentioned that a 19th Century Supreme Court case denied the federal government the authority to physically collect from the states.
I've been combing States' Rights and the Union by Forrest McDonald for a mention of this, but I can't seem to find it.
The 16th Amendment repealed much of Article I, Section 2, to include the prose I quoted.
Those [taxes] of the direct kind, which principally relate to land and buildings, may admit of a rule of apportionment. Either the value of land, or the number of the people, may serve as a standard.
"the present Constitution was particularly intended to affect individuals, and not states, except in particular cases specified: And this is the leading distinction between the articles of Confederation and the present Constitution." "Uniformity is an instant operation on individuals, without the intervention of assessments, or any regard to states," "[T]he DIRECT TAXES contemplated by the Constitution, are only two, to wit, A CAPITATION OR POLL TAX, simply, without regard to property, profession, or any other circumstance; and a tax on LAND."
Springer v. United States(1880), 102 U.S. 586
"The central and controlling question in this case is whether the tax which was levied on the income, gains, and profits of the plaintiff in error, as set forth in the record, and by pretended virtue of the acts of Congress and parts of acts therein mentioned, is a direct tax." "Our conclusions are, that direct taxes, within the meaning of the Constitution, are only capitation taxes, as expressed in that instrument, and taxes on real estate; and that the tax of which the plaintiff in error complains is within the category of an excise or duty." "[W]henever the government has imposed a tax which it recognized as a direct tax, it has never been applied to any objects but real estate and slaves."
Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Company, 157 U.S. 429 (1895)
POLLOCK v. FARMERS' LOAN & TRUST CO., 158 U.S. 601 (1895):
First. We adhere to the opinion already announced,-that, taxes on real estate being indisputably direct taxes, taxes on the rents or income of real estate are equally direct taxes.
Second. We are of opinion that taxes on personal property, or on the income of personal property, are likewise direct taxes.
Third. The tax imposed by sections 27 to 37, inclusive, of the act of 1894, so far as it falls on the income of real estate, and of personal property, being a direct tax, within the meaning of the constitution, and therefore unconstitutional and void, because not apportioned according to representation, all those sections, constituting one entire scheme of taxation, are necessarily invalid.
16. The injustice of the conclusion points to the error of adopting it. It takes invested wealth, and reads it into the constitution as a favored and protected class of property, which cannot be taxed without apportionment, while it leaves the occupation of the minister, the doctor, the professor, the lawyer, the inventor, the author, the merchant, the mechanic, and all other forms of industry upon which the prosperity of a people must depend, subject to taxation without that condition.
Thanks for the ping/post and your work. Very interesting. Thanks to every poster on this thread. BTTT!
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.