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The Federalist No. 14

Objections to the Proposed Constitution From Extent of Territory Answered

New York Packet
Friday, November 30, 1787
[James Madison]

To the People of the State of New York:

WE HAVE seen the necessity of the Union, as our bulwark against foreign danger, as the conservator of peace among ourselves, as the guardian of our commerce and other common interests, as the only substitute for those military establishments which have subverted the liberties of the Old World, and as the proper antidote for the diseases of faction, which have proved fatal to other popular governments, and of which alarming symptoms have been betrayed by our own. All that remains, within this branch of our inquiries, is to take notice of an objection that may be drawn from the great extent of country which the Union embraces. A few observations on this subject will be the more proper, as it is perceived that the adversaries of the new Constitution are availing themselves of the prevailing prejudice with regard to the practicable sphere of republican administration, in order to supply, by imaginary difficulties, the want of those solid objections which they endeavor in vain to find.

The error which limits republican government to a narrow district has been unfolded and refuted in preceding papers. I remark here only that it seems to owe its rise and prevalence chiefly to the confounding of a republic with a democracy, applying to the former reasonings drawn from the nature of the latter. The true distinction between these forms was also adverted to on a former occasion. It is, that in a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. A democracy, consequently, will be confined to a small spot. A republic may be extended over a large region.

To this accidental source of the error may be added the artifice of some celebrated authors, whose writings have had a great share in forming the modern standard of political opinions. Being subjects either of an absolute or limited monarchy, they have endeavored to heighten the advantages, or palliate the evils of those forms, by placing in comparison the vices and defects of the republican, and by citing as specimens of the latter the turbulent democracies of ancient Greece and modern Italy. Under the confusion of names, it has been an easy task to transfer to a republic observations applicable to a democracy only; and among others, the observation that it can never be established but among a small number of people, living within a small compass of territory.

Such a fallacy may have been the less perceived, as most of the popular governments of antiquity were of the democratic species; and even in modern Europe, to which we owe the great principle of representation, no example is seen of a government wholly popular, and founded, at the same time, wholly on that principle. If Europe has the merit of discovering this great mechanical power in government, by the simple agency of which the will of the largest political body may be concentred, and its force directed to any object which the public good requires, America can claim the merit of making the discovery the basis of unmixed and extensive republics. It is only to be lamented that any of her citizens should wish to deprive her of the additional merit of displaying its full efficacy in the establishment of the comprehensive system now under her consideration.

As the natural limit of a democracy is that distance from the central point which will just permit the most remote citizens to assemble as often as their public functions demand, and will include no greater number than can join in those functions; so the natural limit of a republic is that distance from the centre which will barely allow the representatives to meet as often as may be necessary for the administration of public affairs. Can it be said that the limits of the United States exceed this distance? It will not be said by those who recollect that the Atlantic coast is the longest side of the Union, that during the term of thirteen years, the representatives of the States have been almost continually assembled, and that the members from the most distant States are not chargeable with greater intermissions of attendance than those from the States in the neighborhood of Congress.

That we may form a juster estimate with regard to this interesting subject, let us resort to the actual dimensions of the Union. The limits, as fixed by the treaty of peace, are: on the east the Atlantic, on the south the latitude of thirty-one degrees, on the west the Mississippi, and on the north an irregular line running in some instances beyond the forty-fifth degree, in others falling as low as the forty-second. The southern shore of Lake Erie lies below that latitude. Computing the distance between the thirty-first and forty-fifth degrees, it amounts to nine hundred and seventy-three common miles; computing it from thirty-one to forty-two degrees, to seven hundred and sixty-four miles and a half. Taking the mean for the distance, the amount will be eight hundred and sixty-eight miles and three-fourths. The mean distance from the Atlantic to the Mississippi does not probably exceed seven hundred and fifty miles. On a comparison of this extent with that of several countries in Europe, the practicability of rendering our system commensurate to it appears to be demonstrable. It is not a great deal larger than Germany, where a diet representing the whole empire is continually assembled; or than Poland before the late dismemberment, where another national diet was the depositary of the supreme power. Passing by France and Spain, we find that in Great Britain, inferior as it may be in size, the representatives of the northern extremity of the island have as far to travel to the national council as will be required of those of the most remote parts of the Union.

