The Federalist Papers
be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted. One spirit would
animate and conduct the whole. The same combinations, in short, would
result from an apprehension of the federal, as was produced by the
dread of a foreign, yoke; and unless the projected innovations should be
voluntarily renounced, the same appeal to a trial of force would be made
in the one case as was made in the other. But what degree of madness
could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity. In the
contest with Great Britain, one part of the empire was employed against
the other. The more numerous part invaded the rights of the less
numerous part. The attempt was unjust and unwise; but it was not in
speculation absolutely chimerical. But what would be the contest in the
case we are supposing? Who would be the parties? A few representatives
of the people would be opposed to the people themselves; or rather one
set of representatives would be contending against thirteen sets of
representatives, with the whole body of their common constituents on the
side of the latter.
The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State
governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may
previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition. The
reasonings contained in these papers must have been employed to little
purpose indeed, if it could be necessary now to disprove the reality
of this danger. That the people and the States should, for a sufficient
period of time, elect an uninterrupted succession of men ready to betray
both; that the traitors should, throughout this period, uniformly and
systematically pursue some fixed plan for the extension of the military
establishment; that the governments and the people of the States should
silently and patiently behold the gathering storm, and continue to
supply the materials, until it should be prepared to burst on their own
heads, must appear to every one more like the incoherent dreams of a
delirious jealousy, or the misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit
zeal, than like the sober apprehensions of genuine patriotism.
Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular
army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let
it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would
not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people
on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to
which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried
in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number
of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This
proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than
twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia
amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands,
officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common
liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their
affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia
thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of
regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful
resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most
inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being
armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other
nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people
are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a
barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than
any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding
the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are
carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are
afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with
this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were
the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments
chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the
national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these
governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be
affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny
in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which
surround it. Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America
with the suspicion, that they would be less able to defend the rights of
which they would be in actual possession, than the debased subjects
of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their
oppressors. Let us rather no longer insult them with the supposition
that they can ever reduce themselves to the necessity of making
the experiment, by a blind and tame submission to the long train of
insidious measures which must precede and produce it.
The argument under the present head may be put into a very concise
form, which appears altogether conclusive. Either the mode in which
the federal government is to be constructed will render it sufficiently
dependent on the people, or it will not. On the first supposition, it
will be restrained by that dependence from forming schemes obnoxious to
their constituents. On the other supposition, it will not possess the
confidence of the people, and its schemes of usurpation will be easily
defeated by the State governments, who will be supported by the people.
On summing up the considerations stated in this and the last paper, they
seem to amount to the most convincing evidence, that the powers proposed
to be lodged in the federal government are as little formidable to those
reserved to the individual States, as they are indispensably necessary
to accomplish the purposes of the Union; and that all those alarms which
have been sounded, of a meditated and consequential annihilation of
the State governments, must, on the most favorable interpretation, be
ascribed to the chimerical fears of the authors of them.
PUBLIUS
FEDERALIST No. 47
The Particular Structure of the New Government and the Distribution of
Power Among Its Different Parts.
For the Independent Journal. Wednesday, January 30, 1788.
MADISON
To the People of the State of New York:
HAVING reviewed the general form of the proposed government and
the general mass of power allotted to it, I proceed to examine the
particular structure of this government, and the distribution of this
mass of power among its constituent parts.
One of the principal objections inculcated by the more respectable
adversaries to the Constitution, is its supposed violation of the
political maxim, that the legislative, executive, and judiciary
departments ought to be separate and distinct. In the structure of the
federal government, no regard, it is said, seems to have been paid to
this essential precaution in favor of liberty. The several departments
of power are distributed and blended in such a manner as at once to
destroy all symmetry and beauty of form, and to expose some of the
essential parts of the edifice to the danger of being crushed by the
disproportionate weight of other parts.
No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is
stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty, than
that on which the objection is founded. The accumulation of all powers,
legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of
one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective,
may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. Were the
federal Constitution, therefore, really chargeable with the accumulation
of power, or with a mixture of powers, having a dangerous tendency to
such an accumulation, no further arguments would be necessary to inspire
a universal reprobation of the system. I persuade myself, however,
that it will be made apparent to every one, that the charge cannot
be supported, and that the maxim on which it relies has been totally
misconceived and misapplied. In order to form correct ideas on this
important subject, it will be proper to investigate the sense in which
the preservation of liberty requires that the three great departments of
power should be separate and distinct.
The oracle who is always consulted and cited on this subject is the
celebrated Montesquieu. If he be not the author of this invaluable
precept in the science of politics, he has the merit at least of
displaying and recommending it most effectually to the attention of
mankind. Let us endeavor, in the first place, to ascertain his meaning
on this point.
The British Constitution was to Montesquieu what Homer has been to the
didactic writers on epic poetry. As the latter have considered the work
of the immortal bard as the perfect model from which the principles and
rules of the epic art were to be drawn, and by which all similar works
were to be judged, so this great political critic appears to have
viewed the Constitution of England as the standard, or to use his own
expression, as the mirror of political liberty; and to have delivered,
in the form of elementary truths, the several characteristic principles
of that particular system. That we may be sure, then, not to mistake his
meaning in this case, let us recur to the source from which the maxim
was drawn.
On the slightest view of the British Constitution, we must perceive that
the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments are by no means
totally separate and distinct from each other. The executive magistrate
forms an integral part of the legislative authority. He alone has the
prerogative of making treaties with foreign sovereigns, which, when
made, have, under certain limitations, the force of legislative acts.
All the members of the judiciary department are appointed by him, can be
removed by him on the address of the two Houses of Parliament, and form,
when he pleases to consult them, one of his constitutional councils. One
branch of the legislative department forms also a great constitutional
council to the executive chief, as, on another hand, it is the sole
depositary of judicial power in cases of impeachment, and is invested
with the supreme appellate jurisdiction in all other cases. The judges,
again, are so far connected with the legislative department as often to
attend and participate in its deliberations, though not admitted to a
legislative vote.
From these facts, by which Montesquieu was guided, it may clearly be
inferred that, in saying "There can be no liberty where the legislative
and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of
magistrates," or, "if the power of judging be not separated from
the legislative and executive powers," he did not mean that these
departments ought to have no PARTIAL AGENCY in, or no CONTROL over, the
acts of each other. His meaning, as his own words import, and still more
conclusively as illustrated by the example in his eye, can amount to
no more than this, that where the WHOLE power of one department is
exercised by the same hands which possess the WHOLE power of another
department, the fundamental principles of a free constitution are
subverted. This would have been the case in the constitution examined
by him, if the king, who is the sole executive magistrate, had possessed
also the complete legislative power, or the supreme administration of
justice; or if the entire legislative body had possessed the supreme
judiciary, or the supreme executive authority. This, however, is not
among the vices of that constitution. The magistrate in whom the whole
executive power resides cannot of himself make a law, though he can put