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Books about Politics and Current Events in The Radical Academy Bookstore Click Here for New & Used College Textbooks at Discount Prices Click Here for College Education Information & Study Resources Shop Amazon Stores in the Radical Academy Bookstore Magazine Outlet Music Store Classical Music Store Video Store DVD Store Computer Store Camera & Photo Store Computer/Video Games Software Store Musical Instruments Outlet Store Cellular Phones Toys & Games Tools & Hardware Automotive Store Outdoor Living Consumer Electronics Home & Garden Kitchen & Housewares Baby Superstore Apparel & Accessories Gourmet Food Grocery Store Sporting Goods Jewelry & Watches Health & Personal Care Beauty Store		A Guide to Reading the American State Papers The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States, and The Federalist   I. The Declaration of Independence is largely the work of Thomas Jefferson, while Alexander Hamilton is the chief author of The Federalist, although some papers were contributed by James Madison and some by John Jay. In spite of the fact that the contribution of the latter two is quantitatively small, their co-authorship was important, since Madison was one of the chief framers of the Constitution, while John Jay's prestige, at the time of writing was the greatest of the three men. He was the oldest of the three authors (forty-two); Hamilton was only thirty years old, and Madison, thirty-six. No matter who the author of a Federalist paper is, it is always signed "Publius." The Constitution was, of course, the collaborative effort of the Constitutional Convention, but Madison is often called the "Father of the Constitution." The Constitutional Convention completed its work in September. 1787, and the Federalist papers started to appear soon thereafter. They were articles written for several New York newspapers, in order to urge the people of the state of New York to ratify the Constitution. The papers appeared from October 1787 to April 1788. There was considerable opposition to ratification in New York, led by the very influential governor, George Clinton. The last article of the Constitution provides that if nine of the thirteen states ratify it, it shall then go into effect among those nine states. In spite of the efforts of the Federalist papers, New York was among the last states to ratify the Constitution; and in fact it did not ratify until after the ninth state (New Hampshire) had done so. (With New Hampshire's ratification, the Constitution went into effect for the ratifying states.) Even when New York finally ratified in July 1788, it did so only by a very slight margin of votes in its convention thirty to twenty-seven. II. Jefferson's views on representative government were in many respects opposed to the views of the Federalist writers. Jefferson favored placing power and responsibility in the hands of the people as far as possible; the Federalists wanted safeguards against the uses to which the people might put such power. Jefferson, for example, wrote as follows to Pierre Du Pont de Nemours: We both consider the people as our children, and love them with parental affection. But you love them as infants whom you are afraid to trust without nurses; and I as adults whom I freely leave to self-government. Madison, on the other hand, thinks that it is beneficial to take the management of government out of the direct hands of the people and to delegate it to elected representatives, because this will refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Thus, he prefers representative, republican government to direct democracy, not only because the size and population of the United States make the latter impracticable, but because he (unlike Jefferson) thinks that the people cannot always be trusted to know what is for their own good. "Under such [republican] regulation," he continues, it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves... The Constitution contains many evidences of these two opposed tendencies, one of which would give power and responsibility to the people, while the other would guard against unlimited popular government. The success of the Constitution may, at least in part, be attributed to the fact that it managed successful compromises between these two tendencies. Let us look at some of these compromises. They can be found everywhere. Thus in Article 1, it is noted that the Congress of the United States "shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives." The bicameral arrangement of the legislature constitutes a compromise between a Congress that is very responsive to the will of the people, and a Congress that acts in the light of its own best opinion, without necessarily and automatically succumbing to popular pressure. One reason why the House of Representatives is very responsive to the wishes of the electorate is that each one of its seats is up for election every two years. In the Senate, however, only a third of the seats can change at each election; so that not only does each senator serve for six years, but the over-all complexion of the Senate tends to change more slowly than that of the House. Furthermore, as Section 3 of this article points out, the senators were not to be elected by the people, but chosen by the legislature of each state. This procedure was not changed until the seventeenth amendment, which provided that senators as well as representatives were to be elected by the people of each state, became effective in 1913. The manner of electing the president also reveals the opposing tendencies in the Constitution. On the one hand, the president is elected by the people, rather than by the state legislatures or governors. This places great power in the hands of the people. On the other hand, the election of the president is not direct; the people of each state elect electors, who in turn elect the president. This interposition of the electoral college which, in theory, is free to name as president whomever it likes, was intended to limit the power of the people; the college has, as we know, become a mere formality. Yet another instance of this conflict can be seen in the duties of each branch of the legislature. Only the popular house can initiate bills having to do with money matters (presumably because taxation is to go along with representation), but only the upper house is consulted in matters of foreign policy (presumably because it is not subject to sudden and disastrous whims). Or, again, only the House of Representatives has the power to initiate impeachment; but the Senate tries all cases of impeachment. III. In The Federalist, No. 10, Madison faces one of the perennial problems that beset any popular government -- the problem of internal instability, strife, and faction. It is a problem well known to modern democracies. An extreme contemporary instance is the rapid succession of governments in France. Examples such as this always raise a doubt as to whether the people are really fit to govern themselves. But let us hear