The Influence of the State and Federal Governments Compared



From the New York Packet. Tuesday, January 29, 1788.



MADISON





To the People of the State of New York:



Resuming the subject of the last paper, I proceed to inquire whether

the federal government or the State governments will have the advantage

with regard to the predilection and support of the people.

Notwithstanding the different modes in which they are appointed, we

must consider both of them as substantially dependent on the great body

of the citizens of the United States.



I assume this position here as it respects the first, reserving the

proofs for another place. The federal and State governments are in fact

but different agents and trustees of the people, constituted with

different powers, and designed for different purposes. The adversaries

of the Constitution seem to have lost sight of the people altogether in

their reasonings on this subject; and to have viewed these different

establishments, not only as mutual rivals and enemies, but as

uncontrolled by any common superior in their efforts to usurp the

authorities of each other. These gentlemen must here be reminded of

their error. They must be told that the ultimate authority, wherever

the derivative may be found, resides in the people alone, and that it

will not depend merely on the comparative ambition or address of the

different governments, whether either, or which of them, will be able

to enlarge its sphere of jurisdiction at the expense of the other.

Truth, no less than decency, requires that the event in every case

should be supposed to depend on the sentiments and sanction of their

common constituents. Many considerations, besides those suggested on a

former occasion, seem to place it beyond doubt that the first and most

natural attachment of the people will be to the governments of their

respective States.



Into the administration of these a greater number of individuals will

expect to rise. From the gift of these a greater number of offices and

emoluments will flow. By the superintending care of these, all the more

domestic and personal interests of the people will be regulated and

provided for. With the affairs of these, the people will be more

familiarly and minutely conversant. And with the members of these, will

a greater proportion of the people have the ties of personal

acquaintance and friendship, and of family and party attachments; on

the side of these, therefore, the popular bias may well be expected

most strongly to incline. Experience speaks the same language in this

case. The federal administration, though hitherto very defective in

comparison with what may be hoped under a better system, had, during

the war, and particularly whilst the independent fund of paper

emissions was in credit, an activity and importance as great as it can

well have in any future circumstances whatever.



It was engaged, too, in a course of measures which had for their object

the protection of everything that was dear, and the acquisition of

everything that could be desirable to the people at large. It was,

nevertheless, invariably found, after the transient enthusiasm for the

early Congresses was over, that the attention and attachment of the

people were turned anew to their own particular governments; that the

federal council was at no time the idol of popular favor; and that

opposition to proposed enlargements of its powers and importance was

the side usually taken by the men who wished to build their political

consequence on the prepossessions of their fellow-citizens. If,

therefore, as has been elsewhere remarked, the people should in future

become more partial to the federal than to the State governments, the

change can only result from such manifest and irresistible proofs of a

better administration, as will overcome all their antecedent

propensities. And in that case, the people ought not surely to be

precluded from giving most of their confidence where they may discover

it to be most due; but even in that case the State governments could

have little to apprehend, because it is only within a certain sphere

that the federal power can, in the nature of things, be advantageously

administered. The remaining points on which I propose to compare the

federal and State governments, are the disposition and the faculty they

may respectively possess, to resist and frustrate the measures of each

other. It has been already proved that the members of the federal will

be more dependent on the members of the State governments, than the

latter will be on the former. It has appeared also, that the

prepossessions of the people, on whom both will depend, will be more on

the side of the State governments, than of the federal government. So

far as the disposition of each towards the other may be influenced by

these causes, the State governments must clearly have the advantage.



But in a distinct and very important point of view, the advantage will

lie on the same side. The prepossessions, which the members themselves

will carry into the federal government, will generally be favorable to

the States; whilst it will rarely happen, that the members of the State

governments will carry into the public councils a bias in favor of the

general government. A local spirit will infallibly prevail much more in

the members of Congress, than a national spirit will prevail in the

legislatures of the particular States. Every one knows that a great

proportion of the errors committed by the State legislatures proceeds

from the disposition of the members to sacrifice the comprehensive and

permanent interest of the State, to the particular and separate views

of the counties or districts in which they reside. And if they do not

sufficiently enlarge their policy to embrace the collective welfare of

their particular State, how can it be imagined that they will make the

aggregate prosperity of the Union, and the dignity and respectability

of its government, the objects of their affections and consultations?

