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FEDERALIST No. 19

The Same Subject Continued
(The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the
 Union)
For the Independent Journal.

HAMILTON AND MADISON

To the People of the State of New York:
THE examples of ancient confederacies, cited in my last paper,
 have not exhausted the source of experimental instruction on this
 subject. There are existing institutions, founded on a similar
 principle, which merit particular consideration. The first which
 presents itself is the Germanic body.
In the early ages of Christianity, Germany was occupied by seven
 distinct nations, who had no common chief. The Franks, one of the
 number, having conquered the Gauls, established the kingdom which
 has taken its name from them. In the ninth century Charlemagne, its
 warlike monarch, carried his victorious arms in every direction;
 and Germany became a part of his vast dominions. On the
 dismemberment, which took place under his sons, this part was
 erected into a separate and independent empire. Charlemagne and his
 immediate descendants possessed the reality, as well as the ensigns
 and dignity of imperial power. But the principal vassals, whose
 fiefs had become hereditary, and who composed the national diets
 which Charlemagne had not abolished, gradually threw off the yoke
 and advanced to sovereign jurisdiction and independence. The force
 of imperial sovereignty was insufficient to restrain such powerful
 dependants; or to preserve the unity and tranquillity of the empire.
 The most furious private wars, accompanied with every species of
 calamity, were carried on between the different princes and states.
 The imperial authority, unable to maintain the public order,
 declined by degrees till it was almost extinct in the anarchy, which
 agitated the long interval between the death of the last emperor of
 the Suabian, and the accession of the first emperor of the Austrian
 lines. In the eleventh century the emperors enjoyed full
 sovereignty: In the fifteenth they had little more than the symbols
 and decorations of power.
Out of this feudal system, which has itself many of the
 important features of a confederacy, has grown the federal system
 which constitutes the Germanic empire. Its powers are vested in a
 diet representing the component members of the confederacy; in the
 emperor, who is the executive magistrate, with a negative on the
 decrees of the diet; and in the imperial chamber and the aulic
 council, two judiciary tribunals having supreme jurisdiction in
 controversies which concern the empire, or which happen among its
 members.
The diet possesses the general power of legislating for the
 empire; of making war and peace; contracting alliances; assessing
 quotas of troops and money; constructing fortresses; regulating
 coin; admitting new members; and subjecting disobedient members to
 the ban of the empire, by which the party is degraded from his
 sovereign rights and his possessions forfeited. The members of the
 confederacy are expressly restricted from entering into compacts
 prejudicial to the empire; from imposing tolls and duties on their
 mutual intercourse, without the consent of the emperor and diet;
 from altering the value of money; from doing injustice to one
 another; or from affording assistance or retreat to disturbers of
 the public peace. And the ban is denounced against such as shall
 violate any of these restrictions. The members of the diet, as
 such, are subject in all cases to be judged by the emperor and diet,
 and in their private capacities by the aulic council and imperial
 chamber.
The prerogatives of the emperor are numerous. The most
 important of them are: his exclusive right to make propositions to
 the diet; to negative its resolutions; to name ambassadors; to
 confer dignities and titles; to fill vacant electorates; to found
 universities; to grant privileges not injurious to the states of
 the empire; to receive and apply the public revenues; and
 generally to watch over the public safety. In certain cases, the
 electors form a council to him. In quality of emperor, he possesses
 no territory within the empire, nor receives any revenue for his
 support. But his revenue and dominions, in other qualities,
 constitute him one of the most powerful princes in Europe.
From such a parade of constitutional powers, in the
 representatives and head of this confederacy, the natural
 supposition would be, that it must form an exception to the general
 character which belongs to its kindred systems. Nothing would be
 further from the reality. The fundamental principle on which it
 rests, that the empire is a community of sovereigns, that the diet
 is a representation of sovereigns and that the laws are addressed to
 sovereigns, renders the empire a nerveless body, incapable of
 regulating its own members, insecure against external dangers, and
 agitated with unceasing fermentations in its own bowels.
The history of Germany is a history of wars between the emperor
 and the princes and states; of wars among the princes and states
 themselves; of the licentiousness of the strong, and the oppression
 of the weak; of foreign intrusions, and foreign intrigues; of
 requisitions of men and money disregarded, or partially complied
 with; of attempts to enforce them, altogether abortive, or attended
 with slaughter and desolation, involving the innocent with the
 guilty; of general inbecility, confusion, and misery.
In the sixteenth century, the emperor, with one part of the
 empire on his side, was seen engaged against the other princes and
 states. In one of the conflicts, the emperor himself was put to
 flight, and very near being made prisoner by the elector of Saxony.
 The late king of Prussia was more than once pitted against his
 imperial sovereign; and commonly proved an overmatch for him.
 Controversies and wars among the members themselves have been so
 common, that the German annals are crowded with the bloody pages
 which describe them. Previous to the peace of Westphalia, Germany
 was desolated by a war of thirty years, in which the emperor, with
 one half of the empire, was on one side, and Sweden, with the other
 half, on the opposite side. Peace was at length negotiated, and
 dictated by foreign powers; and the articles of it, to which
 foreign powers are parties, made a fundamental part of the Germanic
 constitution.
If the nation happens, on any emergency, to be more united by
 the necessity of self-defense, its situation is still deplorable.