Madison's description of the problem: Complaints are everywhere beard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. Such malfunctioning of government, Madison says, is largely due to factions, i.e., groups of citizens which manage to control the government not for the common good, but for their own special interests. To prevent this development, be says, we can either (1) eliminate the causes of factions, or (2) control their effects. Factions can be eliminated if it is possible to give to every citizen "the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests." But this clearly is impossible. The other method of eliminating a faction is that of "destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence." But, Madison adds, It could never be more truly said than of [this] remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency. Hence Madison concludes that the way to deal with factions is to realize that they will always be with us and to concentrate on controlling their effects. Now a factious group, i.e., a group aiming at its own rather than the com-mon good, becomes dangerous when it becomes the majority in a popular government. Only then can it pursue its selfish ends without effective opposition. Therefore, the remedy which Madison proposes is something which will prevent a faction from becoming the ruling power in a government. It may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention.... The solution which Madison advocates is republican rather than democratic government. "The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are," he points out, 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. We have already quoted Madison's opinion that such delegates will often recognize the true interest of the country (as distinguished from the selfish interest of a faction) better than the people themselves could. Furthermore, a larger country suffers less from the evils of factions than a small one, for the following reasons: Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other. So convinced is Madison that the Constitution will prevent the evils of factions that he concludes the tenth paper thus: In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government. IV. The separation of the powers of government is a basic provision of the Constitution of the United States. It is a device that prevents any part of the government from becoming too powerful. Locke mentions the separation of powers; but the doctrine that it is all-important for free government stems from Montesquieu, as Madison acknowledges in The Federalist, No. 47. After first distinguishing the three powers, Montesquieu says: When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.   Again, there is no liberty, if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control; for the judge would be then the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with violence and oppression.   There would be an end of everything, were the same man or the same body, whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise those three powers, that of enacting laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and of trying the causes of individuals. (The Spirit of Laws, Book XI, Chap. 6). In The Federalist, No. 47, Madison notes the importance of the separation of powers: One of the principal objections inculcated by the more respectable adversaries to the Constitution is its supposed violation of the political maxim, that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments ought to be separate and distinct. In the structure of the federal government, no regard, it is said, seems to have been paid to this essential precaution in favour of liberty. The several departments of power are distributed and blended in such a manner as at once to destroy all symmetry and beauty of form, and to expose some of the essential parts of the edifice to the danger of being crushed by the disproportionate weight of other parts. Madison acknowledges that there is considerable mixing of governmental powers (the so-called system of checks and balances) in the proposed Constitution. But, referring to Montesquieu's words and to his primary example (the British Constitution), Madison argues that Montesquieu did not mean that these departments ought to have no partial agency in, or no control over, the acts of each other. His meaning, as his own words import, and still more conclusively as illustrated by the example in his eye, can amount to no more than this, that where the whole power of one department is exercised by the same hands which possess the whole power of another department, the fundamental principles of a free constitution are subverted. Still, even if we grant that some mixture of powers is defensible, they are for the most part to be kept separate. And so the author of The Federalist, No. 51, continues as follows: To what expedient, then, shall we finally resort, for maintaining in practice the necessary partition of power among the several departments, as laid down in the Constitution? The only answer that can be given is, that as all these exterior provisions are found to be inadequate, the defect must be supplied, by so contriving the interior structure of the government as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places. "Publius" then lists the principal means for achieving this end: In order to lay a due foundation for that separate and distinct exercise of the different powers of government, which to a certain extent is admitted on all hands to be essential to the preservation of liberty, it is evident that each department should have a will of its own; and consequently should be so constituted that the members of each should have as little agency as possible in the appointment of the members of the others... It is equally evident, that the members of each department should be as little dependent as possible on those of the others, for the emoluments annexed to their offices... But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defence must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. In a word, the Federalists propose to rely on the self-interest of men. If the self-interest of men can be made to coincide with the separation of governmental powers, then these powers will be kept separate far more surely than by any artificial or external devices. "Publius" dwells for a moment on the melancholy truth that public interest is safest when it coincides with private ambition: It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. V. What, according to the Federalists, is the indispensable condition of civil peace? Papers 2 through 9 are devoted to the discussion of war and peace. The first four of these deal with the "dangers from foreign force and influence" while the last four are concerned with "dangers from war between the states." In The Federalist, No. 6, Hamilton makes it clear that if the states were to become independent, sovereign nations, they would soon become embroiled in war. A man must be far gone in Utopian speculations who can seriously doubt that, if these States should either be wholly disunited, or only united in partial confederacies, the subdivisions into which they might be thrown would have frequent and violent contests with each other. To presume a want of motives for such contests as an argument against their existence, would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious. He takes up this topic again a little later: There are still to be found visionary or designing men, who stand ready to advocate the paradox of perpetual peace between the States, though dismembered and alienated from each other. 