The Long Clasp (Post 7)

Part II
The Threat

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UNION

§§ The Defect

In considering the necessity to throw over utterly the Articles of Confederation as inade­quate to sustain the Union, Hamilton, in particular, analyzed nine major defects of that document.

            That one sentence imports very weighty cargo, which we might offload one by one.  The principle,—the underlying basis, the foundational idea, premise, conception, the core notion, the central germ, the inarguable, axiomatic truth—from which flowed the entire design, had proven by actual experience to be defective.
            That principle was one of Legislation, the making of Laws to operate in the activity of Governance.
            The purpose of that Legislative operation was, as spelled out in the Articles, “[f]or the most convenient management of the general interests of the United States,” “general” meaning of interest to all the States as opposed to each several State.
            That principle of Legislation was that Laws created by the Congress of the United States assembled were to be laid upon the member States, to operate on the governments of all the sovereign States uniformly.
            The Vice of that principle, the worm in the bud, was that the States annually appointed the delegates to the Congress to manage the general interests; however, nearly any proposed Legislation would not take effect unless approved by 9 of the 13 sovereign States.
            In consequence of that, the Congress of the United States assembled ranked no more than a Committee of the States with a limited portfolio to recommend legislation to be enacted or not by at least 9 sovereign State governments.  To assure their compliance each sovereign government said it would comply; they promised, pledged to do.
            The Confederation amounted to no more than a league or alliance, an agreement among members^[5] to various stipulations and obligations binding until it no longer served their interests.  Congress, the National Government, had no Power to legislate, no Power to enforce.
            Hamilton dissects the defect with utmost clarity and conviction:
·    “Government implies the power of making laws.
·    “It is essential to the idea of a law that it be attended with a sanction, or, in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience. . .
·    “This penalty, whatever it may be, can only be inflicted in two ways: by the agency of courts and ministers of justice, or by military force; by the coercion of the magistracy, or by the coercion of arms.
·    “The first kind can evidently apply only to men; the last kind must necessarily be employed against bodies politic or communities or States.”
·    “[T]he characteristic difference between a league and a government [is to] extend the authority of the Union to the persons of the citizens—the only proper objects of government.”
            Why are they the only proper objects of government?  “Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.”  In short, the Vice, the Defect of the present form of government was the “principle, which has been found the bane of the old [Articles] and which is in itself evidently incompatible with the idea of government, a principle, in short, which, if it is to be executed at all, must substitute the violent and sanguinary agency of the sword to the mild influence of the magistracy.”

Union truly is the quintessence of the Framers’ vision.  They meant not merely—although very neces­sarily—union of the States, but more importantly union of the people.  Similarly, people are the problem, the danger, the threat.  Not some abstract Other, but actual human nature in all its quirks and foibles and short-sightedness.
            Human beings decide to go to war, to threaten or attack each other militarily.  Human beings decide to rise up with arms to protest or resist their own government, their own nation.  Human beings seek fame, riches, favor, revenge, with varying degrees of disregard for damage done to others.  Human beings stew in their “private passions; in the attachments, enmities, interests, hopes, and fears of leading individuals in their communities, [who,] whether the favorites of a king or of a peo­ple, have in too many instances abused the confidence they possessed; and assuming the pretext of some public motive have not scrupled to sacrifice the national tranquility to personal advantage or personal gratification.” (Hamilton #6)
            In other words, no matter how any particular species of human threat may endanger the unity of the nation, they all belong to a higher order of classification; to the Family, perhaps, of Human Nature.  They ought, therefore, to be the more readily recognized and the more keenly monitored and constrained.  But that re­quires alertness and leadership.  “It will indeed deserve the most vigilant and careful attention of the people to see that [the federal government] be modeled in such a manner as to admit of its being safely vested with the requisite powers.” (Hamilton, #23)  And by extension, to see that it operate in such a manner as to admit of its continuing to be safely vested.