FEDERALIST No. 46



The Influence of the State and Federal Governments Compared

From the New York Packet.

Tuesday, January 29, 1788. 



MADISON



To the People of the State of New York:



RESUMING the subject of the last paper, I proceed to inquire whether the

federal government or the State governments will have the advantage with

regard to the predilection and support of the people. Notwithstanding

the different modes in which they are appointed, we must consider both

of them as substantially dependent on the great body of the citizens of

the United States. I assume this position here as it respects the first,

reserving the proofs for another place. The federal and State

governments are in fact but different agents and trustees of the people,

constituted with different powers, and designed for different purposes.

The adversaries of the Constitution seem to have lost sight of the

people altogether in their reasonings on this subject; and to have

viewed these different establishments, not only as mutual rivals and

enemies, but as uncontrolled by any common superior in their efforts to

usurp the authorities of each other. These gentlemen must here be

reminded of their error. They must be told that the ultimate authority,

wherever the derivative may be found, resides in the people alone, and

that it will not depend merely on the comparative ambition or address of

the different governments, whether either, or which of them, will be

able to enlarge its sphere of jurisdiction at the expense of the other.

Truth, no less than decency, requires that the event in every case

should be supposed to depend on the sentiments and sanction of their

common constituents.



Many considerations, besides those suggested on a former occasion, seem

to place it beyond doubt that the first and most natural attachment of

the people will be to the governments of their respective States. Into

the administration of these a greater number of individuals will expect

to rise. From the gift of these a greater number of offices and

emoluments will flow. By the superintending care of these, all the more

domestic and personal interests of the people will be regulated and

provided for. With the affairs of these, the people will be more

familiarly and minutely conversant. And with the members of these, will

a greater proportion of the people have the ties of personal

acquaintance and friendship, and of family and party attachments; on the

side of these, therefore, the popular bias may well be expected most

strongly to incline.



Experience speaks the same language in this case. The federal

administration, though hitherto very defective in comparison with what

may be hoped under a better system, had, during the war, and

particularly whilst the independent fund of paper emissions was in

credit, an activity and importance as great as it can well have in any

future circumstances whatever. It was engaged, too, in a course of

measures which had for their object the protection of everything that

was dear, and the acquisition of everything that could be desirable to

the people at large. It was, nevertheless, invariably found, after the

transient enthusiasm for the early Congresses was over, that the

attention and attachment of the people were turned anew to their own

particular governments; that the federal council was at no time the idol

of popular favor; and that opposition to proposed enlargements of its

powers and importance was the side usually taken by the men who wished

to build their political consequence on the prepossessions of their

fellow-citizens.



If, therefore, as has been elsewhere remarked, the people should in

future become more partial to the federal than to the State governments,

the change can only result from such manifest and irresistible proofs of

a better administration, as will overcome all their antecedent

propensities. And in that case, the people ought not surely to be

precluded from giving most of their confidence where they may discover

it to be most due; but even in that case the State governments could

have little to apprehend, because it is only within a certain sphere

that the federal power can, in the nature of things, be advantageously

administered.



The remaining points on which I propose to compare the federal and State

governments, are the disposition and the faculty they may respectively

possess, to resist and frustrate the measures of each other.



It has been already proved that the members of the federal will be more

dependent on the members of the State governments, than the latter will

be on the former. It has appeared also, that the prepossessions of the

people, on whom both will depend, will be more on the side of the State

governments, than of the federal government. So far as the disposition

of each towards the other may be influenced by these causes, the State

governments must clearly have the advantage. But in a distinct and very

important point of view, the advantage will lie on the same side. The

prepossessions, which the members themselves will carry into the federal

government, will generally be favorable to the States; whilst it will

rarely happen, that the members of the State governments will carry into

the public councils a bias in favor of the general government. A local

spirit will infallibly prevail much more in the members of Congress,

than a national spirit will prevail in the legislatures of the

particular States. Every one knows that a great proportion of the errors

committed by the State legislatures proceeds from the disposition of the

members to sacrifice the comprehensive and permanent interest of the

State, to the particular and separate views of the counties or districts

in which they reside. And if they do not sufficiently enlarge their

policy to embrace the collective welfare of their particular State, how

can it be imagined that they will make the aggregate prosperity of the

Union, and the dignity and respectability of its government, the objects

of their affections and consultations? For the same reason that the

members of the State legislatures will be unlikely to attach themselves

sufficiently to national objects, the members of the federal legislature

will be likely to attach themselves too much to local objects. The

States will be to the latter what counties and towns are to the former.

