The Federalist Papers
of a law, that it be attended with a sanction; or, in other words, a
penalty or punishment for disobedience. If there be no penalty annexed
to disobedience, the resolutions or commands which pretend to be laws
will, in fact, amount to nothing more than advice or recommendation.
This penalty, whatever it may be, can only be inflicted in two ways: by
the agency of the courts and ministers of justice, or by military force;
by the COERCION of the magistracy, or by the COERCION of arms. The first
kind can evidently apply only to men; the last kind must of necessity,
be employed against bodies politic, or communities, or States. It is
evident that there is no process of a court by which the observance
of the laws can, in the last resort, be enforced. Sentences may be
denounced against them for violations of their duty; but these sentences
can only be carried into execution by the sword. In an association
where the general authority is confined to the collective bodies of the
communities, that compose it, every breach of the laws must involve a
state of war; and military execution must become the only instrument of
civil obedience. Such a state of things can certainly not deserve the
name of government, nor would any prudent man choose to commit his
happiness to it.
There was a time when we were told that breaches, by the States, of the
regulations of the federal authority were not to be expected; that
a sense of common interest would preside over the conduct of the
respective members, and would beget a full compliance with all the
constitutional requisitions of the Union. This language, at the present
day, would appear as wild as a great part of what we now hear from
the same quarter will be thought, when we shall have received further
lessons from that best oracle of wisdom, experience. It at all times
betrayed an ignorance of the true springs by which human conduct is
actuated, and belied the original inducements to the establishment of
civil power. Why has government been instituted at all? Because the
passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice,
without constraint. Has it been found that bodies of men act with more
rectitude or greater disinterestedness than individuals? The contrary
of this has been inferred by all accurate observers of the conduct of
mankind; and the inference is founded upon obvious reasons. Regard to
reputation has a less active influence, when the infamy of a bad action
is to be divided among a number than when it is to fall singly upon
one. A spirit of faction, which is apt to mingle its poison in the
deliberations of all bodies of men, will often hurry the persons of whom
they are composed into improprieties and excesses, for which they would
blush in a private capacity.
In addition to all this, there is, in the nature of sovereign power,
an impatience of control, that disposes those who are invested with the
exercise of it, to look with an evil eye upon all external attempts to
restrain or direct its operations. From this spirit it happens, that
in every political association which is formed upon the principle of
uniting in a common interest a number of lesser sovereignties, there
will be found a kind of eccentric tendency in the subordinate or
inferior orbs, by the operation of which there will be a perpetual
effort in each to fly off from the common centre. This tendency is not
difficult to be accounted for. It has its origin in the love of power.
Power controlled or abridged is almost always the rival and enemy
of that power by which it is controlled or abridged. This simple
proposition will teach us how little reason there is to expect, that
the persons intrusted with the administration of the affairs of the
particular members of a confederacy will at all times be ready, with
perfect good-humor, and an unbiased regard to the public weal, to
execute the resolutions or decrees of the general authority. The reverse
of this results from the constitution of human nature.
If, therefore, the measures of the Confederacy cannot be executed
without the intervention of the particular administrations, there will
be little prospect of their being executed at all. The rulers of the
respective members, whether they have a constitutional right to do it
or not, will undertake to judge of the propriety of the measures
themselves. They will consider the conformity of the thing proposed
or required to their immediate interests or aims; the momentary
conveniences or inconveniences that would attend its adoption. All this
will be done; and in a spirit of interested and suspicious scrutiny,
without that knowledge of national circumstances and reasons of
state, which is essential to a right judgment, and with that strong
predilection in favor of local objects, which can hardly fail to mislead
the decision. The same process must be repeated in every member of which
the body is constituted; and the execution of the plans, framed by the
councils of the whole, will always fluctuate on the discretion of the
ill-informed and prejudiced opinion of every part. Those who have been
conversant in the proceedings of popular assemblies; who have seen
how difficult it often is, where there is no exterior pressure of
circumstances, to bring them to harmonious resolutions on important
points, will readily conceive how impossible it must be to induce a
number of such assemblies, deliberating at a distance from each other,
at different times, and under different impressions, long to co-operate
in the same views and pursuits.
In our case, the concurrence of thirteen distinct sovereign wills is
requisite, under the Confederation, to the complete execution of every
important measure that proceeds from the Union. It has happened as was
to have been foreseen. The measures of the Union have not been executed;
the delinquencies of the States have, step by step, matured themselves
to an extreme, which has, at length, arrested all the wheels of the
national government, and brought them to an awful stand. Congress
at this time scarcely possess the means of keeping up the forms of
administration, till the States can have time to agree upon a more
substantial substitute for the present shadow of a federal government.
