1787 Federalist 19 · Founding Made Plain

11787 Federalist No. 19

2The Same Subject Continued:

3The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation

4to Preserve the Union

5For the Independent Journal.

6HAMILTON AND MADISON

7To the People of the State of New York:

8THE examples of ancient confederacies,

9 cited in my last paper,

10 have not exhausted the source

11 of experimental instruction on this subject.

12There are existing institutions,

13 founded on a similar principle,

14 which merit particular consideration.

15The first which presents itself is the Germanic body.

16In the early ages of Christianity,

17 Germany was occupied by seven distinct nations,

18 who had no common chief.

19The Franks, one of the number,

20 having conquered the Gauls,

21 established the kingdom

22 which has taken its name from them.

23In the ninth century Charlemagne, its warlike monarch,

24 carried his victorious arms in every direction;

25 and Germany became a part of his vast dominions.

26On the dismemberment,

27 which took place under his sons,

28 this part was erected into a separate

29 and independent empire.

30Charlemagne and his immediate descendants

31 possessed the reality,

32 as well as the ensigns and dignity of imperial power.

33But the principal vassals,

34 whose fiefs had become hereditary,

35 and who composed the national diets

36 which Charlemagne had not abolished,

37 gradually threw off the yoke

38 and advanced to sovereign jurisdiction

39 and independence.

40The force of imperial sovereignty was insufficient

41 to restrain such powerful dependants;

42 or to preserve the unity

43 and tranquillity of the empire.

44The most furious private wars,

45 accompanied with every species of calamity,

46 were carried on between the different

47 princes and states.

48The imperial authority,

49 unable to maintain the public order,

50 declined by degrees

51 till it was almost extinct in the anarchy,

52 which agitated the long interval

53 between the death of the last emperor

54 of the Suabian,

55 and the accession of the first emperor

56 of the Austrian lines.

57In the eleventh century the emperors enjoyed

58 full sovereignty:

59 In the fifteenth they had little more

60 than the symbols and decorations of power.

61Out of this feudal system,

62 which has itself many of the important features

63 of a confederacy,

64 has grown the federal system

65 which constitutes the Germanic empire.

66Its powers are vested in a diet

67 representing the component members of the confederacy;

68 in the emperor, who is the executive magistrate,

69 with a negative on the decrees of the diet;

70 and in the imperial chamber and the aulic council,

71 two judiciary tribunals

72 having supreme jurisdiction

73 in controversies which concern the empire,

74 or which happen among its members.

75The diet possesses the general power

76 of legislating for the empire;

77 of making war and peace;

78 contracting alliances;

79 assessing quotas of troops and money;

80 constructing fortresses;

81 regulating coin;

82 admitting new members;

83 and subjecting disobedient members

84 to the ban of the empire,

85 by which the party is degraded

86 from his sovereign rights

87 and his possessions forfeited.

88The members of the confederacy

89 are expressly restricted

90 from entering into compacts

91 prejudicial to the empire;

92 from imposing tolls and duties

93 on their mutual intercourse,

94 without the consent of the emperor and diet;

95 from altering the value of money;

96 from doing injustice to one another;

97 or from affording assistance or retreat

98 to disturbers of the public peace.

99And the ban is denounced

100 against such as shall violate

101 any of these restrictions.

102The members of the diet, as such,

103 are subject in all cases

104 to be judged by the emperor and diet,

105 and in their private capacities

106 by the aulic council and imperial chamber.

107The prerogatives of the emperor are numerous.

108The most important of them are:

109 his exclusive right to make propositions to the diet;

110 to negative its resolutions;

111 to name ambassadors;

112 to confer dignities and titles;

113 to fill vacant electorates;

114 to found universities;

115 to grant privileges not injurious

116 to the states of the empire;

117 to receive and apply the public revenues;

118 and generally to watch over the public safety.

119In certain cases, the electors form a council to him.

120In quality of emperor,

121 he possesses no territory within the empire,

122 nor receives any revenue for his support.

123But his revenue and dominions, in other qualities,

124 constitute him one of the most powerful princes

125 in Europe.

