The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton (books to read in your 20s .txt) π
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In early 1787, the Congress of the United States called a meeting of delegates from each state to try to fix what was wrong with the Articles of Confederation. The Articles had created an intentionally weak central government, and that weakness had brought the nation to a crisis in only a few years. Over the next several months, the delegates worked to produce the document that would become the U.S. Constitution.
When Congress released the proposed Constitution to the states for ratification in the fall of 1787, reaction was swift: in newspapers throughout each state, columnists were quick to condemn the radical reworking of the nationβs formative document. In New York State, a member of the convention decided to launch into the fray; he and two other men he recruited began writing their own anonymous series defending the proposed Constitution, each one signed βPublius.β They published seventy-seven articles in four different New York papers over the course of several months. When the articles were collected and published as a book early the following year, the authors added another eight articles. Although many at the time guessed the true identities of the authors, it would be a few years before the authors were confirmed to be Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, Hamilton and Madison both being delegates at the convention.
Although the articlesβ influence on the Constitutionβs ratification is debatedβnewspapers were largely local at the time, so few outside New York saw the articlesβtheir influence on the interpretation of the Constitution within the judiciary is immense. They are a window not only into the structure and content of the document, but also the reasons for the structure and content, written by men who helped author the document. Consequently, they have been quoted almost 300 times in Supreme Court cases. They remain perhaps the best and clearest explanation of the document that is the cornerstone of the United States government.
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- Author: Alexander Hamilton
Read book online Β«The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton (books to read in your 20s .txt) πΒ». Author - Alexander Hamilton
The separate governments in a confederacy may aptly be compared with the feudal baronies; with this advantage in their favor, that from the reasons already explained, they will generally possess the confidence and goodwill of the people, and with so important a support, will be able effectually to oppose all encroachments of the national government. It will be well if they are not able to counteract its legitimate and necessary authority. The points of similitude consist in the rivalship of power, applicable to both, and in the concentration of large portions of the strength of the community into particular deposits, in one case at the disposal of individuals, in the other case at the disposal of political bodies.
A concise review of the events that have attended confederate governments will further illustrate this important doctrine; an inattention to which has been the great source of our political mistakes, and has given our jealousy a direction to the wrong side. This review shall form the subject of some ensuing papers.
Publius
XVIII The Same Subject Continued (The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union)Madison, with Hamilton: For the New York Packet, Friday, December 7, 1787.
To the People of the State of New York:
Among the confederacies of antiquity, the most considerable was that of the Grecian republics, associated under the Amphictyonic council. From the best accounts transmitted of this celebrated institution, it bore a very instructive analogy to the present Confederation of the American states.
The members retained the character of independent and sovereign states, and had equal votes in the federal council. This council had a general authority to propose and resolve whatever it judged necessary for the common welfare of Greece; to declare and carry on war; to decide, in the last resort, all controversies between the members; to fine the aggressing party; to employ the whole force of the confederacy against the disobedient; to admit new members. The Amphictyons were the guardians of religion, and of the immense riches belonging to the temple of Delphos, where they had the right of jurisdiction in controversies between the inhabitants and those who came to consult the oracle. As a further provision for the efficacy of the federal powers, they took an oath mutually to defend and protect the united cities, to punish the violators of this oath, and to inflict vengeance on sacrilegious despoilers of the temple.
In theory, and upon paper, this apparatus of powers seems amply sufficient for all general purposes. In several material instances, they exceed the powers enumerated in the articles of confederation. The Amphictyons had in their hands the superstition of the times, one of the principal engines by which government was then maintained; they had a declared authority to use coercion against refractory cities, and were bound by oath to exert this authority on the necessary occasions.
Very different, nevertheless, was the experiment from the theory. The powers, like those of the present Congress, were administered by deputies appointed wholly by the cities in their political capacities; and exercised over them in the same capacities. Hence the weakness, the disorders, and finally the destruction of the confederacy. The more powerful members, instead of being kept in awe and subordination, tyrannized successively over all the rest. Athens, as we learn from Demosthenes, was the arbiter of Greece seventy-three years. The Lacedaemonians next governed it twenty-nine years; at a subsequent period, after the battle of Leuctra, the Thebans had their turn of domination.
It happened but too often, according to Plutarch, that the deputies of the strongest cities awed and corrupted those of the weaker; and that judgment went in favor of the most powerful party.
Even in the midst of defensive and dangerous wars with Persia and Macedon, the members never acted in concert, and were, more or fewer of them, eternally the dupes or the hirelings of the common enemy. The intervals of foreign war were filled up by domestic vicissitudes, convulsions, and carnage.
After the conclusion of the war with Xerxes, it appears that the Lacedaemonians required that a number of the cities should be turned out of the confederacy for the unfaithful part they had acted. The Athenians, finding that the Lacedaemonians would lose fewer partisans by such a measure than themselves, and would become masters of the public deliberations, vigorously opposed and defeated the attempt. This piece of history proves at once the inefficiency of the union, the ambition and jealousy of its most powerful members, and the dependent and degraded condition of the rest. The smaller members, though entitled by the theory of their system to revolve in equal pride and majesty around the common center, had become, in fact, satellites of the orbs of primary magnitude.
Had the Greeks, says the AbbΓ© Milot, been as wise as they were courageous, they would have been admonished by experience of the necessity of a closer union, and would have availed themselves of the peace which followed their success against the Persian arms, to establish such a reformation. Instead of this obvious policy, Athens and Sparta, inflated with the victories and the glory they had acquired, became first rivals and then enemies; and did each other infinitely more mischief than they had suffered from Xerxes. Their mutual jealousies, fears, hatreds, and injuries ended in the celebrated Peloponnesian war; which itself ended in the ruin and slavery of the Athenians who had begun it.
As a weak government, when not at war, is ever agitated by
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