Favorable as this view of the subject may be, some observations remain which will place it in a light still more satisfactory.

In the first place it is to be remembered that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws. Its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any. The subordinate governments, which can extend their care to all those other subjects which can be separately provided for, will retain their due authority and activity. Were it proposed by the plan of the convention to abolish the governments of the particular States, its adversaries would have some ground for their objection; though it would not be difficult to show that if they were abolished the general government would be compelled, by the principle of self-preservation, to reinstate them in their proper jurisdiction.

A second observation to be made is that the immediate object of the federal Constitution is to secure the union of the thirteen primitive States, which we know to be practicable; and to add to them such other States as may arise in their own bosoms, or in their neighborhoods, which we cannot doubt to be equally practicable. The arrangements that may be necessary for those angles and fractions of our territory which lie on our northwestern frontier, must be left to those whom further discoveries and experience will render more equal to the task.

Let it be remarked, in the third place, that the intercourse throughout the Union will be facilitated by new improvements. Roads will everywhere be shortened, and kept in better order; accommodations for travelers will be multiplied and meliorated; an interior navigation on our eastern side will be opened throughout, or nearly throughout, the whole extent of the thirteen States. The communication between the Western and Atlantic districts, and between different parts of each, will be rendered more and more easy by those numerous canals with which the beneficence of nature has intersected our country, and which art finds it so little difficult to connect and complete.

A fourth and still more important consideration is, that as almost every State will, on one side or other, be a frontier, and will thus find, in regard to its safety, an inducement to make some sacrifices for the sake of the general protection; so the States which lie at the greatest distance from the heart of the Union, and which, of course, may partake least of the ordinary circulation of its benefits, will be at the same time immediately contiguous to foreign nations, and will consequently stand, on particular occasions, in greatest need of its strength and resources. It may be inconvenient for Georgia, or the States forming our western or northeastern borders, to send their representatives to the seat of government; but they would find it more so to struggle alone against an invading enemy, or even to support alone the whole expense of those precautions which may be dictated by the neighborhood of continual danger. If they should derive less benefit, therefore, from the Union in some respects than the less distant States, they will derive greater benefit from it in other respects, and thus the proper equilibrium will be maintained throughout.

I submit to you, my fellow-citizens, these considerations, in full confidence that the good sense which has so often marked your decisions will allow them their due weight and effect; and that you will never suffer difficulties, however formidable in appearance, or however fashionable the error on which they may be founded, to drive you into the gloomy and perilous scene into which the advocates for disunion would conduct you. Hearken not to the unnatural voice which tells you that the people of America, knit together as they are by so many cords of affection, can no longer live together as members of the same family; can no longer continue the mutual guardians of their mutual happiness; can no longer be fellow citizens of one great, respectable, and flourishing empire. Hearken not to the voice which petulantly tells you that the form of government recommended for your adoption is a novelty in the political world; that it has never yet had a place in the theories of the wildest projectors; that it rashly attempts what it is impossible to accomplish. No, my countrymen, shut your ears against this unhallowed language. Shut your hearts against the poison which it conveys; the kindred blood which flows in the veins of American citizens, the mingled blood which they have shed in defense of their sacred rights, consecrate their Union, and excite horror at the idea of their becoming aliens, rivals, enemies. And if novelties are to be shunned, believe me, the most alarming of all novelties, the most wild of all projects, the most rash of all attempts, is that of rendering us in pieces, in order to preserve our liberties and promote our happiness. But why is the experiment of an extended republic to be rejected, merely because it may comprise what is new? Is it not the glory of the people of America, that, whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience? To this manly spirit, posterity will be indebted for the possession, and the world for the example, of the numerous innovations displayed on the American theatre, in favor of private rights and public happiness. Had no important step been taken by the leaders of the Revolution for which a precedent could not be discovered, no government established of which an exact model did not present itself, the people of the United States might, at this moment have been numbered among the melancholy victims of misguided councils, must at best have been laboring under the weight of some of those forms which have crushed the liberties of the rest of mankind. Happily for America, happily, we trust, for the whole human race, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society. They reared the fabrics of governments which have no model on the face of the globe. They formed the design of a great Confederacy, which it is incumbent on their successors to improve and perpetuate. If their works betray imperfections, we wonder at the fewness of them. If they erred most in the structure of the Union, this was the work most difficult to be executed; this is the work which has been new modelled by the act of your convention, and it is that act on which you are now to deliberate and to decide.