Measures will too often be decided according to their probable effect,

not on the national prosperity and happiness, but on the prejudices,

interests, and pursuits of the governments and people of the individual

States. What is the spirit that has in general characterized the

proceedings of Congress? A perusal of their journals, as well as the

candid acknowledgments of such as have had a seat in that assembly, will

inform us, that the members have but too frequently displayed the

character, rather of partisans of their respective States, than of

impartial guardians of a common interest; that where on one occasion

improper sacrifices have been made of local considerations, to the

aggrandizement of the federal government, the great interests of the

nation have suffered on a hundred, from an undue attention to the local

prejudices, interests, and views of the particular States. I mean not by

these reflections to insinuate, that the new federal government will not

embrace a more enlarged plan of policy than the existing government may

have pursued; much less, that its views will be as confined as those of

the State legislatures; but only that it will partake sufficiently of

the spirit of both, to be disinclined to invade the rights of the

individual States, or the preorgatives of their governments. The motives

on the part of the State governments, to augment their prerogatives by

defalcations from the federal government, will be overruled by no

reciprocal predispositions in the members.



Were it admitted, however, that the Federal government may feel an equal

disposition with the State governments to extend its power beyond the

due limits, the latter would still have the advantage in the means of

defeating such encroachments. If an act of a particular State, though

unfriendly to the national government, be generally popular in that

State and should not too grossly violate the oaths of the State

officers, it is executed immediately and, of course, by means on the

spot and depending on the State alone. The opposition of the federal

government, or the interposition of federal officers, would but inflame

the zeal of all parties on the side of the State, and the evil could not

be prevented or repaired, if at all, without the employment of means

which must always be resorted to with reluctance and difficulty. On the

other hand, should an unwarrantable measure of the federal government be

unpopular in particular States, which would seldom fail to be the case,

or even a warrantable measure be so, which may sometimes be the case,

the means of opposition to it are powerful and at hand. The disquietude

of the people; their repugnance and, perhaps, refusal to co-operate with

the officers of the Union; the frowns of the executive magistracy of the

State; the embarrassments created by legislative devices, which would

often be added on such occasions, would oppose, in any State,

difficulties not to be despised; would form, in a large State, very

serious impediments; and where the sentiments of several adjoining

States happened to be in unison, would present obstructions which the

federal government would hardly be willing to encounter.



But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority

of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single

State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm.

Every government would espouse the common cause. A correspondence would

be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted. One spirit would

animate and conduct the whole. The same combinations, in short, would

result from an apprehension of the federal, as was produced by the dread

of a foreign, yoke; and unless the projected innovations should be

voluntarily renounced, the same appeal to a trial of force would be made

in the one case as was made in the other. But what degree of madness

could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity. In the

contest with Great Britain, one part of the empire was employed against

the other. The more numerous part invaded the rights of the less

numerous part. The attempt was unjust and unwise; but it was not in

speculation absolutely chimerical. But what would be the contest in the

case we are supposing? Who would be the parties? A few representatives

of the people would be opposed to the people themselves; or rather one

set of representatives would be contending against thirteen sets of

representatives, with the whole body of their common constituents on the

side of the latter.



The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State

governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may

previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition. The

reasonings contained in these papers must have been employed to little

purpose indeed, if it could be necessary now to disprove the reality of

this danger. That the people and the States should, for a sufficient

period of time, elect an uninterupted succession of men ready to betray

both; that the traitors should, throughout this period, uniformly and

systematically pursue some fixed plan for the extension of the military

establishment; that the governments and the people of the States should

silently and patiently behold the gathering storm, and continue to

supply the materials, until it should be prepared to burst on their own

heads, must appear to every one more like the incoherent dreams of a

delirious jealousy, or the misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit

zeal, than like the sober apprehensions of genuine patriotism.

Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular

army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it

be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would

not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people

on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to

which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried

in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number

of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This

proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than

twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia

amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands,

officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common

liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their

affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia

thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of

regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful

resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most

inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being

armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other

nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people

are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a

barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than

any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding

the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are

carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are

afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with

this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were

the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments

chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the

national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these

governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be

affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny

in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which

surround it. Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America

with the suspicion, that they would be less able to defend the rights of

which they would be in actual possession, than the debased subjects of

arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their

oppressors. Let us rather no longer insult them with the supposition

that they can ever reduce themselves to the necessity of making the

experiment, by a blind and tame submission to the long train of

insidious measures which must precede and produce it.



The argument under the present head may be put into a very concise form,

which appears altogether conclusive. Either the mode in which the

federal government is to be constructed will render it sufficiently

dependent on the people, or it will not. On the first supposition, it

will be restrained by that dependence from forming schemes obnoxious to

their constituents. On the other supposition, it will not possess the

confidence of the people, and its schemes of usurpation will be easily

defeated by the State governments, who will be supported by the people.



On summing up the considerations stated in this and the last paper, they

seem to amount to the most convincing evidence, that the powers proposed

to be lodged in the federal government are as little formidable to those

reserved to the individual States, as they are indispensably necessary

to accomplish the purposes of the Union; and that all those alarms which

have been sounded, of a meditated and consequential annihilation of the

State governments, must, on the most favorable interpretation, be

ascribed to the chimerical fears of the authors of them.



PUBLIUS