126From such a parade of constitutional powers,

127 in the representatives and head of this confederacy,

128 the natural supposition would be,

129 that it must form an exception

130 to the general character

131 which belongs to its kindred systems.

132Nothing would be further from the reality.

133The fundamental principle on which it rests,

134 that the empire is a community of sovereigns,

135 that the diet is a representation of sovereigns

136 and that the laws are addressed to sovereigns,

137 renders the empire a nerveless body,

138 incapable of regulating its own members,

139 insecure against external dangers,

140 and agitated with unceasing fermentations

141 in its own bowels.

142The history of Germany is a history of wars

143 between the emperor and the princes and states;

144 of wars among the princes and states themselves;

145 of the licentiousness of the strong,

146 and the oppression of the weak;

147 of foreign intrusions, and foreign intrigues;

148 of requisitions of men and money disregarded,

149 or partially complied with;

150 of attempts to enforce them, altogether abortive,

151 or attended with slaughter and desolation,

152 involving the innocent with the guilty;

153 of general inbecility, confusion, and misery.

154In the sixteenth century, the emperor,

155 with one part of the empire on his side,

156 was seen engaged against the other princes and states.

157In one of the conflicts,

158 the emperor himself was put to flight,

159 and very near being made prisoner

160 by the elector of Saxony.

161The late king of Prussia was more than once

162 pitted against his imperial sovereign;

163 and commonly proved an overmatch for him.

164Controversies and wars among the members themselves

165 have been so common,

166 that the German annals are crowded

167 with the bloody pages which describe them.

168Previous to the peace of Westphalia,

169 Germany was desolated by a war of thirty years,

170 in which the emperor, with one half of the empire,

171 was on one side,

172 and Sweden, with the other half, on the opposite side.

173Peace was at length negotiated,

174 and dictated by foreign powers;

175 and the articles of it,

176 to which foreign powers are parties,

177 made a fundamental part of the Germanic constitution.

178If the nation happens, on any emergency,

179 to be more united by the necessity of self-defense,

180 its situation is still deplorable.

181Military preparations must be preceded

182 by so many tedious discussions,

183 arising from the jealousies, pride,

184 separate views, and clashing pretensions

185 of sovereign bodies,

186 that before the diet can settle the arrangements,

187 the enemy are in the field;

188 and before the federal troops are ready to take it,

189 are retiring into winter quarters.

190The small body of national troops,

191 which has been judged necessary in time of peace,

192 is defectively kept up, badly paid,

193 infected with local prejudices,

194 and supported by irregular and disproportionate

195 contributions to the treasury.

196The impossibility of maintaining order

197 and dispensing justice among these sovereign subjects,

198 produced the experiment of dividing the empire

199 into nine or ten circles or districts;

200 of giving them an interior organization,

201 and of charging them with the military execution

202 of the laws against delinquent

203 and contumacious members.

204This experiment has only served to demonstrate

205 more fully the radical vice of the constitution.

206Each circle is the miniature picture

207 of the deformities of this political monster.

208They either fail to execute their commissions,

209 or they do it with all the devastation

210 and carnage of civil war.

211Sometimes whole circles are defaulters;

212 and then they increase the mischief

213 which they were instituted to remedy.

214We may form some judgment

215 of this scheme of military coercion

216 from a sample given by Thuanus.

217In Donawerth, a free and imperial city

218 of the circle of Suabia,

219 the Abbe de St. Croix enjoyed certain immunities

220 which had been reserved to him.

221In the exercise of these, on some public occasions,

222 outrages were committed on him

223 by the people of the city.

224The consequence was

225 that the city was put under the ban of the empire,

226 and the Duke of Bavaria,

227 though director of another circle,

228 obtained an appointment to enforce it.

229He soon appeared before the city

230 with a corps of ten thousand troops,

231 and finding it a fit occasion,

232 as he had secretly intended from the beginning,

233 to revive an antiquated claim,

234 on the pretext that his ancestors had suffered

235 the place to be dismembered from his territory,[1]

236 he took possession of it in his own name,

237 disarmed, and punished the inhabitants,

238 and reannexed the city to his domains.

