Federalist No. 12

“A nation cannot long exist without revenues.”

Source: Alexander Hamilton

Topics: Federalist Papers

The twelth Federalist deals in depth with different possible sources of revenue for the Federal government. The following is a short primer for those of us who may need one in the area of “early colonial tax theory and practice”. The concepts in this primer are important in understanding the meaning of the Constitution and the Federalist Papers concerning taxes.

The author sees two possible sources of revenue for the government.

1. Property taxes (direct taxes) and

2. Consumption taxes (indirect taxes)

“3. In the sense above mentioned, taxes are usually divided into two great classes, those which are direct, and those which are indirect. Under the former denomination are included taxes on land or real property, and under the latter taxes on articles of consumption. 5 Wheat. R. 317.

“4. Congress have plenary {complete} power over every species of taxable property, except exports. But there are two rules prescribed for their government, the rule of uniformity and the rule of apportionment. Three kinds of taxes, namely, duties, imposts and excises are to be laid by the first rule; and capitation and other direct taxes, by the second rule. Should there be any other species of taxes, not direct, and not included within the words duties, imposts or customs, they might be laid by the rule of uniformity or not, as congress should think proper and reasonable. Id.”

Source: Bouvier’s Law Dictionary - 1856 ed.

Topics: ; Federalist Papers

“duty - tax; esp : a tax on imports”

“excise -

1: an internal tax levied on the manufacture, sale, or consumption of a commodity

2: any of various taxes on privileges often assessed in the form of a license or fee”

“impost: something imposed or levied : tax”

“customs -

a : duties, tolls, or imposts imposed by the sovereign law of a country on imports or exports”

“capitation -

1: a direct uniform tax imposed on each head or person: poll tax

2: a uniform per capita payment or fee”

Merriam Websters Collegiate Dictionary 1996 edition

He then uses these terms throughout Federalist No. 12 to describe what advantages one national government would have in financing its operations compared to three or four or thirteen smaller governments.

Topics: ; Federalist Papers

Federalist Nos. 13 + 14

The Federal System

“In the first place it is to be remembered that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws. Its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any. The subordinate governments, which can extend their care to all those other subjects which can be separately provided for, will retain their due authority and activity.”

“Hearken not to the unnatural voice which tells you that the people of America, knit together as they are by so many cords of affection, can no longer live together as members of the same family; can no longer continue the mutual guardians of their mutual happiness; can no longer be fellowcitizens of one great, respectable, and flourishing empire. Hearken not to the voice which petulantly tells you that the form of government recommended for your adoption is a novelty in the political world; that it has never yet had a place in the theories of the wildest projectors; that it rashly attempts what it is impossible to accomplish. No, my countrymen, shut your ears against this unhallowed language. Shut your hearts against the poison which it conveys; the kindred blood which flows in the veins of American citizens, the mingled blood which they have shed in defense of their sacred rights, consecrate their Union, and excite horror at the idea of their becoming aliens, rivals, enemies. And if novelties are to be shunned, believe me, the most alarming of all novelties, the most wild of all projects, the most rash of all attempts, is that of rendering us in pieces, in order to preserve our liberties and promote our happiness. But why is the experiment of an extended republic to be rejected, merely because it may comprise what is new? Is it not the glory of the people of America, that, whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience? To this manly spirit, posterity will be indebted for the possession, and the world for the example, of the numerous innovations displayed on the American theatre, in favor of private rights and public happiness. Had no important step been taken by the leaders of the Revolution for which a precedent could not be discovered, no government established of which an exact model did not present itself, the people of the United States might, at this moment have been numbered among the melancholy victims of misguided councils, must at best have been laboring under the weight of some of those forms which have crushed the liberties of the rest of mankind. Happily for America, happily, we trust, for the whole human race, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society. They reared the fabrics of governments which have no model on the face of the globe. They formed the design of a great Confederacy, which it is incumbent on their successors to improve and perpetuate. If their works betray imperfections, we wonder at the fewness of them. If they erred most in the structure of the Union, this was the work most difficult to be executed; this is the work which has been new modelled by the act of your convention, and it is that act on which you are now to deliberate and to decide.”

Topics: Federalist Papers

Federalist No. 15

“If the road over which you will still have to pass should in some places appear to you tedious or irksome, you will recollect that you are in quest of information on a subject the most momentous which can engage the attention of a free people, that the field through which you have to travel is in itself spacious, and that the difficulties of the journey have been unnecessarily increased by the mazes with which sophistry has beset the way.”

” ... how little dependence is to be placed on treaties which have no other sanction than the obligations of good faith, and which oppose general considerations of peace and justice to the impulse of any immediate interest or passion.

“Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint. Has it been found that bodies of men act with more rectitude or greater disinterestedness than individuals? The contrary of this has been inferred by all accurate observers of the conduct of mankind; and the inference is founded upon obvious reasons. Regard to reputation has a less active influence, when the infamy of a bad action is to be divided among a number than when it is to fall singly upon one. A spirit of faction, which is apt to mingle its poison in the deliberations of all bodies of men, will often hurry the persons of whom they are composed into improprieties and excesses, for which they would blush in a private capacity.

