FEDERALIST No. 19



The Same Subject Continued

(The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union)

For the Independent Journal.

Saturday, December 8, 1787



MADISON, with HAMILTON



To the People of the State of New York:



THE examples of ancient confederacies, cited in my last paper, have not

exhausted the source of experimental instruction on this subject. There

are existing institutions, founded on a similar principle, which merit

particular consideration. The first which presents itself is the

Germanic body.



In the early ages of Christianity, Germany was occupied by seven

distinct nations, who had no common chief. The Franks, one of the

number, having conquered the Gauls, established the kingdom which has

taken its name from them. In the ninth century Charlemagne, its warlike

monarch, carried his victorious arms in every direction; and Germany

became a part of his vast dominions. On the dismemberment, which took

place under his sons, this part was erected into a separate and

independent empire. Charlemagne and his immediate descendants possessed

the reality, as well as the ensigns and dignity of imperial power. But

the principal vassals, whose fiefs had become hereditary, and who

composed the national diets which Charlemagne had not abolished,

gradually threw off the yoke and advanced to sovereign jurisdiction and

independence. The force of imperial sovereignty was insufficient to

restrain such powerful dependants; or to preserve the unity and

tranquillity of the empire. The most furious private wars, accompanied

with every species of calamity, were carried on between the different

princes and states. The imperial authority, unable to maintain the

public order, declined by degrees till it was almost extinct in the

anarchy, which agitated the long interval between the death of the last

emperor of the Suabian, and the accession of the first emperor of the

Austrian lines. In the eleventh century the emperors enjoyed full

sovereignty: In the fifteenth they had little more than the symbols and

decorations of power.



Out of this feudal system, which has itself many of the important

features of a confederacy, has grown the federal system which

constitutes the Germanic empire. Its powers are vested in a diet

representing the component members of the confederacy; in the emperor,

who is the executive magistrate, with a negative on the decrees of the

diet; and in the imperial chamber and the aulic council, two judiciary

tribunals having supreme jurisdiction in controversies which concern the

empire, or which happen among its members.



The diet possesses the general power of legislating for the empire; of

making war and peace; contracting alliances; assessing quotas of troops

and money; constructing fortresses; regulating coin; admitting new

members; and subjecting disobedient members to the ban of the empire, by

which the party is degraded from his sovereign rights and his

possessions forfeited. The members of the confederacy are expressly

restricted from entering into compacts prejudicial to the empire; from

imposing tolls and duties on their mutual intercourse, without the

consent of the emperor and diet; from altering the value of money; from

doing injustice to one another; or from affording assistance or retreat

to disturbers of the public peace. And the ban is denounced against such

as shall violate any of these restrictions. The members of the diet, as

such, are subject in all cases to be judged by the emperor and diet, and

in their private capacities by the aulic council and imperial chamber.



The prerogatives of the emperor are numerous. The most important of them

are: his exclusive right to make propositions to the diet; to negative

its resolutions; to name ambassadors; to confer dignities and titles; to

fill vacant electorates; to found universities; to grant privileges not

injurious to the states of the empire; to receive and apply the public

revenues; and generally to watch over the public safety. In certain

cases, the electors form a council to him. In quality of emperor, he

possesses no territory within the empire, nor receives any revenue for

his support. But his revenue and dominions, in other qualities,

constitute him one of the most powerful princes in Europe.



From such a parade of constitutional powers, in the representatives and

head of this confederacy, the natural supposition would be, that it must

form an exception to the general character which belongs to its kindred

systems. Nothing would be further from the reality. The fundamental

principle on which it rests, that the empire is a community of

sovereigns, that the diet is a representation of sovereigns and that the

laws are addressed to sovereigns, renders the empire a nerveless body,

incapable of regulating its own members, insecure against external

dangers, and agitated with unceasing fermentations in its own bowels.



The history of Germany is a history of wars between the emperor and the

princes and states; of wars among the princes and states themselves; of

the licentiousness of the strong, and the oppression of the weak; of

foreign intrusions, and foreign intrigues; of requisitions of men and

money disregarded, or partially complied with; of attempts to enforce

them, altogether abortive, or attended with slaughter and desolation,

involving the innocent with the guilty; of general inbecility,

confusion, and misery.



In the sixteenth century, the emperor, with one part of the empire on

his side, was seen engaged against the other princes and states. In one

of the conflicts, the emperor himself was put to flight, and very near

being made prisoner by the elector of Saxony. The late king of Prussia

was more than once pitted against his imperial sovereign; and commonly

proved an overmatch for him. Controversies and wars among the members

themselves have been so common, that the German annals are crowded with

the bloody pages which describe them. Previous to the peace of

Westphalia, Germany was desolated by a war of thirty years, in which the

emperor, with one half of the empire, was on one side, and Sweden, with

the other half, on the opposite side. Peace was at length negotiated,

and dictated by foreign powers; and the articles of it, to which foreign

powers are parties, made a fundamental part of the Germanic

constitution.



