Tinct · Library · The Federalist Papers · Chapters · Chapter 27
No. 27 of 85

No. 27 — The Same Subject Continued: Restraining the Legislative Authority Regarding the Common Defense (Hamilton)

A federal government that interacts directly with citizens — through courts, taxation, military service — becomes familiar; familiar authority commands more loyalty and requires less force. The Confederation's remoteness was self-defeating.

Summary

Hamilton opens with a counter-argument to the Anti-Federalist claim that a national government operating on individuals will need military force to secure compliance. His position is the opposite: a government that operates directly on individuals, through the ordinary machinery of taxation, judicial administration, and military recruitment, will require less force than one that operates indirectly through state governments. The reason is political psychology — the dynamics of how authority earns compliance.

Authority commands respect in proportion to its familiarity and its perceived legitimacy. A distant government that issues occasional demands through the intermediary of state governments is abstract, unfamiliar, and easy to regard as an external imposition — exactly the psychology that produced systematic non-compliance with Confederation requisitions. A government that taxes citizens directly, tries them in its own courts, and recruits them into its own military is present in their daily experience. Citizens who regularly interact with federal authority develop a sense of it as their own government, not an alien one. This familiarity — which the Confederation deliberately lacked by operating only on states — is what makes willing compliance possible and force unnecessary.

Hamilton adds a structural reinforcement: federal representatives and federal officers, recruited from the population of the states and accountable to their constituents through election, will develop the same attachments to local interests and local opinion that state officials have. The federal government is not staffed by beings from another world; it is staffed by citizens of the states, selected by the people of the states, and returned to those states when their service ends. This interpenetration of federal and state personnel makes the federal government's potential for oppression structurally less threatening than the Anti-Federalists suppose. A government staffed by one's own neighbours, colleagues, and former fellow-citizens is unlikely to use its military power against those neighbours in the way that a genuinely foreign tyranny might.

