Federalist Paper #9

Since I accidentally skipped Federalist #9 (whoops), I might as well live-blog it for you.

FEDERALIST No. 9. The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection

It's a Hamilton essay, so we're already in a good mood. Plus, the topic seems relevant to our current national interests, so let's see what he has to say:

It is impossible to read the history of the petty republics of Greece and Italy without feeling sensations of horror and disgust at the distractions with which they were continually agitated, and at the rapid succession of revolutions by which they were kept in a state of perpetual vibration between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy.

I have not read the history of the petty republics of Greece and Italy, but I'd read them if Hamilton wrote about them. I mean, rapid succession of revolutions by which they were kept in a state of perpetual vibration, swoon.

He goes on to explain that "the advocates of despotism" like to overthrow free government for nothing more than the thrill of "malicious exultation," which sounds like it's missing a few words like "greed" and "power" but whatever. Also, I love that he uses "the advocates of despotism" instead of the straight-out "despots." Alexander Hamilton offers plausible deniability! We wouldn't want to threaten or offend anyone, especially so early in the Federalist Paper series.

Happily for mankind, stupendous fabrics reared on the basis of liberty, which have flourished for ages, have, in a few glorious instances, refuted their gloomy sophisms.

I really shouldn't live-blog this because I want to quote every sentence. I don't even know what he means by "stupendous fabrics reared on the basis of liberty," did fabric mean something different in 1787, Google Dictionary suggests he may be using fabric to mean structure, but also the word reared implies that someone grew structure up from a baby, who cares, it's beautiful.

The science of politics, however, like most other sciences, has received great improvement. The efficacy of various principles is now well understood, which were either not known at all, or imperfectly known to the ancients. The regular distribution of power into distinct departments; the introduction of legislative balances and checks; the institution of courts composed of judges holding their offices during good behavior; the representation of the people in the legislature by deputies of their own election: these are wholly new discoveries, or have made their principal progress towards perfection in modern times. They are means, and powerful means, by which the excellences of republican government may be retained and its imperfections lessened or avoided. 

YES POLITICS IS A SCIENCE and we don't mean "political science" or some other soft-science relativism, we mean a hard science with provable and replicable outcomes.

Hamilton also starts using ALL CAPS at this point in his essay:

To this catalogue of circumstances that tend to the amelioration of popular systems of civil government, I shall venture, however novel it may appear to some, to add one more, on a principle which has been made the foundation of an objection to the new Constitution; I mean the ENLARGEMENT of the ORBIT within which such systems are to revolve, either in respect to the dimensions of a single State or to the consolidation of several smaller States into one great Confederacy. 

How much did they know about orbits in 1787? I appreciate the whole "let's make government bigger" metaphor but also if you enlarge an orbit everything else falls out of balance and the Earth probably freezes or something. (I imagine there's a small-government advocate making that very argument somewhere online.)

Then he gets into Montesquieu, whom I've never read, and I refuse to ask ChatGPT who he is. I know just enough French to translate the first few paragraphs of Esprit des lois off Project Gutenberg, which appear to be an introduction written by somebody who isn't Montesquieu, because they say his book is the best thing since Aristotle and way better than Machiavelli's book because Machiavelli is evil.

I think I'll deal with that later.

Back to Hamilton, who explains that Montesquieu was kinda-sorta small-government but that was only because he'd never seen something so large and amazing as the North American continent, and it seems obvious that we can extrapolate Montesquieuan principles towards a slightly larger government for our expanding and prosperous Union, and then Hamilton quotes Montiesquieu directly:

"It is very probable," (says he) "that mankind would have been obliged at length to live constantly under the government of a single person, had they not contrived a kind of constitution that has all the internal advantages of a republican, together with the external force of a monarchical government. I mean a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC."

"This form of government is a convention by which several smaller STATES agree to become members of a larger ONE, which they intend to form. It is a kind of assemblage of societies that constitute a new one, capable of increasing, by means of new associations, till they arrive to such a degree of power as to be able to provide for the security of the united body."

"A republic of this kind, able to withstand an external force, may support itself without any internal corruptions. The form of this society prevents all manner of inconveniences."

"If a single member should attempt to usurp the supreme authority, he could not be supposed to have an equal authority and credit in all the confederate states. Were he to have too great influence over one, this would alarm the rest. Were he to subdue a part, that which would still remain free might oppose him with forces independent of those which he had usurped and overpower him before he could be settled in his usurpation."

"Should a popular insurrection happen in one of the confederate states the others are able to quell it. Should abuses creep into one part, they are reformed by those that remain sound. The state may be destroyed on one side, and not on the other; the confederacy may be dissolved, and the confederates preserve their sovereignty."

"As this government is composed of small republics, it enjoys the internal happiness of each; and with respect to its external situation, it is possessed, by means of the association, of all the advantages of large monarchies."

I am very interested in that penultimate quote about states being able to quell other states that are behaving badly, because it seems like we never did get that in our current form of government. What did Hamilton actually intend for our Confederate Republic to become, and what went wrong?

He starts to explain this in his concluding paragraphs, I think; he writes that a CONFEDERACY is not the same thing as a CONSOLIDATION (both of those words in ALL CAPS, of course), and that states will be able to retain their own agency while coming together via a series of elected representatives to make decisions that will benefit the entire Union and prevent decisions that may harm it.

In other words:

The proposed Constitution, so far from implying an abolition of the State governments, makes them constituent parts of the national sovereignty, by allowing them a direct representation in the Senate, and leaves in their possession certain exclusive and very important portions of sovereign power.

The states are the constituents of the federal government, which implies that the citizens are constituents of the states? Hamilton doesn't take us any further, unfortunately, so we'll have to keep reading to find out.