The Federalist Papers: A Collection of Essays Written in Favour of the New Constitution

by Alexander Hamilton

has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.

The consciousness of good intentions disdains ambiguity.

I propose, in a series of papers, to discuss the following interesting particulars: The utility of the Union to your political prosperity—The insufficiency of the present Confederation to preserve that Union—The necessity of a government at least equally energetic with the one proposed, to the attainment of this object—The conformity of the proposed Constitution to the true principles of republican government—Its analogy to your own State constitution—and lastly, The additional security which its adoption will afford to the preservation of that species of government, to liberty, and to property.

The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves.

The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.

No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time; yet what are many of the most important acts of legislation, but so many judicial determinations, not indeed concerning the rights of single persons, but concerning the rights of large bodies of citizens? And what are the different classes of legislators but advocates and parties to the causes which they determine?

Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.

The inference to which we are brought is, that the causes of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its effects.

To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government,

is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed.

The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.

in a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. A democracy, consequently, will be confined to a small spot. A republic may be extended over a large region.

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.

When the sword is once drawn, the passions of men observe no bounds of moderation.

Experience is the oracle of truth; and where its responses are unequivocal, they ought to be conclusive and sacred.

The natural cure for an ill-administration, in a popular or representative constitution, is a change of men. A

The wealth of nations depends upon an infinite variety of causes. Situation, soil, climate, the nature of the productions, the nature of the government, the genius of the citizens, the degree of information they possess, the state of commerce, of arts, of industry, these circumstances and many more, too complex, minute, or adventitious to admit of a particular specification, occasion differences hardly conceivable in the relative opulence and riches of different countries.

The consequence clearly is that there can be no common measure of national wealth, and, of course, no general or stationary rule by which the ability of a state to pay taxes can be determined.

The attempt, therefore, to regulate the contributions of the members of a confederacy by any such rule, cannot fail to be productive of gla...

pertinacious

The principal purposes to be answered by union are these the common defense of the members; the preservation of the public peace as well against internal convulsions as external attacks; the regulation of commerce with other nations and between the States; the superintendence of our intercourse, political and commercial, with foreign countries.

The authorities essential to the common defense are these: to raise armies; to build and equip fleets; to prescribe rules for the government of both; to direct their operations; to provide for their support.

A government ought to contain in itself every power requisite to the full accomplishment of the objects committed to its care, and to the complete execution of the trusts for which it is responsible, free from every other control but a regard to the public good and to the sense of the people.

the federal government must of necessity be invested with an unqualified power of taxation in the ordinary modes.

But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, exclusively delegated to the United States. This exclusive delegation, or rather this alienation, of State sovereignty, would only exist in three cases: where the Constitution in express terms granted an exclusive authority to the

Union; where it granted in one instance an authority to the Union, and in another prohibited the States from exercising the like authority; and where it granted an authority to the Union, to which a similar authority in the States would be absolutely and totally contradictory and repugnant.

where the exercise of a concurrent jurisdiction might be productive of occasional interferences in the policy of any branch of administration, but would not imply any direct contradiction or repugnancy in point of constitutional authority.

The last clause but one in the eighth section of the first article provides expressly that Congress shall exercise “exclusive legislation” over the district to be appropriated as the seat of government. This answers to the first case. The first clause of the same section empowers Congress “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises”; and the second clause of the tenth section of the same article declares that, “No state shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any imposts or duties on imports or exports, except for the purpose of executing its inspection laws.”

this power is abridged by another clause, which declares that no tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any State; in consequence of which qualification, it now only extends to the duties on imports.

This answers to the second case. The third will be found in that clause which declares that Congress shall have power “to establish an uniform rule of naturalization throughout the United States.” This must necessarily be exclusive; because if each State had power to prescribe a distinct rule, there could not be a uniform rule.

the power of imposing taxes on all articles other than exports and imports. This, I contend, is manifestly a concurrent and coequal authority in the United States and in the individual States.

