Federalist Paper No. 46
The Influence of the State and Federal
Governments Compared
From the New York Packet.
Tuesday, January 29, 1788.
MADISON
To the People of the State of New York:
RESUMING the subject of the last paper, I proceed to inquire whether the
federal government or the State governments will have the advantage with regard to the
predilection and support of the people. Notwithstanding the different modes in which they
are appointed, we must consider both of them as substantially dependent on the great body
of the citizens of the United States. I assume this position here as it respects the
first, reserving the proofs for another place. The federal and State governments are in
fact but different agents and trustees of the people, constituted with different powers,
and designed for different purposes. The adversaries of the Constitution seem to have lost
sight of the people altogether in their reasonings on this subject; and to have viewed
these different establishments, not only as mutual rivals and enemies, but as uncontrolled
by any common superior in their efforts to usurp the authorities of each other.
These gentlemen must here be reminded of their error. They must be told that
the ultimate authority, wherever the derivative may be found, resides in the people alone,
and that it will not depend merely on the comparative ambition or address of the different
governments, whether either, or which of them, will be able to enlarge its sphere of
jurisdiction at the expense of the other. Truth, no less than decency, requires that the
event in every case should be supposed to depend on the sentiments and sanction of their
common constituents. Many considerations, besides those suggested on a former occasion,
seem to place it beyond doubt that the first and most natural attachment of the people
will be to the governments of their respective States. Into the administration of these a
greater number of individuals will expect to rise. From the gift of these a greater number
of offices and emoluments will flow. By the superintending care of these, all the more
domestic and personal interests of the people will be regulated and provided for. With the
affairs of these, the people will be more familiarly and minutely conversant. And with the
members of these, will a greater proportion of the people have the ties of personal
acquaintance and friendship, and of family and party attachments; on the side of these,
therefore, the popular bias may well be expected most strongly to incline. Experience
speaks the same language in this case. The federal administration, though hitherto very
defective in comparison with what may be hoped under a better system, had, during the war,
and particularly whilst the independent fund of paper emissions was in credit, an activity
and importance as great as it can well have in any future circumstances whatever. It was
engaged, too, in a course of measures which had for their object the protection of
everything that was dear, and the acquisition of everything that could be desirable to the
people at large.
It was, nevertheless, invariably found, after the transient enthusiasm for the
early Congresses was over, that the attention and attachment of the people were turned
anew to their own particular governments; that the federal council was at no time the idol
of popular favor; and that opposition to proposed enlargements of its powers and
importance was the side usually taken by the men who wished to build their political
consequence on the prepossessions of their fellow-citizens. If, therefore, as has been
elsewhere remarked, the people should in future become more partial to the federal than to
the State governments, the change can only result from such manifest and irresistible
proofs of a better administration, as will overcome all their antecedent propensities. And
in that case, the people ought not surely to be precluded from giving most of their
confidence where they may discover it to be most due; but even in that case the State
governments could have little to apprehend, because it is only within a certain sphere
that the federal power can, in the nature of things, be advantageously administered.
The remaining points on which I propose to compare the federal and State
governments, are the disposition and the faculty they may respectively possess, to resist
and frustrate the measures of each other. It has been already proved that the members of
the federal will be more dependent on the members of the State governments, than the
latter will be on the former. It has appeared also, that the prepossessions of the people,
on whom both will depend, will be more on the side of the State governments, than of the
federal government. So far as the disposition of each towards the other may be influenced
by these causes, the State governments must clearly have the advantage.
But in a distinct and very important point of view, the advantage will lie on
the same side. The prepossessions, which the members themselves will carry into the
federal government, will generally be favorable to the States; whilst it will rarely
happen, that the members of the State governments will carry into the public councils a
bias in favor of the general government. A local spirit will infallibly prevail much more
in the members of Congress, than a national spirit will prevail in the legislatures of the
particular States. Every one knows that a great proportion of the errors committed by the
State legislatures proceeds from the disposition of the members to sacrifice the
comprehensive and permanent interest of the State, to the particular and separate views of
the counties or districts in which they reside. And if they do not sufficiently enlarge
their policy to embrace the collective welfare of their particular State, how can it be
imagined that they will make the aggregate prosperity of the Union, and the dignity and
respectability of its government, the objects of their affections and consultations? For
the same reason that the members of the State legislatures will be unlikely to attach
themselves sufficiently to national objects, the members of the federal legislature will
be likely to attach themselves too much to local objects. The States will be to the latter
what counties and towns are to the former. Measures will too often be decided according to
their probable effect, not on the national prosperity and happiness, but on the
prejudices, interests, and pursuits of the governments and people of the individual
States. What is the spirit that has in general characterized the proceedings of Congress?
