Hamilton]

COMMERCIAL RESTRICTIONS.

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the basis of equal privileges, to which we have been accustomed since the earliest settlement of the country, would give a keener edge to those causes of discontent than they would naturally have independent of this circumstance. We should be ready to denominate injuries those things which were in reality the justifiable acts of independent sovereignties consulting a distinct interest. The spirit of enterprise, which characterizes the commercial part of America, has left no occasion of displaying itself unimproved. It is not at all probable that this unbridled spirit would pay much respect to those regulations of trade by which particular States might endeavor to secure exclusive benefits to their own citizens. The infractions of these regulations, on one side, the efforts to prevent and repel them, on the other, would naturally lead to outrages, and these to reprisals and wars.

The opportunities which some States would have of rendering others tributary to them by commercial regulations would be See No. 22.

impatiently submitted to by the tributary States. The relative situation of New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey, would afford an example of this kind. New York, from the necessities of revenue, must lay duties on her importations. A great part of these duties must be paid by the inhabitants of the two other States in the capacity of consumers of what we import. New York would neither be willing nor able to forego this advantage. Her citizens would not consent that a duty paid by them should be remitted in favor of the citizens of her neighbors; nor would it be practicable, if there were not this impediment in the way, to distinguish the customers in our own markets. Would Connecticut and New Jersey long submit to be taxed by New York for her exclusive benefit? Should we be long permitted to remain in the quiet and undisturbed enjoyment of a metropolis, from the possession of which we derived an advantage so odious to our neighbors, and, in their opinion, so oppressive? Should we be able to preserve it against the incumbent weight of Connecticut on the one side, and the co-operating pressure of New Jersey on the other? These are questions that temerity alone will answer ir. the affirmative.1

A large part of the European goods consumed in the northern part of New Jersey, and of the western parts of Connecticut and Massachusetts, were imported by New York merchants and thus paid the duties levied

The public debt of the Union would be a further cause of collision between the separate States or confederacies. The apportionment, in the first instance, and the progressive extinguishment afterward, would be alike productive of ill-humor and animosity. How would it be possible to agree upon a rule of apportionment satisfactory to all? There is scarcely any that can be proposed which is entirely free from real objections. These, as usual, would be exaggerated by the adverse interest of the parties. There are even dissimilar views among the States as to the general principle of discharging the public debt. Some of them, either less impressed with the importance of national credit, or because their citizens have little, if any, immediate interest in the question, feel an indifference, if not a repugnance, to the payment of the domestic debt at any rate. These would be inclined to magnify the difficulties of a distribution. Others of them, a numerous body of whose citizens are creditors to the public beyond the proportion of the State in the total amount of the national debt, would be strenuous for some equitable and effective provision. The procrastinations of the former would excite the resentments of the latter. The settlement of a rule would, in the meantime, be postponed by real differences of opinion

by the state of New York. As a result it was alleged that New York drew into its public purse from Connecticut alone a yearly sum variously estimated at between $100,000 and $200,000. In the same manner Newport levied a "tribute on the eastern part of Connecticut. Both New Jersey and Connecticut, therefore, were warmly Federal, and were among the first to adopt the constitution, while the States of New York and Rhode Island were correspondingly strongly Anti-federal. New York was finally forced into ratification by the threat of her commercial classes that rather than forego the benefits of this trade, certain to be affected by federal duties, they would make New York city a separate state and then join the Union; and Rhode Island only assented when the passing of a federal revenue bill insured her loss of the trade of Connecticut. In the same manner every tariff bill that has markedly taxed one part of the country for the benefit of another has always stirred up sectional ill-feeling (the most notable instance being the attempt of South Carolina to nullify the tariff of 1828), and became such a source of discontent to the Southern states as to result in an insertion, in the constitution of the Southern Confederacy, of a prohibition of all protective taxes on imports.-EDITOR.

Hamilton] APPORTIONMENT OF PUBLIC DEBT.

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and affected delays. The citizens of the States interested would clamor; foreign powers would urge for the satisfaction of their just demands, and the peace of the States would be hazarded to the double contingency of external invasion and internal contention.

