Federal Governments Tends Towards Separation of Its Members Rather Than Tyranny Over Them

A different objection from the one I answered in my last paper may be urged against letting the union legislate for individual citizens. Critics may say it would make the union’s government too powerful and let it absorb the residual authorities left with the states for local purposes. Allowing for the greatest love of power that any reasonable man could imagine, I confess I am at a loss to discover what temptation federal administrators could feel to strip the states of such authorities. Regulating the mere domestic police of a state offers slender allurements to ambition. Commerce, finance, negotiation, and war seem to include every object that charms ambitious minds, and the powers those objects require belong, in the first instance, with the national government. Administering private justice between citizens of the same state, supervising agriculture, and other such local concerns can never be desirable cares for a general jurisdiction. It is therefore improbable that the federal councils would try to usurp these powers. The attempt would be as troublesome as it would be useless, and their possession would add nothing to the dignity, importance, or splendor of the national government.

But suppose, for argument’s sake, that lust of domination were enough to produce that disposition; even then the people of the several states, who choose the national representatives, would restrain so extravagant an appetite. It will always be far easier for the state governments to encroach upon the national authorities than the reverse. The proof lies in the greater influence that state governments, administered with uprightness and prudence, will generally hold over the people. That fact also teaches us that all federal constitutions carry an inherent weakness, and that we cannot take too much care to give them all the force compatible with liberty.

This superior influence of the state governments will result partly from the diffuse structure of the national government, but chiefly from the nature of the objects the states attend to.

Human affection commonly weakens as its object grows more distant or diffuse. A man is more attached to his family than to his neighborhood, and to his neighborhood than to the community at large. On the same principle, the people of each state will lean toward their local governments over the union, unless a much better federal administration destroys that bias.

This strong propensity of the human heart will find powerful allies in the objects of state regulation. The many minute interests under local supervision form so many rivulets of influence running through every part of society; to list them would be more tedious than instructive.

One transcendent advantage of the state governments settles the matter by itself: the ordinary administration of criminal and civil justice. This is the most powerful, most universal, and most attractive source of popular obedience and attachment. It is the immediate and visible guardian of life and property, its benefits and terrors constantly before the public eye, touching the concerns people feel most keenly. More than anything else, it impresses affection, esteem, and reverence toward government on people’s minds. This great cement of society will flow almost wholly through the channels of the state governments, securing them so firm a hold over their citizens that they will always counterbalance, and often dangerously rival, the union’s power.

The operations of the national government, by contrast, fall less immediately under the eye of ordinary citizens, and its benefits will chiefly be noticed by speculative men. Because those operations concern more general interests, they come home less to people’s feelings, and so inspire less habitual obligation and less active attachment. The experience of every federal constitution we know, and of every government resembling one, has abundantly confirmed this reasoning.

The ancient feudal systems were not, strictly speaking, confederacies, but they shared the nature of such associations. A common head, chieftain, or sovereign ruled the whole nation, while subordinate vassals held large tracts of land, worked by inferior retainers bound to them by fealty and obedience. Each principal vassal was a kind of sovereign within his own domain. The result was continual opposition to the sovereign and frequent wars among the great barons themselves. The head of the nation was commonly too weak to preserve the peace or to protect the people from the oppressions of their immediate lords. Historians pointedly call this period the times of feudal anarchy.

A vigorous, warlike sovereign of superior abilities could acquire personal weight that served, for a time, in place of more regular authority. In general, the barons triumphed over the prince; in many instances his dominion was thrown off entirely, and the great fiefs became independent principalities. Where the monarch finally prevailed, his success was chiefly owed to his vassals’ tyranny over their own dependents. The barons oppressed the common people and defied the sovereign; both dreaded and detested them, until shared danger and shared interest united king and people, to the ruin of aristocratic power. Had the nobles ruled with clemency and justice and kept their retainers’ loyalty, those contests would almost always have ended in the overthrow of royal authority.