PUBLIUS

The voters of Switzerland have taken a daring and dramatic stand against the Islamic colonisation of their country by supporting a ban on the further building of minarets.

A national referendum completed today in Switzerland produced a 57 percent yes vote in favour of the ban, proposed by the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), the largest party in the Swiss parliament.

The poll result is a massive embarrassment for the Swiss coalition government which firmly opposed the ban.

The SVP claimed that allowing minarets would encourage the growth of “an ideology and a legal system — Sharia law — which are incompatible with Swiss democracy.”

SVP member of parliament Ulrich Schluer said the “minaret is a symbol of conquest and power which marks the will to introduce Sharia law as has happened in some other European cities. We will not accept that.”

He added that “Forced marriages and other things like cemeteries separating the pure and impure — we don’t have that in Switzerland, and we do not want to introduce it.”

The outcome of the referendum proved an upset to the pollsters, who, only two weeks ago, claimed that the ban would be defeated by a 53 percent margin.
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The University of Delaware recently made a decision to subject its students to mandatory “treatment” (‘treatment’ is a term used by the university) where they learn that “all whites are racist”, racism by the ‘people of color’ is impossible, and George Washington is merely a “famous Indian fighter, large landholder and slave owner”.

The university requires that the students adopt highly specific university-approved views on issues ranging from politics to race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy, and environmentalism. Students are forced to attend training sessions, floor meetings, and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Assistants (RAs). The RAs who facilitate these meetings have received their own intensive training from the university, including a “diversity facilitation training”.

RAs are required to ask and students are forced to answer private questions such as “When did you discover your sexual identity?”

After the one-on-one meetings, RAs must then prepare reports on each student’s cooperation and viewpoint, ranking them and the progress they’ve made during “treatment”.

Students are not allowed to express disapproval of the “treatment” or of the questions that deal with their political views, sexuality and other private matters. Expressing disapproval will result in a negative report of the progress they’ve made during “treatment”, which may result in punishment.
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OCEANSIDE, Calif. — Federal agents have raided a pair of San Diego County flea markets and seized thousands of pieces of what they say is phony brand-name clothing.

The North County Times said Saturday that search warrant affidavits from Immigration and Customs Enforcement show agents seized counterfeit NFL jerseys, Lacoste shirts and Nike jackets from the Mission Bazaar and Mission Tanguis flea markets, both in Oceanside.

A total of three stalls at the indoor strip-mall markets near Interstate 5 were raided Oct. 28.

ICE spokeswoman Lauren Mack says agents also raided three vendors’ homes. Mack says the raids are part of a larger probe and more action is expected.
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Benjamin Franklin
(1706 - 1790)

Benjamin Franklin - American on Facebook here.

On the Price of Corn, and Management of the Poor

For the LONDON CHRONICLE.

To Messieurs the PUBLIC and CO. I am one of that class of people that feeds you all, and at present is abus’d by you all; — in short I am a Farmer.

By your News-papers we are told, that God had sent a very short harvest to some other countries of Europe. I thought this might be in favour to Old England; and that now we should get a good price for our grain, which would bring in millions among us, and make us flow in money, that to be sure is scarce enough.

But the wisdom of Government forbad the exportation.

Well, says I, then we must be content with the market price at home.

