suggestions which have taken place respecting the power of calling for
the services of the militia. That of New Hampshire is to be marched to
Georgia, of Georgia to New Hampshire, of New York to Kentucky, and of
Kentucky to Lake Champlain. Nay, the debts due to the French and Dutch
are to be paid in militiamen instead of louis d’ors and ducats. At one
moment there is to be a large army to lay prostrate the liberties of
the people; at another moment the militia of Virginia are to be dragged
from their homes five or six hundred miles, to tame the republican
contumacy of Massachusetts; and that of Massachusetts is to be
transported an equal distance to subdue the refractory haughtiness of
the aristocratic Virginians. Do the persons who rave at this rate
imagine that their art or their eloquence can impose any conceits or
absurdities upon the people of America for infallible truths?
If there should be an army to be made use of as the engine of
despotism, what need of the militia? If there should be no army,
whither would the militia, irritated by being called upon to undertake
a distant and hopeless expedition, for the purpose of riveting the
chains of slavery upon a part of their countrymen, direct their course,
but to the seat of the tyrants, who had meditated so foolish as well as
so wicked a project, to crush them in their imagined intrenchments of
power, and to make them an example of the just vengeance of an abused
and incensed people? Is this the way in which usurpers stride to
dominion over a numerous and enlightened nation? Do they begin by
exciting the detestation of the very instruments of their intended
usurpations? Do they usually commence their career by wanton and
disgustful acts of power, calculated to answer no end, but to draw upon
themselves universal hatred and execration? Are suppositions of this
sort the sober admonitions of discerning patriots to a discerning
people? Or are they the inflammatory ravings of incendiaries or
distempered enthusiasts? If we were even to suppose the national rulers
actuated by the most ungovernable ambition, it is impossible to believe
that they would employ such preposterous means to accomplish their
designs.
In times of insurrection, or invasion, it would be natural and proper
that the militia of a neighboring State should be marched into another,
to resist a common enemy, or to guard the republic against the violence
of faction or sedition. This was frequently the case, in respect to the
first object, in the course of the late war; and this mutual succor is,
indeed, a principal end of our political association. If the power of
affording it be placed under the direction of the Union, there will be
no danger of a supine and listless inattention to the dangers of a
neighbor, till its near approach had superadded the incitements of
selfpreservation to the too feeble impulses of duty and sympathy.
PUBLIUS.
THE FEDERALIST.
No. XXX.
Concerning the General Power of Taxation
From the New York Packet.
Friday, December 28, 1787.
HAMILTON
To the People of the State of New York:
It has been already observed that the federal government ought to
possess the power of providing for the support of the national forces;
in which proposition was intended to be included the expense of raising
troops, of building and equipping fleets, and all other expenses in any
wise connected with military arrangements and operations. But these are
not the only objects to which the jurisdiction of the Union, in respect
to revenue, must necessarily be empowered to extend. It must embrace a
provision for the support of the national civil list; for the payment
of the national debts contracted, or that may be contracted; and, in
general, for all those matters which will call for disbursements out of
the national treasury. The conclusion is, that there must be
interwoven, in the frame of the government, a general power of
taxation, in one shape or another.
Money is, with propriety, considered as the vital principle of the body
politic; as that which sustains its life and motion, and enables it to
perform its most essential functions. A complete power, therefore, to
procure a regular and adequate supply of it, as far as the resources of
the community will permit, may be regarded as an indispensable
ingredient in every constitution. From a deficiency in this particular,
one of two evils must ensue; either the people must be subjected to
continual plunder, as a substitute for a more eligible mode of
supplying the public wants, or the government must sink into a fatal
atrophy, and, in a short course of time, perish.
In the Ottoman or Turkish empire, the sovereign, though in other
respects absolute master of the lives and fortunes of his subjects, has
no right to impose a new tax. The consequence is that he permits the
bashaws or governors of provinces to pillage the people without mercy;
and, in turn, squeezes out of them the sums of which he stands in need,
to satisfy his own exigencies and those of the state. In America, from
a like cause, the government of the Union has gradually dwindled into a
state of decay, approaching nearly to annihilation. Who can doubt, that
the happiness of the people in both countries would be promoted by
competent authorities in the proper hands, to provide the revenues
which the necessities of the public might require?
The present Confederation, feeble as it is intended to repose in the
United States, an unlimited power of providing for the pecuniary wants
of the Union. But proceeding upon an erroneous principle, it has been
done in such a manner as entirely to have frustrated the intention.
