Federalist 27
The debates concerning a standing army take an interesting turn in Federalist #27. In previous papers Hamilton had connected the necessity for a federal army to America’s commercial and security interests, thus sharply delimiting his point of view from those who thought about both commerce and America’s place in the world differently than he did. Underneath those debates remained the fundamental issue about the location of sovereignty and ultimate authority. Part of the nationalist argument for “popular sovereignty” was that in relocating sovereignty from the states to the nation the national government had to exercise its authority directly upon individual citizens.
Hamilton revisited this claim in the middle of his defense of a standing army. Once again accusing the Constitution’s critics of obfuscation, bad faith, and unwarranted prejudices, he reached back to a prior claim that he would make even more forcefully in future essays: the federal government would be superior to the state governments not only because of its superior power but preeminently because it would be better run. Since we could be confident the federal government would be better run than the state governments, why wouldn’t we assume they could run a military better? Hamilton laid it down “as a general rule” that the confidence and obedience of the people in the government would always be proportionate to “the goodness or badness of its administration."
From whence came such confidence? Writing largely in the subjunctive, Hamilton claimed that the larger federal districts would mean more of the "right kind" of people were available to be elected; that the Senate would be a repository of the wise and the virtuous; that representatives at the national level would be better informed and more knowledgeable than those at the state and local level (about what, exactly, he did not say); that the federal councils would “be less apt to be tainted by the spirit of faction, and more out of the reach of those occasional ill humours, or temporary prejudices and propensities which, in smaller societies, frequently contaminate the public deliberations.” These “ill humours” would include the kind of impulsiveness that, at the state level, leads to hastily passed legislation that “terminate in general distress, dissatisfaction, and disgust.” Here, Hamilton restates his position that local attachments necessarily imply narrow prejudices.
In any case, the law required force in order to solicit obedience, and this was as true of the federal government as it was of the state governments. And just as the state governments have at their disposal the arms necessary to enforce their decisions, so too the federal government needed arms lest it depend on the (recalcitrant) states to enforce its laws. By this, Hamilton pivoted away from the purpose of a standing army merely to provide defense against an external enemy to an agent of internal control. This became for Hamilton especially important when we remember that the twin dangers to republican government were external threats and internal sedition, and he believed that, given the probable location of seditious forces, the union had to have the capacity to call upon the collective power of all the states. After all, a group intent on overthrowing the government might have little to fear from a state militia, but they would never imagine themselves to be “equal to the combined efforts of the union.”
Not satisfied with the argument to this point, Hamilton turned the screw: by bypassing the states, but with their cooperation, and exercising its powers directly on individual citizens, the national government could then gain legitimacy for itself because the people would no longer distinguish the power of the one from the power of the other. Hamilton's federalism implied a complete blending of state and federal power. The key would be to have the federal government “intermingle” itself into “the common occurrences of … political life” and touch on “the most sensible chords, and put in motion the most active springs of the human heart.” The more it insinuated itself into the habits and daily lives of the citizens, the more it would “conciliate the respect and attachment of the community.” A government whose power was distant would always be regarded suspiciously by a citizenry vigilant about their liberty, but a government that regulated their daily affairs would cease to be noticed, pacifying the people to the point where they would no longer regard such vigilance as necessary. Indeed, they would become dependent on that government. “The more it circulates through those channels and currents in which the passions of mankind naturally flow, the less it will require the aid of the violent and perilous expedients of compulsion.”
Tocqueville, alert to Hamilton’s argument, and borrowing on the metaphor of the "springs" of the heart, saw how this was playing out in America some forty years later. In Part One of Volume II of Democracy in America, Tocqueville reflected on how democracy affected the operations of the mind and heart. In keeping with his general fear that the increased centralization of power would make individuals feel more helpless and powerless, Tocqueville acknowledged that Americans weren’t that much interested in philosophical ideas but that they could find some support for their sense of agency in religion. So long as religion could resist the corrosive forces of democratic equality it could still tutor people in “the art of being free,” a significant part of which was the belief that God and not the government was the providential source on which we were dependent.
Religion deals with first principles and ultimate concerns. Given that, Tocqueville believed religion was the thing about which we should have the strongest convictions and most “fixed ideas.” Sadly, we too often treated religious belief as if it were just one point of view or options among others. We become certain about inconsequential things and uncertain about the most important ones. The paradox is that we need religious belief to help us navigate our daily lives, but these quotidian concerns keep us from taking religion and religious reflection as seriously as we ought – particularly in a materialist world. Our material obsessions, the desire for comfort and security, distract us from what matters most. The result is that belief begins to dissolve within the populace – as uncertainty increases, the most important of all human questions perplex us so much that we abandon thinking of them altogether. “Such a state,” Tocqueville wrote, “cannot fail to enervate souls; it slackens the springs of the will and prepares citizens for servitude.”
Tocqueville saw that the attenuation of authority in one aspect of human life was both cause and effect of its increase in another. Untethered from dynamic reflections on human destiny, individuals would become “frightened at the aspect of this unlimited independence” and the “perpetual agitation of all things” in an unstable market economy and democratic society. Uncertain in the realm of the mind and heart, they would become more enamored with material well-being and seek some power to secure it. Religious peoples, being “naturally strong in precisely the spot where democratic peoples are weak,” were less susceptible to the daily intrusions of a powerful government, but “the taste for well-being forms the salient and indelible feature of democratic ages.” Libertarian in their private lives, democratic persons become securitarian in their public ones, and the government would indulge private libertarianism so long as the people remained dependent on and obedient to it. This expansion of government’s pastoral power first required the elimination of mediating authorities, such as the states, and then its exercise directly on individual citizens.
If religion would no longer provide informal limits to the exercise of political power, then formal limits were required. Hamilton drew attention to the Constitution’s specific limits on federal power, emphasizing the federal government could only act with regard “to the enumerated and legitimate objects of its jurisdiction,” but that those objects would also become the “SUPREME LAW of the land” to the exclusion of state authority. The federal government should zealously exercise its powers “as far as its just and constitutional authority extends.” Granted, ambitious men might try to transgress such limits, but Hamilton regarded the written limits as sufficient to the task. The Constitution’s critics had to prove that those limits were inadequate.
Director of the Ford Leadership Forum, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation
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