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 Abb 300 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 hereditary 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 repellent 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 accommodating 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 Abreg. Chronol. de l'Hist., etc., d'Allemagne," says the pretext was to indemnify himself for the
expense of the expedition.
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 Abb 300 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 hereditary 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 repellent 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 accommodating 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 Abreg. Chronol. de l'Hist., etc., d'Allemagne," says the pretext was to indemnify himself for the
expense of the expedition.
| FEDERALIST NO. 19 The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union (continued) - Alexander Hamilton & James Madison |
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