The Same Subject Continued (No. 31)

Hey, friends, sorry for the long absence. Much of my writing time lately has been spent on a law review article that is, like Federalist 31, about tax. But don't worry: I haven't abandoned the Federalist Papers or my dozens of readers. We're going to see this Constitution explained in full, if it takes me 'til I retire.


Hamilton is the author again, and he starts this one off kind of strangely. He spends the first three paragraphs discussing the proposition that some things are so obviously true that they "command[] the assent of the mind." As you might expect, it is one such truths that Hamilton proposes to expound.


That "truth" is that the end justifies the means, or, more specifically, that if the government needs money it must have all legitimate means at its disposal to get it. "A government," he writes, "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."


This is the stuff that gave anti-Federalists fits. When you say "every power," all they see is redcoats kicking in your door and drinking all your beer (or worse). Usually, Hamilton sees this coming, having fought against redcoats himself, and makes a plausible counter-argument.


This time, the argument is pretty feeble. You might think the Union has enough money now, Hamilton says, but you never know. Who knows now what national emergency might befall us in the future? There may be a legitimate need for boatloads of your money to be deposited in the federal treasury. And for those worried about the federal government becoming too powerful on account of all this money, Hamilton again tells his readers not to fret. "It should not be forgotten that a disposition in the State governments to encroach upon the rights of the Union is quite as probable as a disposition in the Union to encroach upon the rights of the State governments."


Ok, so he's dead wrong on this one. But even Hamilton could not have predicted the successes of the Marshall Court in striking down states' encroachment on federal power, any more than he could have predicted later Courts' failure to stop the federal government's encroachment upon the states' power. At the time he wrote Federalist 31, Hamilton was looking at strong state governments thumbing their noses at an anemic confederation that couldn't even cover its own bar bill. So, Hamilton was wrong here, but for the right reasons.