FEDERALIST No. 23

The Necessity of a Government as Energetic as the One Proposed to

the Preservation of the Union

From the New York Packet.

Tuesday, December 18, 1787.

To the People of the State of New York:

THE necessity of a Constitution, at least equally energetic with

the one proposed, to the preservation of the Union, is the point at

the examination of which we are now arrived.

This inquiry will naturally divide itself into three

branchesgthe objects to be provided for by the federal government,

the quantity of power necessary to the accomplishment of those

objects, the persons upon whom that power ought to operate. Its

distribution and organization will more properly claim our attention

under the succeeding head.

The principal purposes to be answered by union are thesegthe

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. These powers ought to exist without limitation,

BECAUSE IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO FORESEE OR DEFINE THE EXTENT AND VARIETY

OF NATIONAL EXIGENCIES, OR THE CORRESPONDENT EXTENT AND VARIETY OF

THE MEANS WHICH MAY BE NECESSARY TO SATISFY THEM. The circumstances

that endanger the safety of nations are infinite, and for this

reason no constitutional shackles can wisely be imposed on the power

to which the care of it is committed. This power ought to be

coextensive with all the possible combinations of such

circumstances; and ought to be under the direction of the same

councils which are appointed to preside over the common defense.

This is one of those truths which, to a correct and unprejudiced

mind, carries its own evidence along with it; and may be obscured,

but cannot be made plainer by argument or reasoning. It rests upon

axioms as simple as they are universal; the MEANS ought to be

proportioned to the END; the persons, from whose agency the

attainment of any END is expected, ought to possess the MEANS by

which it is to be attained.

Whether there ought to be a federal government intrusted with

the care of the common defense, is a question in the first instance,

open for discussion; but the moment it is decided in the

affirmative, it will follow, that that government ought to be

clothed with all the powers requisite to complete execution of its

trust. And unless it can be shown that the circumstances which may

affect the public safety are reducible within certain determinate

limits; unless the contrary of this position can be fairly and

rationally disputed, it must be admitted, as a necessary

consequence, that there can be no limitation of that authority which

is to provide for the defense and protection of the community, in

any matter essential to its efficacygthat is, in any matter

essential to the FORMATION, DIRECTION, or SUPPORT of the NATIONAL

FORCES.

Defective as the present Confederation has been proved to be,

this principle appears to have been fully recognized by the framers

of it; though they have not made proper or adequate provision for

its exercise. Congress have an unlimited discretion to make

requisitions of men and money; to govern the army and navy; to

direct their operations. As their requisitions are made

constitutionally binding upon the States, who are in fact under the

most solemn obligations to furnish the supplies required of them,

the intention evidently was that the United States should command

whatever resources were by them judged requisite to the ``common

defense and general welfare.'' It was presumed that a sense of

their true interests, and a regard to the dictates of good faith,

would be found sufficient pledges for the punctual performance of

the duty of the members to the federal head.

The experiment has, however, demonstrated that this expectation

was ill-founded and illusory; and the observations, made under the

last head, will, I imagine, have sufficed to convince the impartial

and discerning, that there is an absolute necessity for an entire

change in the first principles of the system; that if we are in

earnest about giving the Union energy and duration, we must abandon

the vain project of legislating upon the States in their collective

capacities; we must extend the laws of the federal government to

the individual citizens of America; we must discard the fallacious

scheme of quotas and requisitions, as equally impracticable and

unjust. The result from all this is that the Union ought to be

invested with full power to levy troops; to build and equip fleets;

and to raise the revenues which will be required for the formation

and support of an army and navy, in the customary and ordinary modes

practiced in other governments.

If the circumstances of our country are such as to demand a

compound instead of a simple, a confederate instead of a sole,

government, the essential point which will remain to be adjusted

will be to discriminate the OBJECTS, as far as it can be done, which

shall appertain to the different provinces or departments of power;

allowing to each the most ample authority for fulfilling the

objects committed to its charge. Shall the Union be constituted the

guardian of the common safety? Are fleets and armies and revenues

necessary to this purpose? The government of the Union must be

empowered to pass all laws, and to make all regulations which have

relation to them. The same must be the case in respect to commerce,

and to every other matter to which its jurisdiction is permitted to

extend. Is the administration of justice between the citizens of

the same State the proper department of the local governments?