Congress, by the articles which compose that compact (as has already
been stated), are authorized to ascertain and call for any sums of
money necessary, in their judgment, to the service of the United
States; and their requisitions, if conformable to the rule of
apportionment, are in every constitutional sense obligatory upon the
States. These have no right to question the propriety of the demand; no
discretion beyond that of devising the ways and means of furnishing the
sums demanded. But though this be strictly and truly the case; though
the assumption of such a right would be an infringement of the articles
of Union; though it may seldom or never have been avowedly claimed, yet
in practice it has been constantly exercised, and would continue to be
so, as long as the revenues of the Confederacy should remain dependent
on the intermediate agency of its members. What the consequences of
this system have been, is within the knowledge of every man the least
conversant in our public affairs, and has been amply unfolded in
different parts of these inquiries. It is this which has chiefly
contributed to reduce us to a situation, which affords ample cause both
of mortification to ourselves, and of triumph to our enemies.
What remedy can there be for this situation, but in a change of the
system which has produced it in a change of the fallacious and delusive
system of quotas and requisitions? What substitute can there be
imagined for this ignis fatuus in finance, but that of permitting the
national government to raise its own revenues by the ordinary methods
of taxation authorized in every well-ordered constitution of civil
government? Ingenious men may declaim with plausibility on any subject;
but no human ingenuity can point out any other expedient to rescue us
from the inconveniences and embarrassments naturally resulting from
defective supplies of the public treasury.
The more intelligent adversaries of the new Constitution admit the
force of this reasoning; but they qualify their admission by a
distinction between what they call INTERNAL and EXTERNAL taxation. The
former they would reserve to the State governments; the latter, which
they explain into commercial imposts, or rather duties on imported
articles, they declare themselves willing to concede to the federal
head. This distinction, however, would violate the maxim of good sense
and sound policy, which dictates that every POWER ought to be in
proportion to its OBJECT; and would still leave the general government
in a kind of tutelage to the State governments, inconsistent with every
idea of vigor or efficiency. Who can pretend that commercial imposts
are, or would be, alone equal to the present and future exigencies of
the Union? Taking into the account the existing debt, foreign and
domestic, upon any plan of extinguishment which a man moderately
impressed with the importance of public justice and public credit could
approve, in addition to the establishments which all parties will
acknowledge to be necessary, we could not reasonably flatter ourselves,
that this resource alone, upon the most improved scale, would even
suffice for its present necessities. Its future necessities admit not
of calculation or limitation; and upon the principle, more than once
adverted to, the power of making provision for them as they arise ought
to be equally unconfined. I believe it may be regarded as a position
warranted by the history of mankind, that, IN THE USUAL PROGRESS OF
THINGS, THE NECESSITIES OF A NATION, IN EVERY STAGE OF ITS EXISTENCE,
WILL BE FOUND AT LEAST EQUAL TO ITS RESOURCES.
To say that deficiencies may be provided for by requisitions upon the
States, is on the one hand to acknowledge that this system cannot be
depended upon, and on the other hand to depend upon it for every thing
beyond a certain limit. Those who have carefully attended to its vices
and deformities as they have been exhibited by experience or delineated
in the course of these papers, must feel invincible repugnancy to
trusting the national interests in any degree to its operation. Its
inevitable tendency, whenever it is brought into activity, must be to
enfeeble the Union, and sow the seeds of discord and contention between
the federal head and its members, and between the members themselves.
Can it be expected that the deficiencies would be better supplied in
this mode than the total wants of the Union have heretofore been
supplied in the same mode? It ought to be recollected that if less will
be required from the States, they will have proportionably less means
to answer the demand. If the opinions of those who contend for the
distinction which has been mentioned were to be received as evidence of
truth, one would be led to conclude that there was some known point in
the economy of national affairs at which it would be safe to stop and
to say: Thus far the ends of public happiness will be promoted by
supplying the wants of government, and all beyond this is unworthy of
our care or anxiety. How is it possible that a government half supplied
and always necessitous, can fulfill the purposes of its institution,
can provide for the security, advance the prosperity, or support the
reputation of the commonwealth? How can it ever possess either energy
or stability, dignity or credit, confidence at home or respectability
abroad? How can its administration be any thing else than a succession
of expedients temporizing, impotent, disgraceful? How will it be able
to avoid a frequent sacrifice of its engagements to immediate
necessity? How can it undertake or execute any liberal or enlarged
plans of public good?
