>FEDERALIST No. 23 (Hamilton)                                  .



The Necessity of a Government as Energetic as the One Proposed to

 the Preservation of the Union

From the New York Packet.

Tuesday, December 18, 1787.



HAMILTON



To the People of the State of New York:

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.

This inquiry will naturally divide itself into three

 branchesgthe objects to be provided for by the federal government,

 the quantity of power necessary to the accomplishment of those

 objects, the persons upon whom that power ought to operate. Its

 distribution and organization will more properly claim our attention

 under the succeeding head.

The principal purposes to be answered by union are thesegthe

 common defense of the members; the preservation of the public peace

 as well against internal convulsions as external attacks; the

 regulation of commerce with other nations and between the States;

 the superintendence of our intercourse, political and commercial,

 with foreign countries.

The authorities essential to the common defense are these: to

 raise armies; to build and equip fleets; to prescribe rules for

 the government of both; to direct their operations; to provide for

 their support. 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. 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. 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.

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. It rests upon

 axioms as simple as they are universal; the MEANS ought to be

 proportioned to the END; the persons, from whose agency the

 attainment of any END is expected, ought to possess the MEANS by

 which it is to be attained.

Whether there ought to be a federal government intrusted 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. 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 efficacygthat is, in any matter

 essential to the FORMATION, DIRECTION, or SUPPORT of the NATIONAL

 FORCES.

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. Congress have an unlimited discretion to make

 requisitions of men and money; to govern the army and navy; to

 direct their operations. 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.'' 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.

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. 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.

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. Shall the Union be constituted the

 guardian of the common safety? Are fleets and armies and revenues

 necessary to this purpose? The government of the Union must be

 empowered to pass all laws, and to make all regulations which have

 relation to them. The same must be the case in respect to commerce,

 and to every other matter to which its jurisdiction is permitted to

 extend. Is the administration of justice between the citizens of

 the same State the proper department of the local governments?

 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. 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.

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 centre 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? 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? Is not a want

 of co-operation the infallible consequence of such a system? 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? Have we not

 had unequivocal experience of its effects in the course of the

 revolution which we have just accomplished?

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 intrusted to its management. 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. 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. 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.

 Wherever THESE can with propriety be confided, the coincident

 powers may safely accompany them. This is the true result of all

 just reasoning upon the subject. 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. They

 ought not to have wandered into inflammatory declamations and

 unmeaning cavils about the extent of the powers. 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. 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. 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 indispensible to their proper and

 efficient management. Let us not attempt to reconcile

 contradictions, but firmly embrace a rational alternative.

I trust, however, that the impracticability of one general

 system cannot be shown. 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. 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.

 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.

PUBLIUS.





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