No, says my Lords the mob, you sha’n't have that. Bring your corn to market if you dare; — we’ll sell it for you, for less money, or take it for nothing.

Being thus attack’d by both ends of the Constitution, the head and the tail of Government, what am I to do?

Must I keep my corn in barn to feed and increase the breed of rats? — be it so; — they cannot be less thankful than those I have been used to feed.

Are we Farmers the only people to be grudged the profits of honest labour? — And why? — One of the late scribblers against us gives a bill of fare of the provisions at my daughter’s wedding, and proclaims to all the world that we had the insolence to eat beef and pudding! — Has he never read that precept in the good book, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn; or does he think us less worthy of good living than our oxen?

O, but the Manufacturers! the Manufacturers! they are to be favour’d, and they must have bread at a cheap rate!

Hark-ye, Mr. Oaf; — The Farmers live splendidly, you say. And pray, would you have them hoard the money they get? — Their fine cloaths and furniture, do they make them themselves, or for one another, and so keep the money among them? Or do they employ these your darling Manufacturers, and so scatter it again all over the nation?

My wool would produce me a better price if it were suffer’d to go to foreign markets. But that, Messieurs the Public, your laws will not permit. It must be kept all at home, that our dear Manufacturers may have it the cheaper. And then, having yourselves thus lessened our encouragement for raising sheep, you curse us for the scarcity of mutton!

I have heard my grandfather say, that the Farmers submitted to the prohibition on the exportation of wool, being made to expect and believe, that when the Manufacturer bought his wool cheaper, they should have their cloth cheaper. But the deuce a bit. It has been growing dearer and dearer from that day to this. How so? why truly the cloth is exported; and that keeps up the price.

Now if it be a good principle, that the exportation of a commodity is to be restrain’d, that so our own people at home may have it the cheaper, stick to that principle, and go thorough stitch with it. Prohibit the exportation of your cloth, your leather and shoes, your iron ware, and your manufactures of all sorts, to make them all cheaper at home. And cheap enough they will be, I’ll warrant you — till people leave off making them.

Some folks seem to think they ought never to be easy, till England becomes another Lubberland, where ’tis fancied the streets are paved with penny rolls, the houses tiled with pancakes, and chickens ready roasted cry, come eat me.

I say, when you are sure you have got a good principle, stick to it, and carry it thorough. — I hear ’tis said, that though it was necessary and right for the M —— y to advise a prohibition of the exportation of corn, yet it was contrary to law: And also, that though it was contrary to law for the mob to obstruct the waggons, yet it was necessary and right. — Just the same thing, to a tittle. Now they tell me, an act of indemnity ought to pass in favour of the M —— y, to secure them from the consequences of having acted illegally. — If so, pass another in favour of the mob. Others say, some of the mob ought to be hanged, by way of example. — If so, —— but I say no more than I have said before, when you are sure that you have got a good principle, go thorough with it.

You say, poor labourers cannot afford to buy bread at a high price, unless they had higher wages. — Possibly. — But how shall we Farmers be able to afford our labourers higher wages, if you will not allow us to get, when we might have it, a higher price for our corn?

By all I can learn, we should at least have had a guinea a quarter more if the exportation had been allowed. And this money England would have got from foreigners.

But, it seems, we Farmers must take so much less, that the poor may have it so much cheaper.

This operates then as a tax for the maintenance of the poor. — A very good thing, you will say. But I ask, Why a partial tax? Why laid on us Farmers only? — If it be a good thing, pray, Messrs. the Public, take your share of it, by indemnifying us a little out of your public treasury. In doing a good thing there is both honour and pleasure; — you are welcome to your part of both.