This is no mere speculation or conjecture; Scotland furnishes a cogent example. The spirit of clanship, introduced early into that kingdom, united nobles and their dependents by ties equivalent to kindred and made the aristocracy a constant overmatch for the monarch. Only the incorporation with England subdued that fierce and ungovernable spirit, bringing it under the rules of subordination that England’s more rational and energetic government had already established.

The separate governments in a confederacy may aptly be compared with the feudal baronies, with one advantage on their side. They will generally hold the people’s confidence and goodwill, and with that support they can resist every federal encroachment. It will be well if they cannot also counteract the union’s legitimate and necessary authority. The likeness lies in the rivalry of power in both cases, and in the concentration of the community’s strength into particular depositories: individuals in one case, political bodies in the other.

A concise review of the events that have attended confederate governments will further illustrate this important doctrine. Inattention to it has been the great source of our political mistakes and has pointed our jealousy in the wrong direction. That review will form the subject of the papers that follow.

Among the confederacies of antiquity, the most important was that of the Greek republics joined under the Amphictyonic council. From the best accounts that survive of this celebrated body, it offers a very instructive parallel to the present Confederation of the American states.

The members kept the character of independent and sovereign states, and had equal votes in the federal council. That council had general authority to propose and decide whatever it judged necessary for the common welfare of Greece: to declare and wage war, to settle all disputes between members as a final court, to fine the offending party, to turn the whole force of the confederacy against the disobedient, and to admit new members. The Amphictyons were guardians of religion and of the immense riches of the temple at Delphi, where they judged disputes between the inhabitants and those who came to consult the oracle. To strengthen the federal powers further, the members swore a mutual oath to defend and protect the united cities, to punish anyone who broke this oath, and to take vengeance on those who robbed the temple.

In theory, and on paper, this array of powers seems fully sufficient for all general purposes. In several respects it goes beyond the powers listed in our own Articles of Confederation. The Amphictyons commanded the superstition of the age, one of the chief instruments by which government was then upheld; they had a declared authority to use force against defiant cities, and were bound by oath to use it when necessary.

Yet the experience was very different from the theory. These powers, like those of the present Congress, were exercised by deputies whom the cities appointed in their political capacities, and over those cities in the same capacities. Hence came the weakness, the disorders, and finally the destruction of the confederacy. The more powerful members, instead of being held in awe, tyrannized in turn over all the rest. Athens, as Demosthenes tells us, was the master of Greece for seventy-three years, the Spartans for the next twenty-nine, and after the battle of Leuctra the Thebans had their turn of dominance.

Too often, according to Plutarch, the deputies of the strongest cities overawed and bribed those of the weaker, so that judgment went in favor of the most powerful party.

Even in the midst of dangerous defensive wars against Persia and Macedon, the members never acted in concert, and some number of them were forever the dupes or the hirelings of the common enemy. The gaps between foreign wars were filled with domestic upheaval and slaughter.

After the war with Xerxes, the Spartans demanded that a number of cities be expelled from the confederacy for their unfaithful conduct. The Athenians, seeing that this would cost the Spartans fewer partisans than themselves and would make them masters of the council, vigorously opposed and defeated the plan. This one episode shows at once the weakness of the union, the ambition and jealousy of its most powerful members, and the dependent, degraded state of the rest. The smaller members, entitled in theory to circle the common center in equal pride and majesty, had in fact become satellites of the greater bodies.

Had the Greeks, says the Abbe Milot, been as wise as they were brave, experience would have taught them the need for a closer union, and they would have used the peace that followed their success against Persia to bring it about. Instead, Athens and Sparta, puffed up by their victories and glory, became first rivals and then enemies, and did each other far more harm than Xerxes had done them. Their mutual jealousies, fears, hatreds, and injuries ended in the famous Peloponnesian War, which itself ended in the ruin and slavery of the very Athenians who had begun it.

