FEDERALIST No. 16

The Same Subject Continued (The Insufficiency of the Present
Confederation to Preserve the Union)

From the New York Packet. Tuesday, December 4, 1787.

HAMILTON

To the People of the State of New York:

THE tendency of the principle of legislation for States, or communities,
in their political capacities, as it has been exemplified by the
experiment we have made of it, is equally attested by the events which
have befallen all other governments of the confederate kind, of which
we have any account, in exact proportion to its prevalence in those
systems. The confirmations of this fact will be worthy of a distinct
and particular examination. I shall content myself with barely observing
here, that of all the confederacies of antiquity, which history has
handed down to us, the Lycian and Achaean leagues, as far as there
remain vestiges of them, appear to have been most free from the fetters
of that mistaken principle, and were accordingly those which have best
deserved, and have most liberally received, the applauding suffrages of
political writers.

This exceptionable principle may, as truly as emphatically, be styled
the parent of anarchy: It has been seen that delinquencies in the
members of the Union are its natural and necessary offspring; and that
whenever they happen, the only constitutional remedy is force, and the
immediate effect of the use of it, civil war.

It remains to inquire how far so odious an engine of government, in its
application to us, would even be capable of answering its end. If there
should not be a large army constantly at the disposal of the national
government it would either not be able to employ force at all, or,
when this could be done, it would amount to a war between parts of
the Confederacy concerning the infractions of a league, in which the
strongest combination would be most likely to prevail, whether it
consisted of those who supported or of those who resisted the general
authority. It would rarely happen that the delinquency to be redressed
would be confined to a single member, and if there were more than one
who had neglected their duty, similarity of situation would induce them
to unite for common defense. Independent of this motive of sympathy, if
a large and influential State should happen to be the aggressing member,
it would commonly have weight enough with its neighbors to win over some
of them as associates to its cause. Specious arguments of da