 Military preparations must be preceded by so many tedious
 discussions, arising from the jealousies, pride, separate views, and
 clashing pretensions of sovereign bodies, that before the diet can
 settle the arrangements, the enemy are in the field; and before the
 federal troops are ready to take it, are retiring into winter
 quarters.
The small body of national troops, which has been judged
 necessary in time of peace, is defectively kept up, badly paid,
 infected with local prejudices, and supported by irregular and
 disproportionate contributions to the treasury.
The impossibility of maintaining order and dispensing justice
 among these sovereign subjects, produced the experiment of dividing
 the empire into nine or ten circles or districts; of giving them an
 interior organization, and of charging them with the military
 execution of the laws against delinquent and contumacious members.
 This experiment has only served to demonstrate more fully the
 radical vice of the constitution. Each circle is the miniature
 picture of the deformities of this political monster. They either
 fail to execute their commissions, or they do it with all the
 devastation and carnage of civil war. Sometimes whole circles are
 defaulters; and then they increase the mischief which they were
 instituted to remedy.
We may form some judgment of this scheme of military coercion
 from a sample given by Thuanus. In Donawerth, a free and imperial
 city of the circle of Suabia, the Abb 300 de St. Croix enjoyed
 certain immunities which had been reserved to him. In the exercise
 of these, on some public occasions, outrages were committed on him
 by the people of the city. The consequence was that the city was
 put under the ban of the empire, and the Duke of Bavaria, though
 director of another circle, obtained an appointment to enforce it.
 He soon appeared before the city with a corps of ten thousand
 troops, and finding it a fit occasion, as he had secretly intended
 from the beginning, to revive an antiquated claim, on the pretext
 that his ancestors had suffered the place to be dismembered from his
 territory,1 he took possession of it in his own name, disarmed,
 and punished the inhabitants, and reannexed the city to his domains.
It may be asked, perhaps, what has so long kept this disjointed
 machine from falling entirely to pieces? The answer is obvious:
 The weakness of most of the members, who are unwilling to expose
 themselves to the mercy of foreign powers; the weakness of most of
 the principal members, compared with the formidable powers all
 around them; the vast weight and influence which the emperor
 derives from his separate and heriditary dominions; and the
 interest he feels in preserving a system with which his family pride
 is connected, and which constitutes him the first prince in Europe;
 --these causes support a feeble and precarious Union; whilst the
 repellant quality, incident to the nature of sovereignty, and which
 time continually strengthens, prevents any reform whatever, founded
 on a proper consolidation. Nor is it to be imagined, if this
 obstacle could be surmounted, that the neighboring powers would
 suffer a revolution to take place which would give to the empire the
 force and preeminence to which it is entitled. Foreign nations have
 long considered themselves as interested in the changes made by
 events in this constitution; and have, on various occasions,
 betrayed their policy of perpetuating its anarchy and weakness.
If more direct examples were wanting, Poland, as a government
 over local sovereigns, might not improperly be taken notice of. Nor
 could any proof more striking be given of the calamities flowing
 from such institutions. Equally unfit for self-government and
 self-defense, it has long been at the mercy of its powerful
 neighbors; who have lately had the mercy to disburden it of one
 third of its people and territories.
The connection among the Swiss cantons scarcely amounts to a
 confederacy; though it is sometimes cited as an instance of the
 stability of such institutions.
They have no common treasury; no common troops even in war; no
 common coin; no common judicatory; nor any other common mark of
 sovereignty.
They are kept together by the peculiarity of their topographical
 position; by their individual weakness and insignificancy; by the
 fear of powerful neighbors, to one of which they were formerly
 subject; by the few sources of contention among a people of such
 simple and homogeneous manners; by their joint interest in their
 dependent possessions; by the mutual aid they stand in need of, for
 suppressing insurrections and rebellions, an aid expressly
 stipulated and often required and afforded; and by the necessity of
 some regular and permanent provision for accomodating disputes among
 the cantons. The provision is, that the parties at variance shall
 each choose four judges out of the neutral cantons, who, in case of
 disagreement, choose an umpire. This tribunal, under an oath of
 impartiality, pronounces definitive sentence, which all the cantons
 are bound to enforce. The competency of this regulation may be
 estimated by a clause in their treaty of 1683, with Victor Amadeus
 of Savoy; in which he obliges himself to interpose as mediator in
 disputes between the cantons, and to employ force, if necessary,
 against the contumacious party.
So far as the peculiarity of their case will admit of comparison
 with that of the United States, it serves to confirm the principle
 intended to be established. Whatever efficacy the union may have
 had in ordinary cases, it appears that the moment a cause of
 difference sprang up, capable of trying its strength, it failed.
 The controversies on the subject of religion, which in three
 instances have kindled violent and bloody contests, may be said, in
 fact, to have severed the league. The Protestant and Catholic
 cantons have since had their separate diets, where all the most
 important concerns are adjusted, and which have left the general
 diet little other business than to take care of the common bailages.
That separation had another consequence, which merits attention.
 It produced opposite alliances with foreign powers: of Berne, at
 the head of the Protestant association, with the United Provinces;
 and of Luzerne, at the head of the Catholic association, with
 France.
PUBLIUS.
1 Pfeffel, ``Nouvel Abreg. Chronol. de l'Hist., etc.,
 d'Allemagne,'' says the pretext was to indemnify himself for the
 expense of the expedition.