RESUMING the subject of the last paper, I proceed to inquire whether
the federal government or the State governments will have the
advantage with regard to the predilection and support of the people.
Notwithstanding the different modes in which they are appointed, we
must consider both of them as substantially dependent on the great
body of the citizens of the United States. I assume this position
here as it respects the first, reserving the proofs for another
place.
The federal and State governments are in fact but different agents
and trustees of the people, constituted with different powers, and
designed for different purposes. The adversaries of the Constitution
seem to have lost sight of the people altogether in their reasonings
on this subject; and to have viewed these different establishments,
not only as mutual rivals and enemies, but as uncontrolled by any
common superior in their efforts to usurp the authorities of each
other. These gentlemen must here be reminded of their error. They
must be told that the ultimate authority, wherever the derivative
may be found, resides in the people alone, and that it will not
depend merely on the comparative ambition or address of the
different governments, whether either, or which of them, will be
able to enlarge its sphere or jurisdiction at the expense of the
other. Truth, no less than decency, requires that the event in every
case should be supposed to depend on the sentiments and sanction of
their common constituents.
Many considerations, besides those suggested on a former occasion,
seem to place it beyond doubt that the first and most natural
attachment of the people will be to the governments of their
respective States. Into the administration of these a greater number
of individuals will expect to rise. From the gift of these a greater
number of offices and emoluments will flow. By the superintending
care of these, all the most domestic and personal interests of the
people will be regulated and provided for. With the affairs of
these, the people will be more familiarly and minutely conversant.
And with the members of these, will a greater proportion of the
people have the ties of personal acquaintance and friendship, and of
family and party attachments; on the side of these, therefore, the
popular bias may well be expected most strongly to incline.
Experience speaks the same language in this case. The federal
administration, though hitherto very defective in comparison with
what may be hoped under a better system, had, during the war, and
particularly whilst the independent fund of paper emissions was in
credit, an activity and importance as great as it can well have in
any future circumstances whatever. It was engaged, too, in a course
of measures which had for their object the projection of every thing
that was dear, and the acquisition of every thing that could be
desirable to the people at large. It was, nevertheless, invariably
found, after the transient enthusiasm for the early Congress was
over, that the attention and attachment of the people were turned
anew to their own particular governments; that the federal council
was at no time the idol of popular favor; and that opposition to
proposed enlargements of its powers and importance was the side
usually taken by the men who wished to build their political
consequence on the prepossessions of their fellow-citizens.
If, therefore, as has been elsewhere remarked, the people should in
future become more partial to the federal than to the State
governments, the change can only result from such manifest and
irresistible proofs of a better administration, as will overcome all
their antecedent propensities. And in that case, the people ought
not surely to be precluded from giving most of their confidence
where they may discover it to be most due; but even in that case the
State governments could have little to apprehend, because it is only
within a certain sphere that the federal power can, in the nature of
things, be advantageously administered.
The remaining points on which I propose to compare the federal and
State governments, are the disposition and the faculty they may
respectively possess, to resist and frustrate the measures of each
other.
It has been already proved that the members of the federal will be
more dependent on the members of the State governments, than the
latter will be on the former. It has appeared, also, that the
prepossessions of the people, on whom both will depend, will be more
on the side of the State governments, than of the federal
government. So far as the disposition of each towards the other may
be influenced by these causes, the State governments must clearly
have the advantage. But in a distinct and very important point of
view, the advantage will lie on the same side.
The prepossessions, which the members themselves will carry into the
federal government, will generally be favorable to the States;
whilst it will rarely happen, that the members of the State
governments will carry into the public councils a bias in favor of
the general government. A local spirit will infallibly prevail much
more in the members of Congress, than a national spirit will prevail
in the legislatures of the particular States.
Every one knows that a great proportion of the errors committed by
the State legislatures proceeds from the disposition of the members
to sacrifice the comprehensive and permanent interest of the State,
to the particular and separate views of the counties or districts in
which they reside. And if they do not sufficiently enlarge their
policy to embrace the collective welfare of their particular State,
how can it be imagined that they will make the aggregate prosperity
of the Union, and the dignity and respectability of its government,
the objects of their affections and consultations? For the same
reason that the members of the State legislatures will be unlikely
to attach themselves sufficiently to national objects, the members
of the federal legislature will be likely to attach themselves too
much to local objects. The States will be to the latter what
counties and towns are to the former. Measures will too often be
decided according to their probable effect, not on the national
prosperity and happiness, but on the prejudices, interests, and
pursuits of the governments and people of the individual States.
What is the spirit that has in general characterized the proceedings
of Congress? A perusal of their journals, as well as the candid
acknowledgments of such as have had a seat in that assembly, will
inform us, that the members have but too frequently displayed the
character, rather of partisans of their respective States, than of
impartial guardians of a common interest; that where on one occasion
improper sacrifices have been made of local considerations, to the
aggrandizement of the federal government, the great interests of the
nation have suffered on a hundred, from an undue attention to the
local prejudices, interests, and views of the particular States. I
mean not by these reflections to insinuate, that the new federal
government will not embrace a more enlarged plan of policy than the
existing government may have pursued; much less, that its views will
be as confined as those of the State legislatures; but only that it
will partake sufficiently of the spirit of both, to be disinclined
to invade the rights of the individual States, or the prerogatives
of their governments. The motives on the part of the State
governments, to augment their prerogatives by defalcations form the
federal government, will be overruled by no reciprocal
predispositions in the members.
Were it admitted, however, that the Federal government may feel an
equal disposition with the State governments to extend its power
beyond the due limits, the latter would still have the advantage in
the means of defeating such encroachments. If an act of a particular
State, though unfriendly to the national government, be generally
popular in that State, and should not too grossly violate the oaths
of the State officers, it is executed immediately and, of course, by
means on the spot and depending on the State alone. The opposition
of the federal government, or the interposition of federal officers,
would but inflame the zeal of all parties on the side of the State,
and the evil could not be prevented or repaired, if at all, without
the employment of means which must always be resorted to with
reluctance and difficulty.
On the other hand, should an unwarrantable measure of the federal
government be unpopular in particular States, which would seldom
fail to be the case, or even a warrantable measure be so, which may
sometimes be the case, the means of opposition to it are powerful
and at hand. The disquietude of the people; their repugnance and,
perhaps, refusal to cooperate with the officers of the Union; the
frowns of the executive magistracy of the State; the embarrassments
created by legislative devices, which would often be added on such
occasions, would opposed, in any State, difficulties not to be
despised; would form, in a large State, very serious impediments;
and where the sentiments of several adjoining States happened to be
in unison, would present obstructions which the federal government
would hardly be willing to encounter.
But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the
authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition
of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of
general alarm. Every government would espouse the common cause. A
correspondence would 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 hundreth 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 the 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.
Signed "PUBLIUS"
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