#1: Can people govern themselves?
/In the first Federalist essay, Alexander Hamilton puts readers in a frame of mind to be convinced by the arguments he and Madison and Jay present in the series of essays. Federalist #1 was published just a few weeks after the close of the Constitutional Convention. Like all the Federalist essays, it is addressed to the people of New York. It aims to persuade them to add their state to the list of states approving the Constitution.
Hamilton sets a high bar in his opening of Federalist #1:
It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.
“Reflection and choice” are the key words. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention had spent nearly four months reflecting on the best forms of government, and then choosing the combination of rules they thought best. And now, Hamilton informs the New Yorkers, it is up to them to reflect and choose whether the plan he and the other delegates had developed would take effect. If not, America would remain stuck with the old, unsatisfactory government.
It is an important question. Before beginning to consider the particular details of a good government, we have to decide whether ordinary citizens are capable of participating in governing themselves. If they aren’t, it is foolish to ask them to and irresponsible to allow them a role. Americans have all grown up assuming that voting and participating in public affairs is a basic right. But this was still an open question when the Federalist was written.
It is tempting to think that the question Hamilton poses in Federalist #1 has been settled. America has endured for 230+ years with a system in which citizens vote, petition government, run for office, and get involved in many ways. But we should avoid this dodge. Asking “whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government “ is a question we face every day, and a question that can never really be settled.
Hamilton immediately casts doubt. Men are corrupt, he says. But even those who aren’t corrupt are apt to err just from ignorance or confusion:
So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society.
As Hamilton wrote this, illustrious patriots like Patrick Henry and George Mason were standing against the draft Constitution. But Hamilton urged readers to shut their ears to the naysayers: “An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power and hostile to the principles of liberty.”
Alexander Hamilton
Understand this: This is a personal, mudslinging bar fight. Hamilton is saying that he and his fellow federalists are the good guys and their “enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government” is the right position. Perhaps Hamilton was especially concerned to tamp down accusations that he was “fond of despotic power” because deep down he really was fond of it. Hamilton had declared that he considered England’s monarchy the best government in the world, and that the powerful hereditary king at the top was the best part of it. He had urged, during the Constitutional Convention, on June 18, 1787, that the American executive power be vested in a single man with a life-time appointment. That was a far more “despotic” form of executive authority than others at the convention could agree to.
Some readers new to the Federalist find this hard to believe, given that the Americans (including Hamilton himself) had fought a war against the rule a king. It is common for American readers to suppose that opposing a king inclines a person inevitably to a weak government. But that isn’t necessarily true, and wasn’t true for Hamilton. He declares, “[T]he vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty,” meaning that America’s liberty requires a strong government — just not one headed by the British king.
Hamilton concludes Federalist #1 by telling the reader he’s made up his mind and won’t pretend he hasn’t. He says he hopes to convince them to support the new Constitution, too:
Yes, my countrymen, I own to you that, after having given it an attentive consideration, I am clearly of opinion it is your interest to adopt it. I am convinced that this is the safest course for your liberty, your dignity, and your happiness. I affect not reserves which I do not feel. I will not amuse you with an appearance of deliberation when I have decided.
Taking a step back, we can see that Hamilton commits a logical fallacy in the concluding part of Federalist #1. He says: “For nothing can be more evident, to those who are able to take an enlarged view of the subject, than the alternative of an adoption of the new Constitution or a dismemberment of the Union.”
He’s claiming that unless it adopts the proposed Constitution, the country will fall apart. That is a false dichotomy and is untrue. The proposed Constitution was not the only possible way to keep the country together. It was a good proposal and the best that he and the other delegates had been able to agree on during the summer of 1787. But it was not the only possible way to stave off collapse. Several members of the Constitutional convention walked away form it dissatisfied and urging that another convention be started, with different people attending, as soon as possible.
Even admitting that the Articles of Confederation were unsatisfactory — and not everyone did admit that — there were other possibilities. Hamilton brushes them aside. He’s guilty of hard-sell tactics, and of a false dichotomy.
Discuss:
Are ordinary people “capable . . . of establishing good government from reflection and choice?”
What education or training or qualification is necessary to make them capable?
Are Americans today more or less capable of “establishing good government from reflection and choice” than citizens were in 1787?