If the nation happens, on any emergency, to be more united by the

necessity of self-defense, its situation is still deplorable. Military

preparations must be preceded by so many tedious discussions, arising

from the jealousies, pride, separate views, and clashing pretensions of

sovereign bodies, that before the diet can settle the arrangements, the

enemy are in the field; and before the federal troops are ready to take

it, are retiring into winter quarters.



The small body of national troops, which has been judged necessary in

time of peace, is defectively kept up, badly paid, infected with local

prejudices, and supported by irregular and disproportionate

contributions to the treasury.



The impossibility of maintaining order and dispensing justice among

these sovereign subjects, produced the experiment of dividing the empire

into nine or ten circles or districts; of giving them an interior

organization, and of charging them with the military execution of the

laws against delinquent and contumacious members. This experiment has

only served to demonstrate more fully the radical vice of the

constitution. Each circle is the miniature picture of the deformities of

this political monster. They either fail to execute their commissions,

or they do it with all the devastation and carnage of civil war.

Sometimes whole circles are defaulters; and then they increase the

mischief which they were instituted to remedy.



We may form some judgment of this scheme of military coercion from a

sample given by Thuanus. In Donawerth, a free and imperial city of the

circle of Suabia, the Abbe de St. Croix enjoyed certain immunities which

had been reserved to him. In the exercise of these, on some public

occasions, outrages were committed on him by the people of the city. The

consequence was that the city was put under the ban of the empire, and

the Duke of Bavaria, though director of another circle, obtained an

appointment to enforce it. He soon appeared before the city with a corps

of ten thousand troops, and finding it a fit occasion, as he had

secretly intended from the beginning, to revive an antiquated claim, on

the pretext that his ancestors had suffered the place to be dismembered

from his territory,[1] he took possession of it in his own name,

disarmed, and punished the inhabitants, and reannexed the city to his

domains.



It may be asked, perhaps, what has so long kept this disjointed machine

from falling entirely to pieces? The answer is obvious: The weakness of

most of the members, who are unwilling to expose themselves to the mercy

of foreign powers; the weakness of most of the principal members,

compared with the formidable powers all around them; the vast weight and

influence which the emperor derives from his separate and heriditary

dominions; and the interest he feels in preserving a system with which

his family pride is connected, and which constitutes him the first

prince in Europe; -- these causes support a feeble and precarious Union;

whilst the repellant quality, incident to the nature of sovereignty, and

which time continually strengthens, prevents any reform whatever,

founded on a proper consolidation. Nor is it to be imagined, if this

obstacle could be surmounted, that the neighboring powers would suffer a

revolution to take place which would give to the empire the force and

preeminence to which it is entitled. Foreign nations have long

considered themselves as interested in the changes made by events in

this constitution; and have, on various occasions, betrayed their policy

of perpetuating its anarchy and weakness.



If more direct examples were wanting, Poland, as a government over local

sovereigns, might not improperly be taken notice of. Nor could any proof

more striking be given of the calamities flowing from such institutions.

Equally unfit for self-government and self-defense, it has long been at

the mercy of its powerful neighbors; who have lately had the mercy to

disburden it of one third of its people and territories.



The connection among the Swiss cantons scarcely amounts to a

confederacy; though it is sometimes cited as an instance of the

stability of such institutions.



They have no common treasury; no common troops even in war; no common

coin; no common judicatory; nor any other common mark of sovereignty.



They are kept together by the peculiarity of their topographical

position; by their individual weakness and insignificancy; by the fear

of powerful neighbors, to one of which they were formerly subject; by

the few sources of contention among a people of such simple and

homogeneous manners; by their joint interest in their dependent

possessions; by the mutual aid they stand in need of, for suppressing

insurrections and rebellions, an aid expressly stipulated and often

required and afforded; and by the necessity of some regular and

permanent provision for accomodating disputes among the cantons. The

provision is, that the parties at variance shall each choose four judges

out of the neutral cantons, who, in case of disagreement, choose an

umpire. This tribunal, under an oath of impartiality, pronounces

definitive sentence, which all the cantons are bound to enforce. The

competency of this regulation may be estimated by a clause in their

treaty of 1683, with Victor Amadeus of Savoy; in which he obliges

himself to interpose as mediator in disputes between the cantons, and to

employ force, if necessary, against the contumacious party.



So far as the peculiarity of their case will admit of comparison with

that of the United States, it serves to confirm the principle intended

to be established. Whatever efficacy the union may have had in ordinary

cases, it appears that the moment a cause of difference sprang up,

capable of trying its strength, it failed. The controversies on the

subject of religion, which in three instances have kindled violent and

bloody contests, may be said, in fact, to have severed the league. The

Protestant and Catholic cantons have since had their separate diets,

where all the most important concerns are adjusted, and which have left

the general diet little other business than to take care of the common

bailages.



That separation had another consequence, which merits attention. It

produced opposite alliances with foreign powers: of Berne, at the head

of the Protestant association, with the United Provinces; and of

Luzerne, at the head of the Catholic association, with France.



PUBLIUS



1. Pfeffel, "Nouvel Abrég. Chronol. de l'Hist., etc., d'Allemagne," says

the pretext was to indemnify himself for the expense of the expedition.