As a weak government, even when not at war, is always shaken by internal quarrels, so those quarrels never fail to bring fresh calamities from abroad. When the Phocians plowed up some consecrated ground belonging to the temple of Apollo, the Amphictyonic council, in keeping with the superstition of the age, fined the offenders. The Phocians, backed by Athens and Sparta, refused to submit. The Thebans and others undertook to uphold the authority of the Amphictyons and avenge the offended god. Being the weaker side, they called in the help of Philip of Macedon, who had secretly nursed the quarrel. Philip gladly seized the chance to carry out designs he had long laid against the liberties of Greece. By his intrigues and bribes he won over the popular leaders of several cities; through their influence and votes he gained a seat on the Amphictyonic council; and by his arts and his arms he made himself master of the confederacy.

Such were the consequences of the false principle on which this notable body was founded. Had Greece, says a shrewd observer of her fate, been bound by a stricter confederation and held to it, she would never have worn the chains of Macedon, and might have stood as a barrier against the vast ambitions of Rome.

The Achaean league was another society of Greek republics, and it too offers valuable instruction.

Here the union was far closer, and its organization much wiser, than in the former case. And so it will appear that, though it met a similar fate, it by no means equally deserved it.

The cities of this league kept their local jurisdiction, appointed their own officers, and enjoyed perfect equality. The senate in which they were represented had the sole right of peace and war, of sending and receiving ambassadors, of making treaties and alliances, and of appointing a chief magistrate, or praetor, who commanded their armies. With the advice and consent of ten senators, this magistrate not only administered the government while the senate was in recess but had a large share in its deliberations when it met. The original constitution named two praetors, but experience led them to prefer a single one.

It appears that the cities had the same laws and customs, the same weights and measures, and the same money. How far this came from the authority of the federal council is left uncertain; it is said only that the cities were in effect compelled to adopt the same laws and usages. When Sparta was brought into the league by Philopoemen, it meant abolishing the institutions and laws of Lycurgus and adopting those of the Achaeans. The Amphictyonic confederacy, of which Sparta had been a member, had left her the full exercise of her own government and laws. This difference alone marks a very real difference in the spirit of the two systems.

It is much to be regretted that so few records of this remarkable political structure survive. Could its inner workings and regular operation be known, it would probably shed more light on the science of federal government than any other experiment of the kind we know of.

One fact seems to be attested by every historian who touches Achaean affairs. Both after the league was renewed by Aratus, and before it was dissolved by the arts of Macedon, there was far more moderation and justice in its government, and far less violence and sedition among its people, than in any of the cities that exercised all the powers of sovereignty singly. The Abbe Mably, in his observations on Greece, says that popular government, so stormy elsewhere, caused no such disorders among the members of the Achaean republic, because there it was tempered by the general authority and laws of the confederacy.

We should not conclude too quickly, however, that faction did not to some degree stir the individual cities, much less that perfect order and harmony reigned in the whole system. The opposite is plain enough in the fortunes and fate of the republic.