There is plainly no expression in the granting clause which makes that power exclusive in the

Union. There is no independent clause or sentence which prohibits the Sta...

This restriction implies an admission that, if it were not inserted, the States would possess the power it excludes; and it implies a further admission, that as to all other taxes, the authority of the States remains undiminished.

mean that the States, in all cases to which the restriction did not apply, would have a concurrent power of taxation with the Union.

The restriction in question amounts to what lawyers call a negative pregnant that is, a negation of one thing, and an affirmance of another; a negation of the authority of the States to impose taxes on imports and exports, and an affirmance of their authority to impose them on all other articles.

The restraining or prohibitory clause only says, that they shall not, without the consent of Congress, lay such duties; and if we are to understand this in the sense last mentioned, the Constitution would then be made to introduce a formal provision for the sake of a very absurd conclusion; which is, that the States, with the consent of the national legislature, might tax imports and exports; and that they might tax every other article, unless controlled by the same body. If this was the intention, why not leave it, in the first instance, to what is alleged to be the natural operation of the original clause, conferring a general power of taxation upon the Union? It is evident that this could not have been the intention, and that it will not bear a construction of the kind.

The necessity of a concurrent jurisdiction in certain cases results from the division of the sovereign power; and the rule that all authorities, of which the States are not explicitly divested in favor of the Union, remain with them in full vigor, is not a theoretical consequence of that division, but is clearly admitted by the whole tenor of the instrument which contains the articles of the proposed Constitution.

The last clause of the eighth section of the first article of the plan under consideration authorizes the national legislature “to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the powers by that Constitution vested in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof”;

and the second clause of the sixth article declares, “that the Constitution and the laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof, and the treaties made by their authority shall be the supreme law of the land, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.”

These two clauses have been the source of much virulent invective and petulant declamation against the proposed Constitution. They have been held up to the people in all the exaggerated colors of misrepresentation as the pernicious engines by which their loc...

What is a power, but the ability or faculty of doing a thing? What is the ability to do a thing, but the power of employing the means necessary to its execution? What is a legislative power, but a power of making laws? What are the means to execute a legislative power but laws? What is the power of laying and collecting taxes, but a legislative power, or a power of making laws, to lay and collect taxes? What are the proper means of executing such a power, but necessary and proper laws?

that a power to lay and collect taxes must be a power to pass all laws necessary and proper for the execution of that power; and what does the unfortunate and calumniated provision in question do more than declare the same truth, to wit, that the national legislature, to whom the power of laying and collecting taxes had been previously given, might, in the execution of that power, pass all laws necessary and proper to carry it into effect?

But suspicion may ask, Why then was it introduced? The answer is, that it could only have been done for greater caution, and to guard against all cavilling refinements in those who might hereafter feel a disposition to curtail and evade the legitimate authorities of the Union.

that the danger which most threatens our political welfare is that the State governments will finally sap the foundations of the Union; and might therefore think it necessary, in so cardinal a point, to leave nothing to construction. Whatever may have been the inducement to it, the wisdom of the precaution is evident from the cry which has been raised against it; as that very cry betrays a disposition to question the great and essential truth which it is manifestly the object of that provision to declare.

Who is to judge of the necessity and propriety of the laws to be passed for executing the powers of the Union? I answer, first, that this question arises as well and as fully upon the simple grant of those powers as upon the declaratory clause; and I answer, in the second place, that the national government, like every other, must judge, in the first instance, of the proper exercise of its powers, and its constituents in the last. If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.

The propriety of a law, in a constitutional light, must always be determined by the nature of the powers upon which it is founded.

But it is said that the laws of the Union are to be the supreme law of the land.

A law, by the very meaning of the term, includes supremacy. It is a rule which those to whom it is prescribed are bound to observe.

individuals enter into a state of society, the laws of that society must be the supreme regulator of their conduct.