FEDERALIST No. 19

The Same Subject Continued

(The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the

Union)

For the Independent Journal.

HAMILTON AND MADISON

To the People of the State of New York:

THE examples of ancient confederacies, cited in my last paper,

have not exhausted the source of experimental instruction on this

subject. There are existing institutions, founded on a similar

principle, which merit particular consideration. The first which

presents itself is the Germanic body.

In the early ages of Christianity, Germany was occupied by seven

distinct nations, who had no common chief. The Franks, one of the

number, having conquered the Gauls, established the kingdom which

has taken its name from them. In the ninth century Charlemagne, its

warlike monarch, carried his victorious arms in every direction;

and Germany became a part of his vast dominions. On the

dismemberment, which took place under his sons, this part was

erected into a separate and independent empire. Charlemagne and his

immediate descendants possessed the reality, as well as the ensigns

and dignity of imperial power. But the principal vassals, whose

fiefs had become hereditary, and who composed the national diets

which Charlemagne had not abolished, gradually threw off the yoke

and advanced to sovereign jurisdiction and independence. The force

of imperial sovereignty was insufficient to restrain such powerful

dependants; or to preserve the unity and tranquillity of the empire.

The most furious private wars, accompanied with every species of

calamity, were carried on between the different princes and states.

The imperial authority, unable to maintain the public order,

declined by degrees till it was almost extinct in the anarchy, which

agitated the long interval between the death of the last emperor of

the Suabian, and the accession of the first emperor of the Austrian

lines. In the eleventh century the emperors enjoyed full

sovereignty: In the fifteenth they had little more than the symbols

and decorations of power.

Out of this feudal system, which has itself many of the

important features of a confederacy, has grown the federal system

which constitutes the Germanic empire. Its powers are vested in a

diet representing the component members of the confederacy; in the

emperor, who is the executive magistrate, with a negative on the

decrees of the diet; and in the imperial chamber and the aulic

council, two judiciary tribunals having supreme jurisdiction in

controversies which concern the empire, or which happen among its

members.

The diet possesses the general power of legislating for the

empire; of making war and peace; contracting alliances; assessing

quotas of troops and money; constructing fortresses; regulating

coin; admitting new members; and subjecting disobedient members to

the ban of the empire, by which the party is degraded from his

sovereign rights and his possessions forfeited. The members of the

confederacy are expressly restricted from entering into compacts

prejudicial to the empire; from imposing tolls and duties on their

mutual intercourse, without the consent of the emperor and diet;

from altering the value of money; from doing injustice to one

another; or from affording assistance or retreat to disturbers of

the public peace. And the ban is denounced against such as shall

violate any of these restrictions. The members of the diet, as

such, are subject in all cases to be judged by the emperor and diet,

and in their private capacities by the aulic council and imperial

chamber.

The prerogatives of the emperor are numerous. The most

important of them are: his exclusive right to make propositions to

the diet; to negative its resolutions; to name ambassadors; to

confer dignities and titles; to fill vacant electorates; to found

universities; to grant privileges not injurious to the states of

the empire; to receive and apply the public revenues; and

generally to watch over the public safety. In certain cases, the

electors form a council to him. In quality of emperor, he possesses

no territory within the empire, nor receives any revenue for his

support. But his revenue and dominions, in other qualities,

constitute him one of the most powerful princes in Europe.

From such a parade of constitutional powers, in the

representatives and head of this confederacy, the natural

supposition would be, that it must form an exception to the general

character which belongs to its kindred systems. Nothing would be

further from the reality. The fundamental principle on which it

rests, that the empire is a community of sovereigns, that the diet

is a representation of sovereigns and that the laws are addressed to

sovereigns, renders the empire a nerveless body, incapable of

regulating its own members, insecure against external dangers, and

agitated with unceasing fermentations in its own bowels.

The history of Germany is a history of wars between the emperor

and the princes and states; of wars among the princes and states

themselves; of the licentiousness of the strong, and the oppression

of the weak; of foreign intrusions, and foreign intrigues; of

requisitions of men and money disregarded, or partially complied

with; of attempts to enforce them, altogether abortive, or attended

with slaughter and desolation, involving the innocent with the

guilty; of general inbecility, confusion, and misery.

In the sixteenth century, the emperor, with one part of the

empire on his side, was seen engaged against the other princes and

states. In one of the conflicts, the emperor himself was put to

flight, and very near being made prisoner by the elector of Saxony.

The late king of Prussia was more than once pitted against his

imperial sovereign; and commonly proved an overmatch for him.

Controversies and wars among the members themselves have been so

common, that the German annals are crowded with the bloody pages

which describe them. Previous to the peace of Westphalia, Germany

was desolated by a war of thirty years, in which the emperor, with

one half of the empire, was on one side, and Sweden, with the other

half, on the opposite side. Peace was at length negotiated, and

dictated by foreign powers; and the articles of it, to which

foreign powers are parties, made a fundamental part of the Germanic

constitution.

If the nation happens, on any emergency, to be more united by

the necessity of self-defense, its situation is still deplorable.