239It may be asked, perhaps,

240 what has so long kept this disjointed machine

241 from falling entirely to pieces?

242The answer is obvious:

243 The weakness of most of the members,

244 who are unwilling to expose themselves

245 to the mercy of foreign powers;

246 the weakness of most of the principal members,

247 compared with the formidable powers

248 all around them;

249 the vast weight and influence

250 which the emperor derives

251 from his separate and heriditary dominions;

252 and the interest he feels in preserving a system

253 with which his family pride is connected,

254 and which constitutes him

255 the first prince in Europe;--

256 these causes support a feeble and precarious Union;

257 whilst the repellant quality,

258 incident to the nature of sovereignty,

259 and which time continually strengthens,

260 prevents any reform whatever,

261 founded on a proper consolidation.

262Nor is it to be imagined,

263 if this obstacle could be surmounted,

264 that the neighboring powers would suffer a revolution

265 to take place

266 which would give to the empire

267 the force and preeminence to which it is entitled.

268Foreign nations have long considered themselves

269 as interested in the changes made by events

270 in this constitution;

271 and have, on various occasions,

272 betrayed their policy

273 of perpetuating its anarchy and weakness.

274If more direct examples were wanting,

275 Poland, as a government over local sovereigns,

276 might not improperly be taken notice of.

277Nor could any proof more striking be given

278 of the calamities flowing from such institutions.

279Equally unfit for self-government and self-defense,

280 it has long been at the mercy

281 of its powerful neighbors;

282 who have lately had the mercy to disburden it

283 of one third of its people and territories.

284The connection among the Swiss cantons

285 scarcely amounts to a confederacy;

286 though it is sometimes cited as an instance

287 of the stability of such institutions.

288They have no common treasury;

289 no common troops even in war;

290 no common coin;

291 no common judicatory;

292 nor any other common mark of sovereignty.

293They are kept together

294 by the peculiarity of their topographical position;

295 by their individual weakness and insignificancy;

296 by the fear of powerful neighbors,

297 to one of which they were formerly subject;

298 by the few sources of contention

299 among a people of such simple

300 and homogeneous manners;

301 by their joint interest in their dependent possessions;

302 by the mutual aid they stand in need of,

303 for suppressing insurrections and rebellions,

304 an aid expressly stipulated

305 and often required and afforded;

306 and by the necessity of some regular

307 and permanent provision

308 for accomodating disputes among the cantons.

309The provision is,

310 that the parties at variance

311 shall each choose four judges

312 out of the neutral cantons,

313 who, in case of disagreement, choose an umpire.

314This tribunal, under an oath of impartiality,

315 pronounces definitive sentence,

316 which all the cantons are bound to enforce.

317The competency of this regulation may be estimated

318 by a clause in their treaty of 1683,

319 with Victor Amadeus of Savoy;

320 in which he obliges himself to interpose as mediator

321 in disputes between the cantons,

322 and to employ force, if necessary,

323 against the contumacious party.

324So far as the peculiarity of their case

325 will admit of comparison

326 with that of the United States,

327 it serves to confirm the principle

328 intended to be established.

329Whatever efficacy the union may have had

330 in ordinary cases,

331 it appears that the moment a cause of difference

332 sprang up,

333 capable of trying its strength,

334 it failed.

335The controversies on the subject of religion,

336 which in three instances

337 have kindled violent and bloody contests,

338 may be said, in fact, to have severed the league.

339The Protestant and Catholic cantons

340 have since had their separate diets,

341 where all the most important concerns are adjusted,

342 and which have left the general diet

343 little other business

344 than to take care of the common bailages.

345That separation had another consequence,

346 which merits attention.

347It produced opposite alliances with foreign powers:

348 of Berne, at the head of the Protestant association,

349 with the United Provinces;

350 and of Luzerne, at the head

351 of the Catholic association,

352 with France.

353PUBLIUS.

354[1] Pfeffel, "Nouvel Abreg. Chronol. de l'Hist., etc.,

355 d'Allemagne," says the pretext was to indemnify himself

356 for the expense of the expedition.