The Federalists thus repudiated the emerging Jeffersonian Republican view that the best government was the least government. Hamilton believed deeply in the “need” for “a common directing power” in government, and had only contempt for those who thought trade and other private interests could regulate themselves. “This is one of those wild speculative paradoxes,” he said, “which have grown into credit among us, contrary to the uniform practice and sense of the most enlightened nations.… It must be rejected by every man acquainted with commercial history.”36