While the Amphictyonic confederacy lasted, the Achaean league, which took in only the lesser cities, made little figure in Greece. When the former fell to Macedon, the latter was spared by the policy of Philip and Alexander. Under their successors, though, a different policy prevailed: the arts of division were used against the Achaeans, each city was drawn into a separate interest, and the union dissolved. Some cities fell under the tyranny of Macedonian garrisons, others under usurpers who rose out of their own confusions. Before long, shame and oppression woke their love of liberty. A few cities reunited; others followed as chances came to cut off their tyrants; and the league soon embraced almost the whole Peloponnesus. Macedon watched its growth but was kept by internal quarrels from stopping it. All Greece caught the enthusiasm and seemed ready to unite in one confederacy, when the jealousy of Sparta and Athens at the rising glory of the Achaeans threw a fatal chill on the enterprise. Fearing Macedon, the league sought alliance with the kings of Egypt and Syria, rivals of the Macedonian king. This policy was undone by Cleomenes, king of Sparta, whose ambition led him to attack his Achaean neighbors, and who had influence enough with the Egyptian and Syrian princes to break their engagements with the league. The Achaeans now had to choose between submitting to Cleomenes and begging aid from Macedon, their old oppressor. They chose the latter. The quarrels of the Greeks always gave that powerful neighbor a welcome chance to meddle. A Macedonian army soon appeared, Cleomenes was beaten, and the Achaeans learned, as often happens, that a victorious and powerful ally is only another name for a master. All their most abject submissions could win from him was leave to keep their own laws. Philip, now on the throne of Macedon, soon provoked fresh combinations among the Greeks by his tyrannies. The Achaeans, weakened by internal strife and by the revolt of one of their members, Messene, joined the Aetolians and Athenians and raised the standard of resistance. Finding themselves still unequal to the task, they once more took the dangerous step of calling in foreign arms. The Romans, invited to help, eagerly accepted. Philip was beaten and Macedon subdued. A new crisis then came upon the league. Quarrels broke out among its members, and the Romans fed them. Callicrates and other popular leaders became paid tools for entrapping their countrymen. To nourish discord all the more, the Romans had, to the astonishment of those who trusted their sincerity, already proclaimed universal liberty throughout Greece. With the same treacherous aim, they now lured members away from the league by appealing to their pride, telling them the league violated their sovereignty. By these arts this union, the last hope of Greece and of ancient liberty, was torn to pieces, and such weakness and disorder followed that the arms of Rome had little trouble completing the ruin their arts had begun. The Achaeans were cut to pieces, and Achaia was loaded with the chains under which it groans to this hour.

I have thought it worthwhile to sketch this important stretch of history, both because it teaches more than one lesson and because, as a supplement to the outline of the Achaean constitution, it strikingly shows how federal bodies tend toward anarchy among the members rather than tyranny in the head.

The ancient confederacies cited in my last paper do not exhaust the store of experience on this subject. There are living institutions, built on a similar principle, that deserve particular notice. The first that presents itself is the Germanic body.

In the early ages of Christianity, Germany was held by seven distinct nations with no common chief. One of them, the Franks, having conquered the Gauls, founded the kingdom that took their name. In the ninth century their warlike monarch Charlemagne carried his victorious arms in every direction, and Germany became part of his vast dominions. When his empire was divided among his sons, this part was raised into a separate and independent empire. Charlemagne and his immediate descendants held the reality, as well as the marks and dignity, of imperial power. But the chief vassals, whose fiefs had become hereditary and who made up the national diets that Charlemagne had not abolished, gradually threw off the yoke and rose to sovereign independence. The imperial power could not restrain such mighty dependents or preserve the unity and peace of the empire. The most savage private wars, with every kind of calamity, were waged between the various princes and states. The imperial authority, unable to keep order, declined by degrees until it was nearly extinct in the anarchy that filled the long interval between the death of the last emperor of the Suabian line and the accession of the first of the Austrian line. In the eleventh century the emperors held full sovereignty; by the fifteenth they had little more than the symbols and trappings of power.

Out of this feudal system, which itself has many features of a confederacy, grew the federal system of the Germanic empire. Its powers are lodged in a diet that represents the members of the confederacy; in the emperor, who is the executive magistrate, with a veto over the diet’s decrees; and in the imperial chamber and the aulic council, two courts with supreme jurisdiction over disputes concerning the empire or arising among its members.

The diet holds the general power of legislating for the empire; of making war and peace; of forming alliances; of assessing quotas of troops and money; of building fortresses; of regulating coin; of admitting new members; and of placing disobedient members under the ban of the empire, by which the offender loses his sovereign rights and forfeits his possessions. The members are expressly forbidden to make compacts harmful to the empire, to lay tolls and duties on their trade with one another without the consent of emperor and diet, to alter the value of money, to wrong one another, or to shelter disturbers of the public peace; and the ban is threatened against any who break these rules. The members of the diet, as such, are in all cases subject to the judgment of emperor and diet, and in their private capacities to the aulic council and imperial chamber.