These must possess all the authorities which are connected with

this object, and with every other that may be allotted to their

particular cognizance and direction. Not to confer in each case a

degree of power commensurate to the end, would be to violate the

most obvious rules of prudence and propriety, and improvidently to

trust the great interests of the nation to hands which are disabled

from managing them with vigor and success.

Who is likely to make suitable provisions for the public

defense, as that body to which the guardianship of the public safety

is confided; which, as the centre of information, will best

understand the extent and urgency of the dangers that threaten; as

the representative of the WHOLE, will feel itself most deeply

interested in the preservation of every part; which, from the

responsibility implied in the duty assigned to it, will be most

sensibly impressed with the necessity of proper exertions; and

which, by the extension of its authority throughout the States, can

alone establish uniformity and concert in the plans and measures by

which the common safety is to be secured? Is there not a manifest

inconsistency in devolving upon the federal government the care of

the general defense, and leaving in the State governments the

EFFECTIVE powers by which it is to be provided for? Is not a want

of co-operation the infallible consequence of such a system? And

will not weakness, disorder, an undue distribution of the burdens

and calamities of war, an unnecessary and intolerable increase of

expense, be its natural and inevitable concomitants? Have we not

had unequivocal experience of its effects in the course of the

revolution which we have just accomplished?

Every view we may take of the subject, as candid inquirers after

truth, will serve to convince us, that it is both unwise and

dangerous to deny the federal government an unconfined authority, as

to all those objects which are intrusted to its management. It will

indeed deserve the most vigilant and careful attention of the

people, to see that it be modeled in such a manner as to admit of

its being safely vested with the requisite powers. If any plan

which has been, or may be, offered to our consideration, should not,

upon a dispassionate inspection, be found to answer this

description, it ought to be rejected. A government, the

constitution of which renders it unfit to be trusted with all the

powers which a free people OUGHT TO DELEGATE TO ANY GOVERNMENT,

would be an unsafe and improper depositary of the NATIONAL INTERESTS.

Wherever THESE can with propriety be confided, the coincident

powers may safely accompany them. This is the true result of all

just reasoning upon the subject. And the adversaries of the plan

promulgated by the convention ought to have confined themselves to

showing, that the internal structure of the proposed government was

such as to render it unworthy of the confidence of the people. They

ought not to have wandered into inflammatory declamations and

unmeaning cavils about the extent of the powers. The POWERS are not

too extensive for the OBJECTS of federal administration, or, in

other words, for the management of our NATIONAL INTERESTS; nor can

any satisfactory argument be framed to show that they are chargeable

with such an excess. If it be true, as has been insinuated by some

of the writers on the other side, that the difficulty arises from

the nature of the thing, and that the extent of the country will not

permit us to form a government in which such ample powers can safely

be reposed, it would prove that we ought to contract our views, and

resort to the expedient of separate confederacies, which will move

within more practicable spheres. For the absurdity must continually

stare us in the face of confiding to a government the direction of

the most essential national interests, without daring to trust it to

the authorities which are indispensible to their proper and

efficient management. Let us not attempt to reconcile

contradictions, but firmly embrace a rational alternative.

I trust, however, that the impracticability of one general

system cannot be shown. I am greatly mistaken, if any thing of

weight has yet been advanced of this tendency; and I flatter

myself, that the observations which have been made in the course of

these papers have served to place the reverse of that position in as

clear a light as any matter still in the womb of time and experience

can be susceptible of. This, at all events, must be evident, that

the very difficulty itself, drawn from the extent of the country, is

the strongest argument in favor of an energetic government; for any

other can certainly never preserve the Union of so large an empire.

If we embrace the tenets of those who oppose the adoption of the

proposed Constitution, as the standard of our political creed, we

cannot fail to verify the gloomy doctrines which predict the

impracticability of a national system pervading entire limits of the

present Confederacy.