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 humours which have so often kindled into wars. Hamilton shows by many examples that this is a delusion. "There have been," he concludes, "almost as many popular as royal wars." The only effective means of maintaining peace among the several States is by uniting them under a common government. Hamilton quotes the Abbe de Mably in support of his contention: "Neighbouring nations are naturally enemies of each other, unless their common weakness forces them to league in a confederate republic, and their constitution prevents the differences that neighbourhood occasions, extinguishing that secret jealousy which disposes all states to aggrandise themselves at the expense of their neighbours." Are there any first principles or axioms in politics? In The Federalist, No. 31, Hamilton writes as follows: In disquisitions of every kind, there are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasonings must depend. These contain an internal evidence which, antecedent to all reflection or combination, commands the assent of the mind. . . . Of this nature are the maxims in geometry, that "the whole is greater than its part; things equal to the same are equal to one another; two straight lines cannot enclose a space; and all right angles are equal to each other." Of the same nature are these other maxims in ethics and politics, that there cannot be an effect without a cause; that the means ought to be proportioned to the end; that every power ought to be commensurate with its object; that there ought to be no limitation of a power destined to effect a purpose which is itself incapable of limitation. Obviously, therefore, Hamilton answers our question affirmatively. But we can still ask whether he is correct, and even if he is, whether he has correctly identified the first principles of politics. Taking the first question first, we may point out that some of the axioms to which Hamilton refers are not restricted to geometry. Indeed, such axioms, being "common notions," apply equally to geometry, arithmetic, ethics, or any other discipline. In other words, that the whole is greater than any of its parts is not a truth applicable only to geometry. Hence, strictly speaking, there are no "axioms of geometry" or "axioms of politics," but simply "axioms." On the other hand, there are first or basic principles of geometry; and there may also be first or basic principles of politics. That a straight line cannot enclose a space seems to be such a first principle of geometry. This principle is definitely geometrical in nature. Most of the statements concerning power that Hamilton offers appear to be first principles of politics, rather than axioms. This brings us to a second question: Are the first principles of politics only those that Hamilton mentions? Or, for instance, is the observation that the public interest is most effectively safeguarded when it coincides with private interest also a first principle? Are the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence first principles of politics? In the second paragraph Of the Declaration, we read: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. It is interesting to observe that, although the Declaration of Independence preceded The Federalist by eleven years, Hamilton does not refer to the truths that Jefferson had called self-evident in order to exemplify the first principles of politics. The reason may be that Hamilton did not think these statements true, much less self-evident. The twenty-second amendment to the Constitution limits the president to two terms. What are the consequences of this limitation? Here is the precise text of the twenty-second amendment, which became effective on February 26, 1951: 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term. 2. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress. We may, first of all, wonder whether this amendment is an expression of one of the two tendencies in the Constitution that we mentioned earlier. Does this limitation of the president's tenure put greater or less power into the hands of the people? It probably does both. On the one hand, it prevents a president from becoming too powerful, because he continues in office too long. This, therefore, seems to safeguard the people against an ambitious president. On the other hand, the amendment also limits the power of the people, since it forbids them to elect anyone president for a third time, even if they should desire to do so because of his special qualifications or because of special circumstances. Hamilton devotes all of paper No. 72 to exactly this question. He concludes that Nothing appears more plausible at first sight, nor more ill-founded upon close inspection, than a scheme which in relation to the present point has had some respectable advocates, -- I mean that of continuing the chief magistrate in office for a certain time, and then excluding him from it, either for a limited period or for ever after. He lists the various undesirable effects that he thinks would follow upon such a constitutional exclusion. "One ill effect of the exclusion would be a diminution of the inducements to good behaviour." "Another ill effect of the exclusion would be the temptation to sordid views, to peculation, and, in some instances, to usurpation." "A third ill effect of the exclusion would be the depriving the community of the advantage of the experience gained by the chief magistrate in the exercise of his office." "A fourth ill effect of the exclusion would be the banishing men from stations in which, in certain emergencies of the state, their presence might be of the greatest moment to the public interest or safety." "A fifth ill effect of the exclusion would be, that it would operate as a constitutional interdiction of stability in the administration." Hamilton concludes his discussion with the following paragraph: There is an excess of refinement in the idea of disabling the people to continue in office men who had entitled themselves, in their opinion, to approbation and confidence; the advantages of which are at best speculative and equivocal, and are overbalanced by disadvantages far more certain and decisive. From The Great Ideas Program: An Introduction to The Great Books and to a Liberal Education, by Mortimer J. Adler and and Peter Wolff Academy Showcase Specials Politics Resource Center Main Page
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