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Text File | 1991-10-04 | 10KB | 166 lines

FEDERALIST No. 28

The Same Subject Continued
(The Idea of Restraining the Legislative Authority in Regard to
 the Common Defense Considered)
For the Independent Journal.

HAMILTON

To the People of the State of New York:
THAT there may happen cases in which the national government may
 be necessitated to resort to force, cannot be denied. Our own
 experience has corroborated the lessons taught by the examples of
 other nations; that emergencies of this sort will sometimes arise
 in all societies, however constituted; that seditions and
 insurrections are, unhappily, maladies as inseparable from the body
 politic as tumors and eruptions from the natural body; that the
 idea of governing at all times by the simple force of law (which we
 have been told is the only admissible principle of republican
 government), has no place but in the reveries of those political
 doctors whose sagacity disdains the admonitions of experimental
 instruction.
Should such emergencies at any time happen under the national
 government, there could be no remedy but force. The means to be
 employed must be proportioned to the extent of the mischief. If it
 should be a slight commotion in a small part of a State, the militia
 of the residue would be adequate to its suppression; and the
 national presumption is that they would be ready to do their duty.
 An insurrection, whatever may be its immediate cause, eventually
 endangers all government. Regard to the public peace, if not to the
 rights of the Union, would engage the citizens to whom the contagion
 had not communicated itself to oppose the insurgents; and if the
 general government should be found in practice conducive to the
 prosperity and felicity of the people, it were irrational to believe
 that they would be disinclined to its support.
If, on the contrary, the insurrection should pervade a whole
 State, or a principal part of it, the employment of a different kind
 of force might become unavoidable. It appears that Massachusetts
 found it necessary to raise troops for repressing the disorders
 within that State; that Pennsylvania, from the mere apprehension of
 commotions among a part of her citizens, has thought proper to have
 recourse to the same measure. Suppose the State of New York had
 been inclined to re-establish her lost jurisdiction over the
 inhabitants of Vermont, could she have hoped for success in such an
 enterprise from the efforts of the militia alone? Would she not
 have been compelled to raise and to maintain a more regular force
 for the execution of her design? If it must then be admitted that
 the necessity of recurring to a force different from the militia, in
 cases of this extraordinary nature, is applicable to the State
 governments themselves, why should the possibility, that the
 national government might be under a like necessity, in similar
 extremities, be made an objection to its existence? Is it not
 surprising that men who declare an attachment to the Union in the
 abstract, should urge as an objection to the proposed Constitution
 what applies with tenfold weight to the plan for which they contend;
 and what, as far as it has any foundation in truth, is an
 inevitable consequence of civil society upon an enlarged scale? Who
 would not prefer that possibility to the unceasing agitations and
 frequent revolutions which are the continual scourges of petty
 republics?
Let us pursue this examination in another light. Suppose, in
 lieu of one general system, two, or three, or even four
 Confederacies were to be formed, would not the same difficulty
 oppose itself to the operations of either of these Confederacies?
 Would not each of them be exposed to the same casualties; and when
 these happened, be obliged to have recourse to the same expedients
 for upholding its authority which are objected to in a government
 for all the States? Would the militia, in this supposition, be more
 ready or more able to support the federal authority than in the case
 of a general union? All candid and intelligent men must, upon due
 consideration, acknowledge that the principle of the objection is
 equally applicable to either of the two cases; and that whether we
 have one government for all the States, or different governments for
 different parcels of them, or even if there should be an entire
 separation of the States, there might sometimes be a necessity to
 make use of a force constituted differently from the militia, to
 preserve the peace of the community and to maintain the just
 authority of the laws against those violent invasions of them which
 amount to insurrections and rebellions.
Independent of all other reasonings upon the subject, it is a
 full answer to those who require a more peremptory provision against
 military establishments in time of peace, to say that the whole
 power of the proposed government is to be in the hands of the
 representatives of the people. This is the essential, and, after
 all, only efficacious security for the rights and privileges of the
 people, which is attainable in civil society.%n1%n
If the representatives of the people betray their constituents,
 there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original
 right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of
 government, and which against the usurpations of the national
 rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success
 than against those of the rulers of an individual state. In a
 single state, if the persons intrusted with supreme power become
 usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which
 it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no
 regular measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously
 to arms, without concert, without system, without resource; except
 in their courage and despair. The usurpers, clothed with the forms
 of legal authority, can too often crush the opposition in embryo.
 The smaller the extent of the territory, the more difficult will it
 be for the people to form a regular or systematic plan of
 opposition, and the more easy will it be to defeat their early
 efforts. Intelligence can be more speedily obtained of their
 preparations and movements, and the military force in the possession
 of the usurpers can be more rapidly directed against the part where
 the opposition has begun. In this situation there must be a
 peculiar coincidence of circumstances to insure success to the
 popular resistance.
The obstacles to usurpation and the facilities of resistance
 increase with the increased extent of the state, provided the
 citizens understand their rights and are disposed to defend them.
 The natural strength of the people in a large community, in
 proportion to the artificial strength of the government, is greater
 than in a small, and of course more competent to a struggle with the
 attempts of the government to establish a tyranny. But in a
 confederacy the people, without exaggeration, may be said to be
 entirely the masters of their own fate. Power being almost always
 the rival of power, the general government will at all times stand
 ready to check the usurpations of the state governments, and these
 will have the same disposition towards the general government. The
 people, by throwing themselves into either scale, will infallibly
 make it preponderate. If their rights are invaded by either, they
 can make use of the other as the instrument of redress. How wise
 will it be in them by cherishing the union to preserve to themselves
 an advantage which can never be too highly prized!
It may safely be received as an axiom in our political system,
 that the State governments will, in all possible contingencies,
 afford complete security against invasions of the public liberty by
 the national authority. Projects of usurpation cannot be masked
 under pretenses so likely to escape the penetration of select bodies
 of men, as of the people at large. The legislatures will have
 better means of information. They can discover the danger at a
 distance; and possessing all the organs of civil power, and the
 confidence of the people, they can at once adopt a regular plan of
 opposition, in which they can combine all the resources of the
 community. They can readily communicate with each other in the
 different States, and unite their common forces for the protection
 of their common liberty.
The great extent of the country is a further security. We have
 already experienced its utility against the attacks of a foreign
 power. And it would have precisely the same effect against the
 enterprises of ambitious rulers in the national councils. If the
 federal army should be able to quell the resistance of one State,
 the distant States would have it in their power to make head with
 fresh forces. The advantages obtained in one place must be
 abandoned to subdue the opposition in others; and the moment the
 part which had been reduced to submission was left to itself, its
 efforts would be renewed, and its resistance revive.
We should recollect that the extent of the military force must,
 at all events, be regulated by the resources of the country. For a
 long time to come, it will not be possible to maintain a large army;
 and as the means of doing this increase, the population and natural
 strength of the community will proportionably increase. When will
 the time arrive that the federal government can raise and maintain
 an army capable of erecting a despotism over the great body of the
 people of an immense empire, who are in a situation, through the
 medium of their State governments, to take measures for their own
 defense, with all the celerity, regularity, and system of
 independent nations? The apprehension may be considered as a
 disease, for which there can be found no cure in the resources of
 argument and reasoning.
PUBLIUS.
 Its full efficacy will be examined hereafter.