The emperor’s prerogatives are many. The chief are his exclusive right to lay proposals before the diet, to veto its resolutions, to name ambassadors, to grant dignities and titles, to fill vacant electorates, to found universities, to grant privileges not harmful to the states of the empire, to receive and spend the public revenues, and generally to watch over the public safety. In certain cases the electors form a council to advise him. As emperor he holds no territory within the empire and receives no revenue for his support; but his revenue and dominions in other capacities make him one of the most powerful princes in Europe.

From so grand a parade of constitutional powers in the head and representatives of this confederacy, one would naturally suppose it must be an exception to the character of its kindred systems. Nothing could be further from the truth. The basic principle on which it rests, that the empire is a community of sovereigns, that the diet represents sovereigns, and that the laws are addressed to sovereigns, makes the empire a nerveless body: unable to govern its own members, defenseless against outside dangers, and shaken by unceasing ferment within.

The history of Germany is a history of wars: between the emperor and the princes and states, and among the princes and states themselves. It is a history of the license of the strong and the oppression of the weak, of foreign intrusions and foreign intrigues, of requisitions of men and money ignored or only partly met. It is a history of attempts to enforce them that failed entirely, or ended in slaughter and desolation that swept the innocent along with the guilty; a history of general weakness, confusion, and misery.

In the sixteenth century the emperor, with one part of the empire on his side, was seen at war with the other princes and states. In one clash the emperor himself was put to flight and nearly captured by the elector of Saxony. The late king of Prussia was more than once matched against his imperial sovereign, and usually proved the stronger. Disputes and wars among the members have been so common that the German annals are crowded with their bloody pages. Before the Peace of Westphalia, Germany was laid waste by a war of thirty years, in which the emperor with half the empire stood on one side and Sweden with the other half on the opposite side. Peace was at last negotiated and dictated by foreign powers, and its articles, to which foreign powers are parties, became a fundamental part of the Germanic constitution.

If in some emergency the nation happens to be more united by the need for self-defense, its situation is still wretched. Military preparations must be preceded by so many tedious debates, born of the jealousies, pride, and clashing claims of sovereign bodies, that before the diet can settle its arrangements the enemy is in the field, and before the federal troops are ready to take it, the enemy is retiring into winter quarters.

The small body of national troops judged necessary in time of peace is poorly kept up, badly paid, infected with local prejudices, and supported by irregular and unequal contributions to the treasury.

The impossibility of keeping order and dispensing justice among these sovereign subjects led to the experiment of dividing the empire into nine or ten circles, or districts, giving each an internal organization, and charging them with enforcing the laws against delinquent and defiant members. The experiment only showed the radical vice of the constitution more clearly. Each circle is a miniature of the deformities of this political monster. They either fail to carry out their commissions or carry them out with all the devastation of civil war. Sometimes whole circles are the defaulters, and then they add to the very mischief they were meant to cure.

We may judge this scheme of military coercion from an instance given by Thuanus. In Donawerth, a free imperial city of the circle of Suabia, the Abbe de St. Croix enjoyed certain reserved privileges. While exercising them on some public occasion, he was assaulted by the townspeople. The result was that the city was placed under the ban of the empire, and the Duke of Bavaria, though director of another circle, was appointed to enforce it. He soon appeared before the city with ten thousand troops, and finding it a fit occasion, as he had secretly meant all along, to revive an old claim, he took possession of the city in his own name, disarmed and punished the inhabitants, and annexed it to his own domains.

It may be asked what has so long kept this disjointed machine from falling entirely to pieces. The answer is plain. It is the weakness of most of the members, unwilling to expose themselves to the mercy of foreign powers; the weakness of the principal members compared with the great powers around them; the vast weight and influence the emperor draws from his own hereditary dominions; and the interest he takes in preserving a system tied to his family pride and making him the first prince in Europe. These causes prop up a feeble and precarious union, while the repellent quality inherent in sovereignty, growing stronger with time, blocks any reform founded on a proper consolidation. Nor is it likely, even if this obstacle could be overcome, that the neighboring powers would allow a change that gave the empire the strength it deserves. Foreign nations have long thought themselves interested in the shifts of this constitution, and have more than once shown their policy of keeping it weak and anarchic.

