PUBLIUS

FEDERALIST No. 17

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

For the Independent Journal. Wednesday, December 5, 1787

HAMILTON

To the People of the State of New York:

AN OBJECTION, of a nature different from that which has been stated and
answered, in my last address, may perhaps be likewise urged against the
principle of legislation for the individual citizens of America. It may
be said that it would tend to render the government of the Union too
powerful, and to enable it to absorb those residuary authorities, which
it might be judged proper to leave with the States for local purposes.
Allowing the utmost latitude to the love of power which any reasonable
man can require, I confess I am at a loss to discover what temptation
the persons intrusted with the administration of the general government
could ever feel to divest the States of the authorities of that
description. The regulation of the mere domestic police of a State
appears to me to hold out slender allurements to ambition. Commerce,
finance, negotiation, and war seem to comprehend all the objects which
have charms for minds governed by that passion; and all the powers
necessary to those objects ought, in the first instance, to be lodged in
the national depository. The administration of private justice between
the citizens of the same State, the supervision of agriculture and of
other concerns of a similar nature, all those things, in short, which
are proper to be provided for by local legislation, can never be
desirable cares of a general jurisdiction. It is therefore improbable
that there should exist a disposition in the federal councils to
usurp the powers with which they are connected; because the attempt to
exercise those powers would be as troublesome as it would be nugatory;
and the possession of them, for that reason, would contribute nothing
to the dignity, to the importance, or to the splendor of the national
government.

But let it be admitted, for argument's sake, that mere wantonness and
lust of domination would be sufficient to beget that disposition; still
it may be safely affirmed, that the sense of the constituent body of the
national representatives, or, in other words, the people of the several
States, would control the indulgence of so extravagant an appetite. It
will always be far more easy for the State governments to encroach upon
the national authoritie