Things did not come to this desperate extremity at once. The
causes which have been specified produced at first only unequal and
disproportionate degrees of compliance with the requisitions of the
Union. The greater deficiencies of some States furnished the pretext of
example and the temptation of interest to the complying, or to the least
delinquent States. Why should we do more in proportion than those who
are embarked with us in the same political voyage? Why should we consent
to bear more than our proper share of the common burden? These were
suggestions which human selfishness could not withstand, and which even
speculative men, who looked forward to remote consequences, could not,
without hesitation, combat. Each State, yielding to the persuasive voice
of immediate interest or convenience, has successively withdrawn its
support, till the frail and tottering edifice seems ready to fall upon
our heads, and to crush us beneath its ruins.
PUBLIUS
1. "I mean for the Union."
FEDERALIST No. 16
The Same Subject Continued (The Insufficiency of the Present
Confederation to Preserve the Union)
From the New York Packet. Tuesday, December 4, 1787.
HAMILTON
To the People of the State of New York:
THE tendency of the principle of legislation for States, or communities,
in their political capacities, as it has been exemplified by the
experiment we have made of it, is equally attested by the events which
have befallen all other governments of the confederate kind, of which
we have any account, in exact proportion to its prevalence in those
systems. The confirmations of this fact will be worthy of a distinct
and particular examination. I shall content myself with barely observing
here, that of all the confederacies of antiquity, which history has
handed down to us, the Lycian and Achaean leagues, as far as there
remain vestiges of them, appear to have been most free from the fetters
of that mistaken principle, and were accordingly those which have best
deserved, and have most liberally received, the applauding suffrages of
political writers.
This exceptionable principle may, as truly as emphatically, be styled
the parent of anarchy: It has been seen that delinquencies in the
members of the Union are its natural and necessary offspring; and that
whenever they happen, the only constitutional remedy is force, and the
immediate effect of the use of it, civil war.
It remains to inquire how far so odious an engine of government, in its
application to us, would even be capable of answering its end. If there
should not be a large army constantly at the disposal of the national
government it would either not be able to employ force at all, or,
when this could be done, it would amount to a war between parts of
the Confederacy concerning the infractions of a league, in which the
strongest combination would be most likely to prevail, whether it
consisted of those who supported or of those who resisted the general
authority. It would rarely happen that the delinquency to be redressed
would be confined to a single member, and if there were more than one
who had neglected their duty, similarity of situation would induce them
to unite for common defense. Independent of this motive of sympathy, if
a large and influential State should happen to be the aggressing member,
it would commonly have weight enough with its neighbors to win over some
of them as associates to its cause. Specious arguments of danger to
the common liberty could easily be contrived; plausible excuses for
the deficiencies of the party could, without difficulty, be invented
to alarm the apprehensions, inflame the passions, and conciliate the
good-will, even of those States which were not chargeable with any
violation or omission of duty. This would be the more likely to take
place, as the delinquencies of the larger members might be expected
sometimes to proceed from an ambitious premeditation in their rulers,
with a view to getting rid of all external control upon their designs
of personal aggrandizement; the better to effect which it is presumable
they would tamper beforehand with leading individuals in the adjacent
States. If associates could not be found at home, recourse would be
had to the aid of foreign powers, who would seldom be disinclined to
encouraging the dissensions of a Confederacy, from the firm union
of which they had so much to fear. When the sword is once drawn, the
passions of men observe no bounds of moderation. The suggestions of
wounded pride, the instigations of irritated resentment, would be apt
to carry the States against which the arms of the Union were exerted, to
any extremes necessary to avenge the affront or to avoid the disgrace
of submission. The first war of this kind would probably terminate in a
dissolution of the Union.
This may be considered as the violent death of the Confederacy. Its more
natural death is what we now seem to be on the point of experiencing, if
the federal system be not speedily renovated in a more substantial form.
It is not probable, considering the genius of this country, that the
complying States would often be inclined to support the authority of the
Union by engaging in a war against the non-complying States. They would
always be more ready to pursue the milder course of putting themselves
upon an equal footing with the delinquent members by an imitation of
their example. And the guilt of all would thus become the security of
all. Our past experience has exhibited the operation of this spirit in