If more direct examples were needed, Poland, a government over local sovereigns, might fairly be cited. No proof could be more striking of the calamities such institutions bring. Unfit alike for self-government and self-defense, it has long lain at the mercy of its powerful neighbors, who have lately had the mercy to relieve it of a third of its people and territory.

The connection among the Swiss cantons scarcely amounts to a confederacy, though it is sometimes cited as proof of the stability of such institutions.

They have no common treasury, no common troops even in war, no common coin, no common court, nor any other common mark of sovereignty.

They are held together by their peculiar geography, by their individual weakness and smallness, and by the fear of powerful neighbors, to one of whom they were once subject. They are held together, too, by the few grounds for quarrel among a people of such simple and similar manners, by their shared interest in their dependent possessions, and by the mutual aid they need for suppressing insurrections, aid expressly promised and often given. And they are held together by the need for some regular way to settle disputes among the cantons. That provision is this: the parties at odds each choose four judges from the neutral cantons, who, if they disagree, choose an umpire. This tribunal, under an oath of impartiality, gives a final sentence that all the cantons must enforce. How well this works may be judged from a clause in their 1683 treaty with Victor Amadeus of Savoy, in which he binds himself to mediate disputes between the cantons and to use force, if need be, against the stubborn party.

So far as their peculiar case allows comparison with the United States, it confirms the principle I mean to establish. Whatever force the union had in ordinary cases, it appears that the moment a serious cause of difference arose, one that tested its strength, it failed. The disputes over religion, which three times kindled violent and bloody contests, may be said in fact to have split the league. Since then the Protestant and Catholic cantons have held separate diets, where all the most important matters are settled, leaving the general diet little to do but manage the common dependencies.

That separation had another consequence worth noting. It produced opposite foreign alliances: Berne, at the head of the Protestant group, with the United Provinces, and Luzerne, at the head of the Catholic group, with France.

The United Netherlands is a confederacy of republics, or rather of aristocracies, with a very remarkable structure, and it confirms every lesson drawn from the confederacies we have already reviewed.

The union is composed of seven coequal and sovereign provinces, and each province is itself a body of equal and independent cities. In all important cases, not only the provinces but the cities must be unanimous.

The sovereignty of the union is represented by the States-General, about fifty deputies appointed by the provinces. Some sit for life, some for six, three, or one years, and two provinces keep theirs in office at pleasure.

The States-General may make treaties and alliances, make war and peace, raise armies and equip fleets, and set quotas and demand contributions. In all these cases, however, they need unanimity and the approval of their constituents. They also appoint and receive ambassadors, execute existing treaties, collect duties on imports and exports, regulate the mint, and govern the dependent territories. No province may, without general consent, make a foreign treaty, impose duties that injure others, or charge its neighbors more than its own subjects. A council of state, a chamber of accounts, and five colleges of admiralty support the federal administration.

The executive magistrate of the union is the stadtholder, now a hereditary prince. His weight comes from this independent title, his great family estates, his ties to some of the chief rulers of Europe, and above all from being stadtholder in each province as well as for the union. In the provinces he appoints town magistrates, executes provincial decrees, presides in the provincial courts when he pleases, and holds the power of pardon.

As stadtholder of the union, however, he holds considerable powers of his own.

In his political capacity he settles disputes between the provinces when other methods fail, assists in the deliberations of the States-General, receives foreign ambassadors, and keeps his own agents at foreign courts.

In his military capacity he commands the federal troops, provides for garrisons, and regulates military affairs generally; he fills every appointment from colonel to ensign and assigns the governments of the fortified towns.

In his marine capacity he is admiral-general and directs everything relating to the naval forces. He presides in the admiralties, appoints the lieutenant-admirals and other officers, and establishes councils of war whose sentences take effect only with his approval.