For the same reason that the members of the State legislatures will be

unlikely to attach themselves sufficiently to national objects, the

members of the federal legislature will be likely to attach themselves

too much to local objects. The States will be to the latter what

counties and towns are to the former. Measures will too often be

decided according to their probable effect, not on the national

prosperity and happiness, but on the prejudices, interests, and

pursuits of the governments and people of the individual States. What

is the spirit that has in general characterized the proceedings of

Congress? A perusal of their journals, as well as the candid

acknowledgments of such as have had a seat in that assembly, will

inform us, that the members have but too frequently displayed the

character, rather of partisans of their respective States, than of

impartial guardians of a common interest; that where on one occasion

improper sacrifices have been made of local considerations, to the

aggrandizement of the federal government, the great interests of the

nation have suffered on a hundred, from an undue attention to the local

prejudices, interests, and views of the particular States. I mean not

by these reflections to insinuate, that the new federal government will

not embrace a more enlarged plan of policy than the existing government

may have pursued; much less, that its views will be as confined as

those of the State legislatures; but only that it will partake

sufficiently of the spirit of both, to be disinclined to invade the

rights of the individual States, or the preorgatives of their

governments. The motives on the part of the State governments, to

augment their prerogatives by defalcations from the federal government,

will be overruled by no reciprocal predispositions in the members. Were

it admitted, however, that the Federal government may feel an equal

disposition with the State governments to extend its power beyond the

due limits, the latter would still have the advantage in the means of

defeating such encroachments. If an act of a particular State, though

unfriendly to the national government, be generally popular in that

State and should not too grossly violate the oaths of the State

officers, it is executed immediately and, of course, by means on the

spot and depending on the State alone. The opposition of the federal

government, or the interposition of federal officers, would but inflame

the zeal of all parties on the side of the State, and the evil could

not be prevented or repaired, if at all, without the employment of

means which must always be resorted to with reluctance and difficulty.



On the other hand, should an unwarrantable measure of the federal

government be unpopular in particular States, which would seldom fail

to be the case, or even a warrantable measure be so, which may

sometimes be the case, the means of opposition to it are powerful and

at hand. The disquietude of the people; their repugnance and, perhaps,

refusal to co-operate with the officers of the Union; the frowns of the

executive magistracy of the State; the embarrassments created by

legislative devices, which would often be added on such occasions,

would oppose, in any State, difficulties not to be despised; would

form, in a large State, very serious impediments; and where the

sentiments of several adjoining States happened to be in unison, would

present obstructions which the federal government would hardly be

willing to encounter. But ambitious encroachments of the federal

government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite

the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would

be signals of general alarm. Every government would espouse the common

cause. A correspondence would be opened. Plans of resistance would be

concerted. One spirit would animate and conduct the whole. The same

combinations, in short, would result from an apprehension of the

federal, as was produced by the dread of a foreign, yoke; and unless

the projected innovations should be voluntarily renounced, the same

appeal to a trial of force would be made in the one case as was made in

the other. But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal

government to such an extremity. In the contest with Great Britain, one

part of the empire was employed against the other.



The more numerous part invaded the rights of the less numerous part.

The attempt was unjust and unwise; but it was not in speculation

absolutely chimerical. But what would be the contest in the case we are

supposing? Who would be the parties? A few representatives of the

people would be opposed to the people themselves; or rather one set of

representatives would be contending against thirteen sets of

representatives, with the whole body of their common constituents on

the side of the latter. The only refuge left for those who prophesy the

downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the

federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the

projects of ambition. The reasonings contained in these papers must

have been employed to little purpose indeed, if it could be necessary

now to disprove the reality of this danger. That the people and the

States should, for a sufficient period of time, elect an uninterrupted

succession of men ready to betray both; that the traitors should,

throughout this period, uniformly and systematically pursue some fixed

plan for the extension of the military establishment; that the

governments and the people of the States should silently and patiently

behold the gathering storm, and continue to supply the materials, until

it should be prepared to burst on their own heads, must appear to every

one more like the incoherent dreams of a delirious jealousy, or the

misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal, than like the sober

apprehensions of genuine patriotism.



Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a

regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed;

and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still

it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with

the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The

highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing

army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part

of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number

able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United

States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To

these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of

citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among

themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and

conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It

may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be

conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best

acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against

the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it.

Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over

the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate

governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia

officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of

ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any

form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the

several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public

resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people

with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would

not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess

the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves,

who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and

of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and

attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the

greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be

speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it. Let us

not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion,

that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would

be in actual possession, than the debased subjects of arbitrary power

would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors. Let us

rather no longer insult them with the supposition that they can ever

reduce themselves to the necessity of making the experiment, by a blind

and tame submission to the long train of insidious measures which must

precede and produce it. The argument under the present head may be put

into a very concise form, which appears altogether conclusive. Either

the mode in which the federal government is to be constructed will

render it sufficiently dependent on the people, or it will not. On the

first supposition, it will be restrained by that dependence from

forming schemes obnoxious to their constituents. On the other

supposition, it will not possess the confidence of the people, and its

schemes of usurpation will be easily defeated by the State governments,

who will be supported by the people. On summing up the considerations

stated in this and the last paper, they seem to amount to the most

convincing evidence, that the powers proposed to be lodged in the

federal government are as little formidable to those reserved to the

individual States, as they are indispensably necessary to accomplish

the purposes of the Union; and that all those alarms which have been

sounded, of a meditated and consequential annihilation of the State

governments, must, on the most favorable interpretation, be ascribed to

the chimerical fears of the authors of them.



PUBLIUS.









THE FEDERALIST.