Appears
Alexander Hamilton Publius
Themes
Energy in the Executive Separation of Powers and Auxiliary Precautions
All 85 chapters — click to jump
  1. No. 1Hamilton's overture: can mankind establish good government by deliberate choice, or are we forever condemned to accident and...
  2. No. 2Jay opens the foreign-affairs case: Providence gave America one connected territory and one people — the argument for one...
  3. No. 3Jay makes a structural argument: a united government selects better diplomats, enforces treaties consistently, and is harder to...
  4. No. 4Nations fight not just from justice but from opportunity. Jay argues that union gives America the strength to make aggression...
  5. No. 5Using the union of England and Scotland as his text, Jay warns that American confederacies would generate the same jealousy and...
  6. No. 6Hamilton demolishes the claim that commercial republics don't fight. Pericles waged war for personal reasons; the Dutch republic...
  7. No. 7Hamilton names three specific causes of war already present in 1787: competing state claims to western lands, commercial...
  8. No. 8Hamilton's bleakest paper: disunion produces war, war produces standing armies, and standing armies produce the subordination of...
  9. No. 9Hamilton turns Montesquieu against the Anti-Federalists: the philosopher they cite actually endorsed confederate republics. And...
  10. No. 10The most important essay in The Federalist: Madison defines faction, shows its causes are ineradicable, then makes the...
  11. No. 11Union converts American commerce from a liability into a lever. Three million consumers under one commercial policy can demand...
  12. No. 12Revenue, Hamilton argues, depends on commerce; commerce depends on union. A unified import system at national ports generates far...
  13. No. 13The shortest paper in the sequence, but pointed: three confederacies need three of everything — governments, navies, diplomatic...
  14. No. 14Madison distinguishes democracy from republic: a democracy requires citizens to assemble; a republic requires only their...
  15. No. 15Hamilton identifies the Confederation's root defect: it addresses states, not individuals. Compliance is voluntary; the only...
  16. No. 16Legislating for states as states is the parent of anarchy: the only alternatives are accepted non-compliance (impotence) or...
  17. No. 17Hamilton's reassurance paper: the federal government will be more powerful, but state governments will command more affection....
  18. No. 18The Amphictyonic League had stronger formal powers than the American Confederation — and still failed. Stronger members dominated...
  19. No. 19The Holy Roman Empire had emperor, diet, and imperial courts — and still failed. German princes maintained private armies, made...
  20. No. 20The United Netherlands required unanimity and achieved paralysis. Foreign powers exploited every division; the stadtholder was...
  21. No. 21Three specific defects beyond the fundamental one: no sanction for non-compliance except civil war; no protection for state...
  22. No. 22Four more defects: no commercial power (universally admitted); a military auction system that rewards rich states and penalises...
  23. No. 23The federal government's powers must be proportioned to its ends, and its ends include the common defense. Because national...
  24. No. 24The standing army critics are demanding from the federal Constitution a restriction they have never imposed on their own state...
  25. No. 25Military power left with the states would recreate the Confederation's error in a new form: interstate military rivalry, a federal...
  26. No. 26The English precedent cuts against the Anti-Federalists: after 1688, Parliament controlled the military — and never prohibited...
  27. No. 27Authority becomes familiar through regular interaction — and familiar authority commands willing obedience rather than resistance....
  28. No. 28Federal oppression? The states resist. State oppression? The federal government intervenes. Hamilton argues that the dual...
  29. No. 29A militia is only useful if uniformly trained — which requires federal standards. The Anti-Federalists want no federal army and no...
  30. No. 30Hamilton makes the case that a government unable to fund itself is no government at all, and that the requisition system under the...
  31. No. 31Hamilton invokes the self-evidence of geometric axioms to argue that resistance to federal taxation reveals not faulty reasoning...
  32. No. 32Hamilton distinguishes concurrent from exclusive taxing authority, showing that federal taxation does not eliminate state revenues...
  33. No. 33Hamilton dismantles the fear of the Necessary and Proper Clause by showing it implies nothing beyond what the enumerated powers...
  34. No. 34Hamilton shows that the unpredictable cost of war makes it structurally impossible to set constitutional caps on federal revenue...
  35. No. 35Hamilton argues that class-based objections to the size of the House misread how legislative representation actually works across...
  36. No. 36Hamilton closes the taxation sequence by showing that state delegations in Congress supply the local knowledge that federal tax...
  37. No. 37Madison opens the constitutional analysis sequence with a request for candor, cataloguing the genuine difficulties facing the...
  38. No. 38Madison invokes the great ancient lawgivers to show that constitution-making requires creative authority, not the veto power the...
  39. No. 39Madison defines the republic from first principles and then shows the Constitution is neither purely national nor purely federal...
  40. No. 40Madison defends the Convention's authority to produce a new constitution by reading its mandate broadly and invoking the people's...
  41. No. 41Madison opens his power-by-power review of the Constitution, showing that objections to each federal power implicitly concede its...
  42. No. 42Madison reviews the foreign relations and interstate commerce powers, finding each necessary for national coherence and none...
  43. No. 43Madison defends miscellaneous federal powers from copyrights to the capital district, closing with the philosophical grounding of...
  44. No. 44Madison defends the Constitution's state-level prohibitions — especially the ban on paper money — as protections against the...