Let us attend to what would be the effects of this situation in the
very first war in which we should happen to be engaged. We will
presume, for argument’s sake, that the revenue arising from the impost
duties answers the purposes of a provision for the public debt and of a
peace establishment for the Union. Thus circumstanced, a war breaks
out. What would be the probable conduct of the government in such an
emergency? Taught by experience that proper dependence could not be
placed on the success of requisitions, unable by its own authority to
lay hold of fresh resources, and urged by considerations of national
danger, would it not be driven to the expedient of diverting the funds
already appropriated from their proper objects to the defense of the
State? It is not easy to see how a step of this kind could be avoided;
and if it should be taken, it is evident that it would prove the
destruction of public credit at the very moment that it was becoming
essential to the public safety. To imagine that at such a crisis credit
might be dispensed with, would be the extreme of infatuation. In the
modern system of war, nations the most wealthy are obliged to have
recourse to large loans. A country so little opulent as ours must feel
this necessity in a much stronger degree. But who would lend to a
government that prefaced its overtures for borrowing by an act which
demonstrated that no reliance could be placed on the steadiness of its
measures for paying? The loans it might be able to procure would be as
limited in their extent as burdensome in their conditions. They would
be made upon the same principles that usurers commonly lend to bankrupt
and fraudulent debtors, with a sparing hand and at enormous premiums.
It may perhaps be imagined that, from the scantiness of the resources
of the country, the necessity of diverting the established funds in the
case supposed would exist, though the national government should
possess an unrestrained power of taxation. But two considerations will
serve to quiet all apprehension on this head: one is, that we are sure
the resources of the community, in their full extent, will be brought
into activity for the benefit of the Union; the other is, that whatever
deficiences there may be, can without difficulty be supplied by loans.
The power of creating new funds upon new objects of taxation, by its
own authority, would enable the national government to borrow as far as
its necessities might require. Foreigners, as well as the citizens of
America, could then reasonably repose confidence in its engagements;
but to depend upon a government that must itself depend upon thirteen
other governments for the means of fulfilling its contracts, when once
its situation is clearly understood, would require a degree of
credulity not often to be met with in the pecuniary transactions of
mankind, and little reconcilable with the usual sharp-sightedness of
avarice.
Reflections of this kind may have trifling weight with men who hope to
see realized in America the halcyon scenes of the poetic or fabulous
age; but to those who believe we are likely to experience a common
portion of the vicissitudes and calamities which have fallen to the lot
of other nations, they must appear entitled to serious attention. Such
men must behold the actual situation of their country with painful
solicitude, and deprecate the evils which ambition or revenge might,
with too much facility, inflict upon it.
PUBLIUS.
THE FEDERALIST.
No. XXXI.
The Same Subject Continued
(Concerning the General Power of Taxation)
From the New York Packet.
Tuesday, January 1, 1788.
HAMILTON
To the People of the State of New York:
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. Where it produces not
this effect, it must proceed either from some defect or disorder in the
organs of perception, or from the influence of some strong interest, or
passion, or prejudice. 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. And there are other truths in the
two latter sciences which, if they cannot pretend to rank in the class
of axioms, are yet such direct inferences from them, and so obvious in
themselves, and so agreeable to the natural and unsophisticated
dictates of common-sense, that they challenge the assent of a sound and
unbiased mind, with a degree of force and conviction almost equally
irresistible.
The objects of geometrical inquiry are so entirely abstracted from
those pursuits which stir up and put in motion the unruly passions of
the human heart, that mankind, without difficulty, adopt not only the
more simple theorems of the science, but even those abstruse paradoxes
which, however they may appear susceptible of demonstration, are at
variance with the natural conceptions which the mind, without the aid
of philosophy, would be led to entertain upon the subject. The INFINITE
DIVISIBILITY of matter, or, in other words, the INFINITE divisibility
of a FINITE thing, extending even to the minutest atom, is a point
agreed among geometricians, though not less incomprehensible to
common-sense than any of those mysteries in religion, against which the
batteries of infidelity have been so industriously leveled.
But in the sciences of morals and politics, men are found far less
tractable. To a certain degree, it is right and useful that this should
be the case. Caution and investigation are a necessary armor against
error and imposition. But this untractableness may be carried too far,
and may degenerate into obstinacy, perverseness, or disingenuity.
