fp46.txt

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 of 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 more 
        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 protection of everything that was dear, and the acquisition of everything 
        that could be desirable to the people at large. It was, nevertheless, 
        invariably found, after the transient enthusiasm for the early Congresses 
        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 preorgatives of their governments. The motives on the part 
        of the State governments, to augment their prerogatives by defalcations 
        from 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 co-operate 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 oppose, 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 uninterupted 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.