A perusal of their journals, as well as the candid acknowledgments of such as
have had a seat in that assembly, will inform us, that the members have but too frequently
displayed the character, rather of partisans of their respective States, than of impartial
guardians of a common interest; that where on one occasion improper sacrifices have been
made of local considerations, to the aggrandizement of the federal government, the great
interests of the nation have suffered on a hundred, from an undue attention to the local
prejudices, interests, and views of the particular States. I mean not by these reflections
to insinuate, that the new federal government will not embrace a more enlarged plan of
policy than the existing government may have pursued; much less, that its views will be as
confined as those of the State legislatures; but only that it will partake sufficiently of
the spirit of both, to be disinclined to invade the rights of the individual States, or
the preorgatives of their governments. The motives on the part of the State governments,
to augment their prerogatives by defalcations from the federal government, will be
overruled by no reciprocal predispositions in the members.
Were it admitted, however, that the Federal government may feel an equal
disposition with the State governments to extend its power beyond the due limits, the
latter would still have the advantage in the means of defeating such encroachments. If an
act of a particular State, though unfriendly to the national government, be generally
popular in that State and should not too grossly violate the oaths of the State officers,
it is executed immediately and, of course, by means on the spot and depending on the State
alone. The opposition of the federal government, or the interposition of federal officers,
would but inflame the zeal of all parties on the side of the State, and the evil could not
be prevented or repaired, if at all, without the employment of means which must always be
resorted to with reluctance and difficulty. On the other hand, should an unwarrantable
measure of the federal government be unpopular in particular States, which would seldom
fail to be the case, or even a warrantable measure be so, which may sometimes be the case,
the means of opposition to it are powerful and at hand.
The disquietude of the people; their repugnance and, perhaps, refusal to
co-operate with the officers of the Union; the frowns of the executive magistracy of the
State; the embarrassments created by legislative devices, which would often be added on
such occasions, would oppose, in any State, difficulties not to be despised; would form,
in a large State, very serious impediments; and where the sentiments of several adjoining
States happened to be in unison, would present obstructions which the federal government
would hardly be willing to encounter. But ambitious encroachments of the federal
government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of
a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm. Every
government would espouse the common cause. A correspondence would be opened. Plans of
resistance would be concerted. One spirit would animate and conduct the whole. The same
combinations, in short, would result from an apprehension of the federal, as was produced
by the dread of a foreign, yoke; and unless the projected innovations should be
voluntarily renounced, the same appeal to a trial of force would be made in the one case
as was made in the other. But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal
government to such an extremity. In the contest with Great Britain, one part of the empire
was employed against the other. The more numerous part invaded the rights of the less
numerous part. The attempt was unjust and unwise; but it was not in speculation absolutely
chimerical.
But what would be the contest in the case we are supposing? Who would be the
parties? A few representatives of the people would be opposed to the people themselves; or
rather one set of representatives would be contending against thirteen sets of
representatives, with the whole body of their common constituents on the side of the
latter. The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments
is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a
military force for the projects of ambition. The reasonings contained in these papers must
have been employed to little purpose indeed, if it could be necessary now to disprove the
reality of this danger. That the people and the States should, for a sufficient period of
time, elect an uninterupted succession of men ready to betray both; that the traitors
should, throughout this period, uniformly and systematically pursue some fixed plan for
the extension of the military establishment; that the governments and the people of the
States should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm, and continue to supply
the materials, until it should be prepared to burst on their own heads, must appear to
every one more like the incoherent dreams of a delirious jealousy, or the misjudged
exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal, than like the sober apprehensions of genuine
patriotism.
Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army,
fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the
devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the
State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The
highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried
in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one
twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the
United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be
opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands,
officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and
united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may
well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a
proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful
resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the
possibility of it.
Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the
people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which
the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier
against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple
government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the
several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear,
the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with
this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes.
But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments
chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force,
and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to
them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne
of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which
surround it. Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the
suspicion, that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in
actual possession, than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs
from the hands of their oppressors. Let us rather no longer insult them with the
supposition that they can ever reduce themselves to the necessity of making the
experiment, by a blind and tame submission to the long train of insidious measures which
must precede and produce it.
The argument under the present head may be put into a very concise form, which
appears altogether conclusive. Either the mode in which the federal government is to be
constructed will render it sufficiently dependent on the people, or it will not. On the
first supposition, it will be restrained by that dependence from forming schemes obnoxious
to their constituents. On the other supposition, it will not possess the confidence of the
people, and its schemes of usurpation will be easily defeated by the State governments,
who will be supported by the people.
On summing up the considerations stated in this and the last paper, they seem
to amount to the most convincing evidence, that the powers proposed to be lodged in the
federal government are as little formidable to those reserved to the individual States, as
they are indispensably necessary to accomplish the purposes of the Union; and that all
those alarms which have been sounded, of a meditated and consequential annihilation of the
State governments, must, on the most favorable interpretation, be ascribed to the
chimerical fears of the authors of them.
PUBLIUS.
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