Military preparations must be preceded by so many tedious

discussions, arising from the jealousies, pride, separate views, and

clashing pretensions of sovereign bodies, that before the diet can

settle the arrangements, the enemy are in the field; and before the

federal troops are ready to take it, are retiring into winter

quarters.

The small body of national troops, which has been judged

necessary in time of peace, is defectively kept up, badly paid,

infected with local prejudices, and supported by irregular and

disproportionate contributions to the treasury.

The impossibility of maintaining order and dispensing justice

among these sovereign subjects, produced the experiment of dividing

the empire into nine or ten circles or districts; of giving them an

interior organization, and of charging them with the military

execution of the laws against delinquent and contumacious members.

This experiment has only served to demonstrate more fully the

radical vice of the constitution. Each circle is the miniature

picture of the deformities of this political monster. They either

fail to execute their commissions, or they do it with all the

devastation and carnage of civil war. Sometimes whole circles are

defaulters; and then they increase the mischief which they were

instituted to remedy.

We may form some judgment of this scheme of military coercion

from a sample given by Thuanus. In Donawerth, a free and imperial

city of the circle of Suabia, the Abb 300 de St. Croix enjoyed

certain immunities which had been reserved to him. In the exercise

of these, on some public occasions, outrages were committed on him

by the people of the city. The consequence was that the city was

put under the ban of the empire, and the Duke of Bavaria, though

director of another circle, obtained an appointment to enforce it.

He soon appeared before the city with a corps of ten thousand

troops, and finding it a fit occasion, as he had secretly intended

from the beginning, to revive an antiquated claim, on the pretext

that his ancestors had suffered the place to be dismembered from his

territory,1 he took possession of it in his own name, disarmed,

and punished the inhabitants, and reannexed the city to his domains.

It may be asked, perhaps, what has so long kept this disjointed

machine from falling entirely to pieces? The answer is obvious:

The weakness of most of the members, who are unwilling to expose

themselves to the mercy of foreign powers; the weakness of most of

the principal members, compared with the formidable powers all

around them; the vast weight and influence which the emperor

derives from his separate and heriditary dominions; and the

interest he feels in preserving a system with which his family pride

is connected, and which constitutes him the first prince in Europe;

--these causes support a feeble and precarious Union; whilst the

repellant quality, incident to the nature of sovereignty, and which

time continually strengthens, prevents any reform whatever, founded

on a proper consolidation. Nor is it to be imagined, if this

obstacle could be surmounted, that the neighboring powers would

suffer a revolution to take place which would give to the empire the

force and preeminence to which it is entitled. Foreign nations have

long considered themselves as interested in the changes made by

events in this constitution; and have, on various occasions,

betrayed their policy of perpetuating its anarchy and weakness.

If more direct examples were wanting, Poland, as a government

over local sovereigns, might not improperly be taken notice of. Nor

could any proof more striking be given of the calamities flowing

from such institutions. Equally unfit for self-government and

self-defense, it has long been at the mercy of its powerful

neighbors; who have lately had the mercy to disburden it of one

third of its people and territories.

The connection among the Swiss cantons scarcely amounts to a

confederacy; though it is sometimes cited as an instance of the

stability of such institutions.

They have no common treasury; no common troops even in war; no

common coin; no common judicatory; nor any other common mark of

sovereignty.

They are kept together by the peculiarity of their topographical

position; by their individual weakness and insignificancy; by the

fear of powerful neighbors, to one of which they were formerly

subject; by the few sources of contention among a people of such

simple and homogeneous manners; by their joint interest in their

dependent possessions; by the mutual aid they stand in need of, for

suppressing insurrections and rebellions, an aid expressly

stipulated and often required and afforded; and by the necessity of

some regular and permanent provision for accomodating disputes among

the cantons. The provision is, that the parties at variance shall

each choose four judges out of the neutral cantons, who, in case of

disagreement, choose an umpire. This tribunal, under an oath of

impartiality, pronounces definitive sentence, which all the cantons

are bound to enforce. The competency of this regulation may be

estimated by a clause in their treaty of 1683, with Victor Amadeus

of Savoy; in which he obliges himself to interpose as mediator in

disputes between the cantons, and to employ force, if necessary,

against the contumacious party.

So far as the peculiarity of their case will admit of comparison

with that of the United States, it serves to confirm the principle

intended to be established. Whatever efficacy the union may have

had in ordinary cases, it appears that the moment a cause of

difference sprang up, capable of trying its strength, it failed.

The controversies on the subject of religion, which in three

instances have kindled violent and bloody contests, may be said, in

fact, to have severed the league. The Protestant and Catholic

cantons have since had their separate diets, where all the most

important concerns are adjusted, and which have left the general

diet little other business than to take care of the common bailages.

That separation had another consequence, which merits attention.

It produced opposite alliances with foreign powers: of Berne, at

the head of the Protestant association, with the United Provinces;

and of Luzerne, at the head of the Catholic association, with

France.

PUBLIUS.

1 Pfeffel, ``Nouvel Abreg. Chronol. de l'Hist., etc.,

d'Allemagne,'' says the pretext was to indemnify himself for the

expense of the expedition.