Federalist Papers 1-6

So, okay, I made a few edits to my evaluation of Middlemarch yesterday, all of them based on my confusion over whether the English estate system was "good, actually" or "bad, actually," it's clear in Eliot's text that there are well-run estates and less-well-run estates, and let's go ahead and break them down:

• Freshitt is the well-run estate, improved by scientific methods and strong management practices in combination with an emphasis on tenant housing
• Tipton is the poorly-run estate, why give anything nice to the tenants since they're just going to ruin it anyway, let them farm as they choose and pay the rent as they can
• Lowick is the ignored estate, the tenants are allowed to retain more of the financial value of their own farms since Casaubon can't be bothered to pay attention to them, they stop going to church (refusing to listen to apostolic nonsense) until Dorothea installs Farebrother in the parsonage and restores a Christianity based on consequentialism, the Middlemarchers are all "what do we do with these people, they're behaving as if they didn't have landlords"

Obviously we'd prefer Freshitt to Tipton, but we might prefer Lowick to both (as might John Steinbeck, who suggests this kind of individual+collective+anarchic balance might be the optimal system). Unfortunately we don't know what happens to Lowick after Dorothea renounces her claim to the estate in order to marry Will. Does she give the land to the tenants, or does she allow someone else to take ownership?

And obviously estate systems are "bad, actually" because they allow wealth to accumulate in the hands of a few owners, but they're "good, actually" because they increase food production and provide security, they're also "good, actually" because some of the owners use their excess wealth to fund technology and art, paying people to think and so on, they also figure out more economical farming methods, etc., estates are idea generators as well as food generators, they may also be "good, actually" because the people who work the farms might be better off under the estate management than they would be if they were left to self-manage, but they're "bad, actually" because they limit the capacity of the worker to accumulate wealth, which really means that they limit the capacity of the worker to accumulate ideas.

We don't get to see this with any of the tenant farmers because Eliot doesn't write any of them into characters; we do see this with Fred and Mary, both of whom are bound by the necessity of earning a middle-class living. Without wealth, Fred and Mary become consumers; Mary reads silly romance novels and Fred busies his mind with hunting and sport. We also see this with Lydgate and Rosamond; Lydgate had hoped that he could survive on very little income and live a life of the mind until he made the discovery that made him famous, but we already know he's going to fail because he spends his free time watching the kind of melodramas that stunt his thoughts before they have the chance to grow. Meanwhile Rosamond insists on conspicuous consumption because she has nothing else with which to distinguish herself – and because she went to a middle-class finishing school that taught her these values, which is a whole 'nother deal, the idea of these schools being created at just about the same time that you get mass production and a middle class.

At any rate, I told Larry last night that if we could solve this problem we would have done something immensely important for humanity, and then I told him that we probably wouldn't be able to solve this problem, and then we talked a bit more about the Federalist Papers.

FEDERALIST No. 1. General Introduction

"An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power and hostile to the principles of liberty. An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good. It will be forgotten, on the one hand, that jealousy is the usual concomitant of love, and that the noble enthusiasm of liberty is apt to be infected with a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust. On the other hand, it will be equally forgotten that the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty; that, in the contemplation of a sound and well-informed judgment, their interest can never be separated; and that a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants."

Alexander Hamilton tells us it's okay to love government. Really! Also, people who talk about rights may actually want to curtail liberties, so beware.

FEDERALIST No. 2. Concerning Dangers from Foreign Force and Influence

"With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people—a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence. This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties."

I don't want to say that John Jay is an idiot, but ummmmmmm first of all we haven't manifested any destinies yet and second of all there was never a point in time in which we all came from the same ancestors and spoke the same religion, even if you only count the European immigration parts, and third of all you are already split into sovereignties if you count ideas as borders, the biggest split will be called Jeffersonianism vs. Hamiltonianism, also you literally can't decide whether or not to have slaves (and you are about to make the worst decision ever), what is John Jay even thinking here.

FEDERALIST No. 3. The Same Subject Continued (Concerning Dangers From Foreign Force and Influence)

More ridiculousness from John Jay. The best way to protect our new republic of all-same-people is by making sure we never let any other country near us.

FEDERALIST No. 4. The Same Subject Continued (Concerning Dangers From Foreign Force and Influence)

We will protect ourselves from foreign influence by becoming better than all of the other countries at everything, says John Jay.

FEDERALIST No. 5. The Same Subject Continued (Concerning Dangers From Foreign Force and Influence)

Britain has problems because it lets Scotland and Ireland do their own things and everyone fights all the time and our country may have the same kinds of problems because we have smart people in the North and dum-dums in the South, it's not their fault, it's just how climate works, and so we have to unite with the South as quickly as possible so that they won't fight with us.

NO SERIOUSLY JOHN JAY WRITES ALL OF THIS DOWN. THESE ARE HIS BEST IDEAS.

FEDERALIST No. 6. Concerning Dangers from Dissensions Between the States

Back to Hamilton, thank goodness. He begins with a meditation on war:

"The causes of hostility among nations are innumerable. There are some which have a general and almost constant operation upon the collective bodies of society. Of this description are the love of power or the desire of pre-eminence and dominion—the jealousy of power, or the desire of equality and safety. There are others which have a more circumscribed though an equally operative influence within their spheres. Such are the rivalships and competitions of commerce between commercial nations. And there are others, not less numerous than either of the former, which take their origin entirely in private passions; in the attachments, enmities, interests, hopes, and fears of leading individuals in the communities of which they are members. Men of this class, whether the favorites of a king or of a people, have in too many instances abused the confidence they possessed; and assuming the pretext of some public motive, have not scrupled to sacrifice the national tranquillity to personal advantage or personal gratification."

Then he explains that our new nation will be able to avoid this because we're going to be a nation of commerce:

"The genius of republics (say they) is pacific; the spirit of commerce has a tendency to soften the manners of men, and to extinguish those inflammable humors which have so often kindled into wars. Commercial republics, like ours, will never be disposed to waste themselves in ruinous contentions with each other. They will be governed by mutual interest, and will cultivate a spirit of mutual amity and concord."

We will be like Athens, the best city-state in the world. We won't be like Carthage, which was pretty good until Hannibal ruined everything, and we definitely won't be like Sparta, which wasn't even a real state, it was just a bunch of bros in a gym chanting "no pain, no gain."

Also – and Hamilton is very clear on this – we will not be like Rome. Never like Rome. The Romans took their capacity for greatness and ate it.