“In addition to all this, there is, in the nature of sovereign power, an impatience of control, that disposes those who are invested with the exercise of it, to look with an evil eye upon all external attempts to restrain or direct its operations. ... Power controlled or abridged is almost always the rival and enemy of that power by which it is controlled or abridged.”

Topics: Federalist Papers

Federalist No. 16

“The majesty of the national authority must be manifested through the medium of the courts of justice. The government of the Union, like that of each State, must be able to address itself immediately to the hopes and fears of individuals; and to attract to its support those passions which have the strongest influence upon the human heart. It must, in short, possess all the means, and have aright to resort to all the methods, of executing the powers with which it is intrusted, that are possessed and exercised by the government of the particular States.”

{What is being criticized here is the theory that some people had that the Federal government should only be allowed to work upon individuals through the intermediate agency of the State governments. But the author points out that without a Federal court system which has authority to act on individual citizens, the only way for the government to enforce its decisions would be through military force, which naturally was unwanted by all.}

Topics: Federalist Papers

Federalist No. 17

“The administration of private justice between the citizens of the same State, the supervision of agriculture and of other concerns of a similar nature, all those things, in short, which are proper to be provided for by local legislation, can never be desirable cares of a general jurisdiction.

“There is one transcendant advantage belonging to the province of the State governments, which alone suffices to place the matter in a clear and satisfactory light,—I mean the ordinary administration of criminal and civil justice. This, of all others, is the most powerful, most universal, and most attractive source of popular obedience and attachment. It is that which, being the immediate and visible guardian of life and property, having its benefits and its terrors in constant activity before the public eye, regulating all those personal interests and familiar concerns to which the sensibility of individuals is more immediately awake, contributes, more than any other circumstance, to impressing upon the minds of the people, affection, esteem, and reverence towards the government. This great cement of society, which will diffuse itself almost wholly through the channels of the particular governments, independent of all other causes of influence, would insure them so decided an empire over their respective citizens as to render them at all times a complete counterpoise, and, not unfrequently, dangerous rivals to the power of the Union.”

{In a nutshell, because the State governments are given “police powers” and the Federal government is not, the State governments will be seen by the people as more immediate and important. If the Federal government ever becomes the prime defender of the lives, liberty and property of individual citizens, this would serve to strengthen the People’s affinity to the Federal government, and at the same time weaken their connection to their State governments.}

Topics: Federalist Papers

Federalist Nos. 18 + 19

{This 18th Federalist Paper discusses parallels between government in ancient Greece and the American Confederacy, and the difficulties and wars caused by a weak Federal government. The 19th Federalist Paper discusses experiences and lessons of other governments such as Germany, Poland, France and Switzerland that can be applied to the American situation.}

“As a weak government, when not at war, is ever agitated by internal dissentions, so these never fail to bring on fresh calamities from abroad.”

“The Achaeans soon experienced, as often happens, that a victorious and powerful ally is but another name for a master.”

Topics: Federalist Papers

Federalist No. 20

{The twentieth Federalist continues is the same vein as the two previous Papers, this time about The Netherlands and Belgium and their experience with Federalism.}

“A weak constitution must necessarily terminate in dissolution, for want of proper powers, or the usurpation of powers requisite for the public safety. Whether the usurpation, when once begun, will stop at the salutary point, or go forward to the dangerous extreme, must depend on the contingencies of the moment. Tyranny has perhaps oftener grown out of the assumptions of power, called for, on pressing exigencies, by a defective constitution, than out of the full exercise of the largest constitutional authorities.”

“Experience is the oracle of truth; and where its responses are unequivocal, they ought to be conclusive and sacred. The important truth, which it unequivocally pronounces in the present case, is that a sovereignty over sovereigns, a government over governments, a legislation for communities, as contradistinguished from individuals, as it is a solecism in theory, so in practice it is subversive of the order and ends of civil polity, by substituting VIOLENCE in place of LAW, or the destructive COERCION of the SWORD in place of the mild and salutary COERCION of the MAGISTRACY.”

Topics: Federalist Papers

Federalist No. 21

“The next most palpable defect of the subsisting Confederation, is the total want of a SANCTION to its laws. The United States, as now composed, have no powers to exact obedience, or punish disobedience to their resolutions, either by pecuniary mulcts, by a suspension or divestiture of privileges, or by any other constitutional mode.”

“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.”

{Pointing to one of the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederacy, the author demonstrates why imposts, excises and duties (different forms of consumption taxes) are better sources of national revenue than requistions (quotas) of money based upon population or total land value from the States to the Federal government.}

Topics: Federalist Papers

Federalist No. 22

Main Defects in the Articles

“The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government.”

“One of the weak sides of republics, among their numerous advantages, is that they afford too easy an inlet to foreign corruption.”

“A circumstance which crowns the defects of the Confederation remains yet to be mentioned, the want of a judiciary power. Laws are a dead letter without courts to expound and define their true meaning and operation. The treaties of the United States, to have any force at all, must be considered as part of the law of the land. Their true import, as far as respects individuals, must, like all other laws, be ascertained by judicial determinations.”

Topics: Federalist Papers

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