  45. No. 45Madison argues from confederal history that the real danger is always state encroachment on federal authority, not federal...
  46. No. 46Madison argues that popular loyalty naturally favors the states, and that a tyrannical federal army would face an overwhelming...
  47. No. 47Madison launches the separation-of-powers sequence by showing that Montesquieu's maxim — the oracle the Anti-Federalists cite...
  48. No. 48Madison shows from state constitutional experience that written separation of powers is worthless without institutional mechanisms...
  49. No. 49Madison gently rejects Jefferson's convention-appeal proposal as theoretically sound but practically corrosive of the...
  50. No. 50Madison examines Pennsylvania's Council of Censors as a real-world experiment in periodic constitutional review — and finds the...
  51. No. 51The pivot of the series: Madison shows that checks and balances work by aligning each officeholder's personal interest with the...
  52. No. 52Madison opens the examination of the House by defending biennial elections as appropriate for a legislature whose objects require...
  53. No. 53Madison shows that the annual-elections doctrine was designed for constitutionally unlimited parliaments and does not apply to a...
  54. No. 54Madison's most uncomfortable paper: a carefully constructed defense of the three-fifths compromise that barely conceals the...
  55. No. 55Madison defends the initial sixty-five-member House by arguing that legislative competence declines with excessive size and that...
  56. No. 56Madison argues that federal legislation requires less granular local knowledge than state legislation because its objects...
  57. No. 57Madison lists five structural mechanisms that bind House members to the interests of their constituents and rebuts the charge that...
  58. No. 58Madison defends decennial reapportionment and argues that a growing House of Representatives strengthens popular control rather...
  59. No. 59Hamilton defends Congress's power over federal election rules as the minimum necessary for a national government to survive...
  60. No. 60Hamilton argues that America's social and economic diversity makes it structurally impossible for Congress to use its election...
  61. No. 61Hamilton argues for the practical advantages of a uniform national election standard, closing his three-paper defense of...
  62. No. 62Madison examines each structural feature of the Senate and argues that stability — the most chronic deficiency of republican...
  63. No. 63Madison argues that a stable, select Senate is indispensable both for coherent foreign policy and for protecting citizens from the...
  64. No. 64Jay, drawing on his experience as America's chief diplomat, defends the joint treaty-making power of the President and Senate as...
  65. No. 65Hamilton defends the Senate as the proper court for impeachment trials, arguing that the political nature of the offense requires...
  66. No. 66Hamilton systematically refutes the three main objections to Senate impeachment trials — separation of powers, power accumulation...
  67. No. 67Hamilton introduces the executive sequence by cataloging Anti-Federalist misrepresentations of the proposed presidency before...
  68. No. 68Hamilton argues that the Electoral College brilliantly solves the problem of choosing a powerful executive without creating...
  69. No. 69Hamilton compares the proposed presidency point by point with the British monarchy and the New York governorship, showing the...
  70. No. 70Hamilton makes the foundational case for a single unitary executive, arguing that energy in the presidency requires unity of...
  71. No. 71Hamilton argues that a four-year term gives the President enough security to exercise independent judgment and resist legislative...
  72. No. 72Hamilton argues that barring presidents from re-election removes the incentive for good performance and creates conditions for the...
  73. No. 73Hamilton defends fixed presidential compensation and the qualified veto as the two mechanisms that prevent the legislature from...
  74. No. 74Hamilton defends presidential command of the military as requiring the unity the office provides, and the pardon power as...
  75. No. 75Hamilton argues that treaty-making is a hybrid function requiring the executive's energy for negotiation and the Senate's broader...
  76. No. 76Hamilton argues that placing appointment authority in the President — with Senate confirmation as a check — produces better...
  77. No. 77Hamilton completes his defense of the executive by arguing that Senate involvement in removals promotes administrative stability...
  78. No. 78Hamilton establishes the theoretical basis for judicial review, arguing that the courts' power to void unconstitutional...
  79. No. 79Hamilton defends fixed judicial salaries and life tenure as essential to independence, while acknowledging the unresolved problem...
  80. No. 80Hamilton derives the scope of federal judicial jurisdiction from the principle that legislative authority without judicial...
  81. No. 81Hamilton defends the two-tier federal court structure and the Supreme Court's broad appellate jurisdiction, while rebutting the...
  82. No. 82Hamilton argues that federal and state courts exercise concurrent rather than exclusive jurisdiction in most cases, allowing both...
  83. No. 83Hamilton defends the Constitution's silence on civil jury trial by arguing that silence is not abolition, that state jury...
  84. No. 84Hamilton argues against a bill of rights on the ground that explicit limitations on powers the Constitution never granted imply...
  85. No. 85Hamilton closes the Federalist by arguing that the Constitution's imperfections are no reason to reject it, since the amendment...
← Previous · Chapter 26
No. 26 — The Idea of Restraining the Legislative Authority in Regard to the Common Defense Considered (Hamilton)
Next · Chapter 28 →
No. 28 — The Same Subject Continued: Restraining the Legislative Authority Regarding the Common Defense (Hamilton)
The book itself
Summary & story
What The Federalist Papers is, why it matters.
Analysis
Themes
Faction, separation of powers, energy in the executive, judicial review, the bill of rights.
Who's who
The Founders and their adversaries
The voices of a founding argument.

Read Chapter 27 in the reader →