Federalist 41
I offer to the readers of these essays on The Federalist a bit of a breather. Although #41 is one of the longer essays it also covers very little new ground. Here, Madison reviews arguments made against the Constitution’s authorizing of standing armies and the power of taxation as well as Hamilton’s responses. Madison adds very little to Hamilton’s defenses, although he does repeat them with greater clarity. For that reason, I refer the reader to earlier essays dealing with those powers.
Still, #41 has some fresh thoughts in it. Madison dealt with two main questions: was the increased power of the federal government necessary, and were there sufficient precautions in place to guard against their abuse? As a premise for examining both questions, Madison reminded his readers that “union” remained the essential goal, and the answers to both above questions were subordinate to the assumption concerning the desirability of union among the states.
“Every many who loves peace; every man who loves his country; every man who loves liberty, ought to have it ever before his eyes, that he may cherish in his heart a due attachment to the union of America, and be able to set a due value on the means of preserving it.”
As fundamental as the question of union was, I think Madison went even further into essential questions in Federalist #41. Not simply content to deal with issues over ratification, nor even over the desirability of union, he gave us a kind of primer for how we might think about politics itself. I’ll briefly outline and comment on two of his central insights.
First, he reminded readers that, given what human beings are and the essentially tragic and ironic nature of our condition, “the purest of human blessings must have a portion of alloy in them.” Nothing of human hands remains untouched by human sin. Too often we approach politics in binary ways: we are good, they are evil; our party has a monopoly on truth and virtue and the other party is composed of liars and rogues; our nation is just and well-ordered and other counties are malicious and war-mongering; history and those on the right side of it separates the sheep from the goats.
Madison warned us against such thinking. He reminded us that we can’t be children when it comes to politics, thinking that we are choosing between right and wrong. More often, he suggested, we have to choose between the lesser of two evils or, if not that, at least the less good, the perfect never being available to us. He would not go so far as Hamlet as to suggest that "nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so," but he does remind us that in politics we rarely see absolutely good or absolutely bad, and where bad exists it typically exists as a perversion of what is good.
The second axiom that Madison advanced was that any power necessary to “advance the public happiness” was also susceptible to abuse. Precautions might be taken, but precautions are not guarantees. Prudential deliberation requires balancing the limiting effects of the precautions against the necessity of power’s proper exercise. There is no textbook formula for this, only the lessons of experience. Because there are no universal templates to apply, constant recalibration becomes necessary. In other words, those in charge of governing cannot have too many restrictions placed on them or else they would not be able to adjust as circumstances require. Nor can a charter of government anticipate in advance all the exigencies that government will face and for that reason has to have a certain looseness to it.
Madison connected this principle directly to the need for a standing army. Repeating Hamilton’s argument that military preparedness has to be able to respond to the greatest conceivable threat, Madison observed that “the force necessary for defense” could not be limited because there was no way “to limit the force of offense.” “If a federal constitution could chain the ambition, or set bounds to the exertions of all other nations, then indeed might it prudently chain the discretion of its own government, and set the bounds for the exertions for its own safety.”
Madison reminded his audience that human beings are primarily motivated by self-preservation, just as the preservation of the regime was the greatest good to be pursued by political leaders. All other principles must yield to it. “It is in vain to oppose constitutional barriers to the impulse of self-preservation.”
For Madison, politics fundamentally involved balance and harmony. Just as power was to be balanced with liberty as well as among the three branches of government, so too was it to be balanced among the nations. This too was an argument for unity. Europe evinced the principle that once one nation armed itself to the teeth all others had to follow suit. Madison feared that the same thing would happen without a strong union supported by an energetic central government that alone could keep the states from arming themselves against one another. Without the principle of union and a strong national government, America would soon look like Europe with its constant wars, and those wars, he rightly observed, were greater threats to liberty than government. A federal army could be kept small both because a united America proved a more reliable deterrent to foreign nations than a confederated one, and because “her insular situation” and the expanse of the ocean meant that “the distance of the United States from the powerful nations of the world, gives them the same happy security.” This, Madison believed, meant that all the Anti-federalist talk concerning a standing army amounted to little more than claptrap, for the creation of an army dangerous to liberty “can never be necessary or plausible, so long as they continue a united people.” As I said, Madison thought that remaining under the articles would create an arms race among the states, meaning even greater military buildup and thus a greater threat to liberty. The states, trying to get advantage over or protection from their bordering neighbor, would find their citizens “crushed between standing armies, and perpetual taxes.”
Madison freely conceded the danger of a standing army and its threat to liberty, while at the same time (repeatedly) asserting its necessity. He even lauded the Anti-federalists for drawing attention to this important question, even if he regarded their handling of it as “inflam[ing] the passions of the unthinking” and confirming “the prejudices of the misthinking.”
In Federalist #41, Madison also turned his attention to the power of taxation. He again repeated some of Hamilton’s prior arguments, but I want to draw attention to two important observations. In the first instance, Madison suggested that tariffs would be the primary source of revenue for the government, and while he approved of these he also wondered whether changes in the economic substructure would require a kind of flexibility in revenue-raising. As long as America would remain an agricultural economy tariffs would make sense, but as it industrialized and people began buying products they themselves made, government would have to have the flexibility to raise revenues from other sources.
Secondly, Madison turned his attention to the language of the taxation clause, which critics, he claimed, had attached to the terms “common defense” and “general welfare” in the preamble. Madison dismissed that argument, pointing out that the taxation power was not connected to the preamble but grammatically to the detailed enumeration of powers that followed the clause and formed one long sentence. “No stronger proof,” he averred, “could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction.” The reference to “common defense” and “general welfare” in the taxation clause, Madison argued, was limited by the particulars that followed the clause that, he continued, identify specifically what “common defense” and “general welfare” consist of. Furthermore, he drew parallels between the taxation clause in the Constitution and the language found in articles 8 and 9 of The Articles of Confederation. Would the critics of the Constitution also want to get rid of the confederated congress?
As I said, most of the arguments in this paper are not new, but Madison’s “realism” with regard to politics bears mentioning. We would do well to remember that necessity often governs our affairs, that nothing we do is untainted by error and ambition and avarice, and that hardly anything in politics is ever wholly good or wholly bad. We should also attend to his emphasis on prudential and cautious calibration resulting from experience as a pretty wise way to approach political life. Not for Madison was the dreams and schemes of philosophes in their ivory towers any guide to action.
Director of the Ford Leadership Forum, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation
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