His revenue, apart from his private income, amounts to three hundred thousand florins, and the standing army he commands consists of about forty thousand men.

Such is the celebrated Belgic confederacy as drawn on parchment. What characters has practice stamped upon it? Weakness in the government; discord among the provinces; foreign influence and insults; a precarious existence in peace, and peculiar calamities from war.

Grotius remarked long ago that nothing but his countrymen’s hatred of the house of Austria kept them from being ruined by the vices of their constitution.

Another respectable writer observes that the union of Utrecht gives the States-General authority seemingly sufficient to secure harmony, but each province’s jealousy makes the practice very different from the theory.

The same instrument, a third writer says, obliges each province to levy contributions; but the inland provinces, having little commerce, cannot pay an equal quota, so the article never could and probably never will be executed.

In matters of contribution, the practice is simply to waive the articles of the constitution. The danger of delay obliges the consenting provinces to pay their quotas at once and then seek reimbursement from the others however they can. Holland’s great wealth and influence enable her to do both.

More than once the deficiencies have been collected at the point of the bayonet. That is practicable, though dreadful, where one member outweighs all the rest and the others are too small to resist. It is utterly impracticable where several members are equal in strength and each can mount a vigorous, persevering defense.

Sir William Temple, himself a foreign minister, says that foreign envoys defeat measures referred back to the provinces by tampering with the provinces and cities. In 1726 these arts delayed the treaty of Hanover a whole year; such instances are numerous and notorious.

In critical emergencies the States-General are often forced beyond their constitutional bounds. In 1688 they concluded a treaty on their own, at the risk of their heads. The treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which finally recognized their independence, was made without Zealand’s consent; even the recent peace treaty with Great Britain set aside the rule of unanimity. A weak constitution must end in dissolution for want of proper powers, or in usurpation of the powers the public safety demands. Whether usurpation stops at a safe point or runs to a dangerous extreme depends on the accidents of the moment. Tyranny has perhaps more often grown from powers seized under a defective constitution than from the full exercise of the largest lawful powers.

Despite the calamities the stadtholdership has produced, many suppose that without his influence in the provinces, the confederacy’s anarchy would long ago have dissolved it. The Abbe Mably says the union could never have survived without a spring within the provinces to quicken their slowness and force them to think alike; that spring is the stadtholder. Sir William Temple adds that when the stadtholdership lapsed, Holland’s riches and authority supplied its place and drew the others into a sort of dependence.

These are not the only circumstances that have checked the tendency toward anarchy and dissolution. The surrounding powers make some degree of union absolutely necessary, even while their intrigues feed the constitutional vices that keep the republic always somewhat at their mercy.

The true patriots have long mourned these fatal vices; four times they have convened extraordinary assemblies for the special purpose of applying a remedy. Each time their zeal has found it impossible to unite the public councils in reforming the acknowledged and fatal evils of the existing constitution. Let us pause, my fellow-citizens, over this melancholy and cautionary lesson of history. While we weep for the calamities brought on mankind by clashing opinions and selfish passions, let us thank Heaven for the happy concord that has marked our own political consultations.

A plan was also formed to establish a general tax administered by the federal authority; it too had its adversaries and failed.

This unhappy people now seem to face the crisis of their destiny: popular convulsions, dissensions among the states, and actual invasion by foreign arms. All nations have their eyes fixed on the awful spectacle. Humanity’s first wish is that this severe trial may end in a revolution of government establishing their union as the parent of tranquility, freedom, and happiness. The next is that our own country, where we trust these blessings will soon be secured, may receive and console them for the catastrophe of theirs.

I make no apology for dwelling so long on these federal precedents. Experience is the oracle of truth, and where its answers are unequivocal they ought to be conclusive and sacred. Here it pronounces a great truth: a sovereignty over sovereigns, a government over governments, a legislation for communities rather than individuals, is a mistake in theory and ruinous in practice. It subverts the order and ends of civil society by substituting violence for law, the coercion of the sword for the mild coercion of the magistrate.