Dangers from Disagreements Between States

The last three papers covered the dangers of disunion from foreign arms and arts. I turn now to a different and perhaps more alarming kind: quarrels between the states, and factions within them. States wholly disunited, or joined only in partial confederacies, would fall again and again into violent contests. To deny they would have motives forgets that men are ambitious, vengeful, and greedy. To expect lasting harmony among unconnected sovereignties in one neighborhood ignores the whole course of human events.

The causes of hostility among nations are countless. Some act on whole societies almost constantly: the love of power and dominion, the jealousy of power, the wish for equality and safety. Others are narrower, like the rivalries of commerce. Others rise from the private passions of leading men. Such men, whether favorites of a king or of a people, have too often abused their trust. Under a public pretext they have sacrificed the nation’s peace to private advantage. Pericles destroyed the Samians to gratify a courtesan, and private pique made him the author of the Peloponnesian War that ruined Athens.

Yet visionary or scheming men still defend the paradox of perpetual peace among the states once broken apart. The genius of republics, they say, is peaceful. The spirit of commerce softens men’s manners and quenches the passions that so often kindle into war. Commercial republics like ours will never waste themselves in ruinous quarrels. Governed by mutual interest, they will cultivate friendship and concord.

Is that spirit not the true interest of all nations? Have they pursued it? Passing passions and immediate interest always rule conduct more than remote policy or justice. Have republics in practice been less warlike than monarchies? They are run by men, and feel the same aversions, rivalries, and desires of unjust gain. Popular assemblies feel rage, resentment, jealousy, and greed, and a few trusted men often steer their decisions. Has commerce done more than change the objects of war? The love of wealth is as grasping a passion as the love of power. Commercial motives have bred as many wars as the old lust for territory. Let experience, the least fallible guide of human opinions, answer.

Sparta, Athens, Rome, and Carthage were all republics, two of them commercial. Yet they warred as often as the monarchies of their day. Carthage, though commercial, began the very war that destroyed her. In Britain the people’s representatives sit in the legislature, and commerce has ruled for ages. Yet few nations have warred more often, and many of those wars sprang from the people. The cries of the nation dragged monarchs into war against their own wishes. The wars between Britain and France grew largely from commercial rivalry: the desire to supplant, and the fear of being supplanted.

What reason have we to trust reveries of peace among the members of this confederacy once separated? It is time to wake from the dream of a golden age; we are far from perfect wisdom and virtue. Let the facts declare it: our sunken credit, the disorders of weak government, the revolt in part of North Carolina, alarms in Pennsylvania, rebellion in Massachusetts. Long observation has made it an axiom that nearness makes nations natural enemies. One intelligent writer adds that they remain so unless common weakness forces them into a confederate republic. Such a union extinguishes the secret jealousy that tempts every state to grow at its neighbors’ expense. It marks the evil and the remedy at once.

People ask what could tempt disunited states to war on each other. One answer: the same causes that have bloodied every nation. But we have watched such disputes strain the states even under a federal constitution. Remove those restraints, and we can judge what follows. Land disputes have always been among the most fertile sources of war. We hold vast unsettled land, and several states press rival claims. They have already quarreled over the crown lands; Congress calmed it by persuading the states to cede them for the common benefit. Break the Union, and the quarrel revives. The ceding states would reclaim their grants; the rest would demand a share by right of representation.

The Western territory offers a wide theatre for such claims, with no umpire between them. Judging by the past, we have good reason to fear the sword would sometimes decide. Connecticut and Pennsylvania quarreled over the land at Wyoming. A federal court ruled for Pennsylvania, yet Connecticut was not content until negotiation found her something like an equivalent. States, like men, yield with great reluctance to rulings against them.

Trade rivalry would be another fruitful source of contention. States placed less favorably would seek to escape their disadvantages and share their neighbors’ gains. Each state, or separate confederacy, would set its own trade policy. The distinctions, preferences, and exclusions would breed discontent. Our habit of equal trade would sharpen it. We would be ready to call injuries what were really the justifiable acts of independent sovereignties pursuing a distinct interest.

The spirit of enterprise in trading America is not likely to respect rules by which one state secures trade benefits for its own citizens. Breaking those rules, and the efforts to stop it, would lead to outrages, reprisals, and wars. Trade rules also let some states make their neighbors tributary. New York, needing revenue, must tax her imports, and much of that tax falls on consumers in Connecticut and New Jersey. She would neither be willing nor able to give up the advantage. Would her neighbors long submit to be taxed for her sole benefit? Only rashness would answer yes.

The public debt of the Union is another cause of collision: dividing it, and paying it off, would breed ill will. Scarcely any rule of division escapes real objections, which opposed interests would exaggerate. Some states feel indifference, or even repugnance, to paying the domestic debt at all. Others, whose citizens hold more of that debt than their share, would press for a fair plan. Delay by the first would rouse the resentment of the second. Settlement postponed, the peace of the states would hang on two chances: invasion from outside and strife within.

Suppose the states agreed on a rule; in practice it would likely bear harder on some. The sufferers would seek relief, and the rest would resist a change raising their own burden. That refusal would give the complainers too plausible a pretext to withhold their payments. Their failure to pay would breed bitter argument.

Even a fair rule would meet missed payments from other causes: want of resources, mismanaged finances, chance disorders in government. Men give up money reluctantly for purposes that have outlived the need. Missed payments breed complaints and quarrels. Laws that violate private contracts are another likely source of hostility. They attack the rights of the states whose citizens they injure. Without new checks, we cannot expect more fairness from the state legislatures than has already disgraced too many of their codes. Rhode Island’s enormities have already stirred Connecticut to retaliate. We reasonably infer that in like cases a war, not of parchment but of the sword, would punish such breaches.

Earlier papers have shown how readily separate states would form clashing foreign alliances. Suppose America is not connected at all, or joined only by the feeble tie of a simple league, offensive and defensive. Such alliances would draw us into the pernicious labyrinths of European politics and wars. Torn by our own contentions, we would likely fall prey to powers that are enemies of us all. Divide et impera, divide and command, must be the motto of every nation that hates or fears us.