Suppose the difficulties of agreeing upon a rule surmounted, and the apportionment made. Still there is great room to suppose that the rule agreed upon would, upon experiment, be found to bear harder upon some States than upon others. Those which were sufferers by it would naturally seek for a mitigation of the burden. The others would as naturally be disinclined to a revision, which was likely to end in an increase of their own incumbrances. Their refusal would be too plausible a pretext to the complaining States to withhold their contributions, not to be embraced with avidity; and the non-compliance of these States with their engagements would be a ground of bitter discussion and altercation. If even the rule adopted should in practice justify the equality of its principle, still delinquencies in payments on the part of some of the States would result from a diversity of other causes-the real deficiency of resources; the mismanagement of their finances; accidental disorders in the management of the government; and, in addition to the rest, the reluctance with which men commonly part with money for purposes that have outlived. the exigencies which produced them, and interfere with the supply of immediate wants. Delinquencies, from whatever causes, would be productive of complaints, recriminations, and quarrels. There is, perhaps, nothing more likely to disturb the tranquillity of nations than their being bound to mutual contributions for any common object that does not yield an equal and coincident benefit. For it is an observation, as true as it is trite, that there is nothing men differ so readily about as the payment of money.

Laws in violation of private contracts, as they amount to aggressions on the rights of those States whose citizens are injured by them, may be considered as another

probable source of hostility. We are not authorized to expect that a more liberal or more equitable spirit would preside over the legislations of the individual States hereafter, if unrestrained by any additional checks, than we have heretofore seen in too many instances disgracing their several codes. We have observed the disposition to retaliation excited in Connecticut, in consequence of the enormities perpetrated by the Legislature of Rhode Island;' and we reasonably infer that, in similar cases under other circumstances, a war, not of parchment, but of the sword, would chastise such atrocious breaches of moral obligation and social justice.

The probability of incompatible alliances between the different States or confederacies and different foreign nations, and the effects of this situation upon the peace of the whole, have been sufficiently unfolded in some preceding papers. From the view they have exhibited of this part of the subject, this conclusion is to be drawn, that America, if not connected at all, or only by the feeble tie of a simple league, offensive and defensive, would, by the operation of such jarring alliances, be gradually entangled in all the pernicious labyrinths of European politics and wars; and by the destructive contentions of the parts into which she was divided, would be likely to become a prey to the artifices and machinations of powers equally the enemies of them all. Divide et impera* must be the motto of every nation that either hates or fears us.t PUBLIUS.

*Divide and command.-PUBLIUS.

In order that the whole subject of these papers may as soon as possible be laid before the public, it is proposed to publish them four times a week-on Tuesday in the New York Packet and on Thursday in the Daily Advertiser.-PUBLIUS.

Rhode Island, by issues of paper money and tender laws of unusual depravity, had enacted practical public and private repudiation (see Case of Trevett vs. Weeden, Providence, 1787, and Potter's "Account of the Paper Money of Rhode Island," Providence, 1880), and in retaliation Connecticut passed a law forbidding its courts to try cases of Rhode Island creditors against Connecticut debtors.-EDITOR,

War between the states particularly distressing-Lack of standing armies and fortified posts-Necessary introduction of standing armiesCompetition between the states in armaments—Examples of Greek republics-National danger unduly magnifies military power at expense of civil-Example and peculiar felicity of Great Britain-Similiarity of the United States-Needlessness of extensive military establishments.

To the People of the State of New York:

Assuming it therefore as an established truth that the several States in case of disunion, or such combinations of them as might happen to be formed out of the wreck of the general Confederacy, would be subject to those vicissitudes of peace and war, of friendship and enmity. with each other, which have fallen to the lot of all neighboring nations not united under one government, let us enter into a concise detail of some of the consequences that would attend such a situation.

War between States, in the first period of their separate existence, would be accompanied with much greater distresses than it commonly is in those countries where regular military establishments have long obtained. The disciplined armies always kept on foot on the continent of Europe, though they bear a malignant aspect to liberty and economy, have, notwithstanding, been productive of the signal advantage of rendering sudden conquests impracticable, and of preventing that rapid desolation which used to mark the progress of war prior to their introduction. The art of fortification has contributed to the same ends. The nations of Europe are encircled with chains of fortified places, which mutually obstruct invasion. Campaigns are wasted in reducing two or three frontier garrisons, to gain admittance into an enemy's country. Similar impediments occur at every step, to exhaust the strength and delay the progress of an invader.