Though it cannot be pretended that the principles of moral and
political knowledge have, in general, the same degree of certainty with
those of the mathematics, yet they have much better claims in this
respect than, to judge from the conduct of men in particular
situations, we should be disposed to allow them. The obscurity is much
oftener in the passions and prejudices of the reasoner than in the
subject. Men, upon too many occasions, do not give their own
understandings fair play; but, yielding to some untoward bias, they
entangle themselves in words and confound themselves in subtleties.
How else could it happen (if we admit the objectors to be sincere in
their opposition), that positions so clear as those which manifest the
necessity of a general power of taxation in the government of the
Union, should have to encounter any adversaries among men of
discernment? Though these positions have been elsewhere fully stated,
they will perhaps not be improperly recapitulated in this place, as
introductory to an examination of what may have been offered by way of
objection to them. They are in substance as follows:
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.
As the duties of superintending the national defense and of securing
the public peace against foreign or domestic violence involve a
provision for casualties and dangers to which no possible limits can be
assigned, the power of making that provision ought to know no other
bounds than the exigencies of the nation and the resources of the
community.
As revenue is the essential engine by which the means of answering the
national exigencies must be procured, the power of procuring that
article in its full extent must necessarily be comprehended in that of
providing for those exigencies.
As theory and practice conspire to prove that the power of procuring
revenue is unavailing when exercised over the States in their
collective capacities, the federal government must of necessity be
invested with an unqualified power of taxation in the ordinary modes.
Did not experience evince the contrary, it would be natural to conclude
that the propriety of a general power of taxation in the national
government might safely be permitted to rest on the evidence of these
propositions, unassisted by any additional arguments or illustrations.
But we find, in fact, that the antagonists of the proposed
Constitution, so far from acquiescing in their justness or truth, seem
to make their principal and most zealous effort against this part of
the plan. It may therefore be satisfactory to analyze the arguments
with which they combat it.
Those of them which have been most labored with that view, seem in
substance to amount to this: “It is not true, because the exigencies of
the Union may not be susceptible of limitation, that its power of
laying taxes ought to be unconfined. Revenue is as requisite to the
purposes of the local administrations as to those of the Union; and the
former are at least of equal importance with the latter to the
happiness of the people. It is, therefore, as necessary that the State
governments should be able to command the means of supplying their
wants, as that the national government should possess the like faculty
in respect to the wants of the Union. But an indefinite power of
taxation in the LATTER might, and probably would in time, deprive the
FORMER of the means of providing for their own necessities; and would
subject them entirely to the mercy of the national legislature. As the
laws of the Union are to become the supreme law of the land, as it is
to have power to pass all laws that may be NECESSARY for carrying into
execution the authorities with which it is proposed to vest it, the
national government might at any time abolish the taxes imposed for
State objects upon the pretense of an interference with its own. It
might allege a necessity of doing this in order to give efficacy to the
national revenues. And thus all the resources of taxation might by
degrees become the subjects of federal monopoly, to the entire
exclusion and destruction of the State governments.”
This mode of reasoning appears sometimes to turn upon the supposition
of usurpation in the national government; at other times it seems to be
designed only as a deduction from the constitutional operation of its
intended powers. It is only in the latter light that it can be admitted
to have any pretensions to fairness. The moment we launch into
conjectures about the usurpations of the federal government, we get
into an unfathomable abyss, and fairly put ourselves out of the reach
of all reasoning. Imagination may range at pleasure till it gets
bewildered amidst the labyrinths of an enchanted castle, and knows not
on which side to turn to extricate itself from the perplexities into
which it has so rashly adventured. Whatever may be the limits or
modifications of the powers of the Union, it is easy to imagine an
endless train of possible dangers; and by indulging an excess of
jealousy and timidity, we may bring ourselves to a state of absolute
scepticism and irresolution. I repeat here what I have observed in
substance in another place, that all observations founded upon the
danger of usurpation ought to be referred to the composition and
structure of the government, not to the nature or extent of its powers.
The State governments, by their original constitutions, are invested
with complete sovereignty. In what does our security consist against
usurpation from that quarter? Doubtless in the manner of their
formation, and in a due dependence of those who are to administer them
upon the people. If the proposed construction of the federal government
be found, upon an impartial examination of it, to be such as to afford,
to a proper extent, the same species of security, all apprehensions on
the score of usurpation ought to be discarded.