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FEDERALIST No. 23

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
 branches the 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 these the
 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 efficacy that 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.