The History Book Club discussion

This is the thread for the discussion of FEDERALIST. NO 27.

This paper is titled IDEA OF RESTRAINING THE LEGISLATIVE AUTHORITY IN REGARD TO THE COMMON DEFENSE CONSIDERED (CONT'D)


This paper was written by Alexander Hamilton.

by Alexander Hamilton

Within the first paragraph:

Unless we presume at the same time that the powers of the general government will be worse administered than those of the State government, there seems to be no room for the presumption of ill-will, disaffection, or opposition in the people. I believe it may be laid down as a general rule that their confidence in and obedience to a government will commonly be proportioned to the goodness or badness of its administration. It must be admitted that there are exceptions to this rule; but these exceptions depend so entirely on accidental causes, that they cannot be considered as having any relation to the intrinsic merits or demerits of a constitution. These can only be judged of by general principles and maxims.

You have to love that first paragraph. There are a lot of folks who are not satisfied with either their state government or the federal government but nowadays do not know what to do about it. You only have to listen to the pundits and you will hear all of the ill-will, dissaffection, and opposition you can tolerate.

Goodness or badness of its administration and perspective is probably quite divergent depending upon what party the person belongs to and whether the administration belongs to that party. I am certain that these days folks are not as altruistic as they were probably during the above times.

However, most no matter what side of the aisle they are on; seem to feel that the founding fathers did an awesome job with our Constitution and probably that is why many do not want any present day politicians to tinker with it.

I think it is sometimes more difficult for the central government to have direct interactions with the people directly as once it did at the time of the constitution.

I don't think that this one was misassigned. Jay, Hamilton and Madison were the authors of specific ones; Hamilton and Madison teamed up on some and the others were authored by Hamilton or Madison. I will look into it for you.