For my own part, I am not so well satisfied of the goodness of this thing. I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. — I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. There is no country in the world where so many provisions are established for them; so many hospitals to receive them when they are sick or lame, founded and maintained by voluntary charities; so many alms-houses for the aged of both sexes, together with a solemn general law made by the rich to subject their estates to a heavy tax for the support of the poor. Under all these obligations, are our poor modest, humble, and thankful; and do they use their best endeavours to maintain themselves, and lighten our shoulders of this burthen? — On the contrary, I affirm that there is no country in the world in which the poor are more idle, dissolute, drunken, and insolent. The day you passed that act, you took away from before their eyes the greatest of all inducements to industry, frugality, and sobriety, by giving them a dependance on somewhat else than a careful accumulation during youth and health, for support in age or sickness. In short, you offered a premium for the encouragement of idleness, and you should not now wonder that it has had its effect in the increase of poverty. Repeal that law, and you will soon see a change in their manners. St. Monday, and St. Tuesday, will cease to be holidays. SIX days shalt thou labour, though one of the old commandments long treated as out of date, will again be looked upon as a respectable precept; industry will increase, and with it plenty among the lower people; their circumstances will mend, and more will be done for their happiness by inuring them to provide for themselves, than could be done by dividing all your estates among them.

Excuse me, Messrs. the Public, if upon this interesting subject, I put you to the trouble of reading a little of my nonsense. I am sure I have lately read a great deal of yours; and therefore from you (at least from those of you who are writers) I deserve a little indulgence. I am, your’s, &c. ARATOR.

The London Chronicle, November 29, 1766

• Police outside a Forza Coffee Co. shop in Parkland, Wash., where four Lakeland Police officers were killed by one or two gunmen, November 29, 2009. Police say the victims appeared to have been targeted amd were caught in a “flat-out ambush.” (AP/Lui Kit Wong, News Tribune)

(CBS/AP)

Last Updated 3:48 p.m. ET

Four police officers were shot and killed Sunday morning in what authorities called a targeted ambush at a coffee house in Washington State, a sheriff’s official said.

Officials at the scene told The News Tribune in Tacoma that two gunmen burst into the Forza Coffee Co. and shot the four uniformed officers as they were working on their laptop computers, then fled the scene.

Pierce County Sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said investigators believe the officers were targeted, and it was not a robbery.

Troyer told the newspaper “it was just a flat-out ambush.” No one else in the coffee shop was hurt.

It wasn’t clear whether the officers even had time to draw their weapons to return fire, Troyer said.

“This was more of an execution. Walk in with the specific mindset to shoot police officers,” Troyer said.

Troyer said the officers - all from the Lakewood Police Department - were catching up on paperwork at the beginning of their shifts when they were attacked at 8:15 a.m. Sunday.

Troyer said the attack was clearly targeted at the officers, not a robbery gone bad.

“There were marked patrol cars outside and they were all in uniform,” Troyer said.
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Major Nidal Malik Hasan stands charged with killing 13 soldiers at Fort Hood. Politicians, TV pundits, our generals and even our president act perplexed.

But this tragic incident reveals how all the head-shrinking social engineering that goes into diversity training has totally failed.

Major Hasan was supposed to be an example of those most central to the government’s core program of racial, ethnic and religious egalitarianism. He was to be a showpiece of how “diversity is our strength.”

Unfortunately, core to human nature is tribal and religious identity. This is exactly what is denied by diversity advocates.

Diversity advocates assure us that we are a “melting pot” where people would through education, political sloganeering, and even intertribal, international, and even interracial miscegenation, gradually eliminate the “evils” of tribalism and nationalism.
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In electing Lord Pearson of Rannoch as its new leader, the UK Independence Party has gone some way to rectifying that situation.

The Eton-educated insurance broker is always up for a public fight - the bigger the opponent, it seems, the better.

In his time he has declared war on, among others, Lloyd’s of London, the Home Office and Marxism.

However, the foe which has taken central billing in the 67-year-old’s cast of villains is the European Union.

‘Head and shoulders’

For years he has railed against its inefficiencies and incursions on the UK’s national sovereignty.

As leader of a party calling for withdrawal from the organisation, he should be in his element.

But he is also under some pressure.

Previous leader Nigel Farage - who stood down to contest a Westminster seat at the next general election - is a difficult act to follow.
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