The American Revolution was waged against a highly centralized, nationalistic governmental tyranny run by a king, namely, the British Empire. The king enriched himself and his regime through the economic institution of mercantilism, defined by Murray Rothbard as “a system of statism which employed economic fallacy to build up a structure of imperial state power, as well as special subsidy and monopolistic privilege to individuals or groups favored by the state.” This system impoverished the average Englishman but was a perpetual source of power and riches for the king and his political allies. That is why the system lasted so long (at least two centuries) despite the fact that it was so harmful to the average citizen.

After the Seven Years War with France the king of England needed to pay off his war debts, so he stepped up the application of the corrupt mercantilist system to the American colonists. He did so with numerous taxes and interferences with international trade that benefited British businesses and the British state while treating the colonists like tax serfs. The “train of abuses” delineated in the Declaration of Independence were mostly abuses of the colonists for the purpose of plundering them with the British mercantilist system.

There was always a group of men in American politics who were not opposed to the evil mercantilist system in principle. They recognized it as a wonderful system for accumulating power and wealth as long as they could be in charge of it. Being victimized by it was another matter. These men, led by Alexander Hamilton and his fellow Federalists, strived to implement an American version of British mercantilism as soon as the Revolution was over. In doing so they were traitors to the American Revolution and the worst kind of corrupt, power-seeking political scoundrels.

America’s would-be economic dictators strived mightily to “justify” their corrupt scheme by rewriting the history of the American founding. They made the bizarre argument that, having just fought a revolution against a highly centralized tyranny, the founders at the constitutional convention supposedly embraced the same kind of tyranny in the form of a highly centralized or national government.

The Virginia statesman John Taylor of Caroline smoked out these political scoundrels in an 1823 book entitled New Views of the Constitution of the United States (reprinted in 2005 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd, of Union, New Jersey). Making extensive use of the recently published Secret Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention by Robert Yates, who attended the constitutional convention, Taylor shredded the false notions of “nationalists” like Hamilton (and later, Clay and Lincoln).

Focusing on Hamilton as the chief culprit, Taylor explained how the “nationalists” did try at the constitutional convention to create a completely centralized government, but failed. For example, he quotes Hamilton himself at the convention as proposing a form of government such that “All laws of the particular states, contrary to the constitution or laws of the United States [government], to be utterly void. And the better to prevent such laws being passed, the governor . . . of each state shall be appointed by the general government, and shall have a negative upon the laws about to be passed in the state of which he is governor.”

Hamilton’s scheme was rejected, of course, and Taylor correctly commented that “this project comprised a national government, nearly conforming to that of England . . .” (p. 27). “By Colonel Hamilton’s project, the states were fairly and openly to be restored to the rank of provinces, and to be made as dependent upon a supreme national government, as they had been upon a supreme British government” (p. 28). Moreover, under Hamilton’s scheme “A power in the supreme federal court to declare all state laws and judgments void” would be “a supremacy exactly the same with that exercised by the British king and his council over the same provincial departments” (p. 28). Thankfully, Hamilton’s plan was rejected.

Quoting Yates’s journal, Taylor also noted that on June 25, 1787 “it was proposed and seconded to erase the word national, and substitute the words United States [in the plural] in the fourth resolution, which passed in the affirmative” (p. 29). “Thus,” Taylor wrote, “we see an opinion expressed at the convention, that the phrase “United States” did not mean ‘a consolidated American people or nation,’ and all the inferences in favour of a national government . . . are overthrown” (p. 29).

Taylor understood that the reason why Hamilton and other Federalists wanted a centralized or consolidated government was that states’ rights would forever stand in the way of their accumulation of power and wealth through the mercantilist system that they hoped to impose on America. Therefore, states’ rights must be crushed, in the eyes of Hamilton and his followers (despite occasional lip service paid to the notion of states’ rights).

Relying again on Yates’s notes, Taylor wrote of how the Hamiltonians proposed to empower the Congress to engage in a variety of economic interventions, including “the promotion of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures” (p. 29). A “monopoly in currency” by the central government was another of Hamilton’s schemes that alarmed the senator from Virginia. This was their plan for bringing British mercantilism to America: First, consolidate political power in the central government and destroy any semblance of divided sovereignty; then, use that power to replicate the mercantilist British monarchy hidden behind the rhetorical fog of American “democracy.” As Taylor described it, it was “Monarchy, its hand-maiden consolidation, and its other hand-maid, ambition, all dressed in popular disguises . . .” (p. 45). And, “National splendor, national strength, and a national government, were the arguments they [the Hamiltonians] used; but personal considerations, suggested by the prominence of their stations, or the hopes suggested by their talents, really forged their opinions” (p. 46). The “pretended national prosperity, was only a pretext of ambition and monopoly . . . intended to feed avarice, gratify ambition, and make one portion of the nation tributary to another” (p. 46).

But the nationalists failed in their endeavor; the Constitution created a confederacy of states that delegated only a few enumerated powers to the central government, which was to act as their agent, and for their benefit. All other powers were reserved to the people or the states. It was a federal, not a “national” government. Subsequently, “Colonel Hamilton . . . seems to have quitted the convention in despair, soon after the failure of his project” (p. 32).

Yates’s notes on the convention prove definitively that “the whole people” never had anything whatsoever to do with the ratification of the Constitution, which was done by state conventions. There was never any national election that created a national government. As his journal states, quoted by Taylor (p. 32): “that the constitution was transmitted to Congress, and by it to the state legislatures; that these legislatures, by separate laws, appointed state conventions for the consideration of the constitution; and that it was ratified by the delegates of the people of each state.”

Thus, “every step in its progress,” writes Taylor, “from beginning to end, defines [the Constitution] to be a federal and not a national act. . . . It was ratified by each state, because each state was sovereign and independent” (p. 32, emphasis added). Furthermore, “no negative upon state laws was delegated to the federal government, or any department thereof, and the absence of such a power had been enforced by its rejection.”

What motivated Taylor to write New Views of the Constitution of the United States was the alarming fact that, by the 1820s, the men in American politics who still dreamed of reigning over a mercantilist empire began mis-educating the public about the true history of the founding. They did so by repeating Hamilton’s arguments, which were so thoroughly rejected by the convention. As Taylor described it, the public was being told that “the devil, thus repeatedly exorcized, still remains in the church” (p. 36). The “devil,” of course, was the notion that the states were not sovereign over the central government that they had created as their agent. The truth, as Taylor explained, was that “by the constitution, the states may take away all the powers of the federal government, whilst that government is prohibited from taking away a single power reserved to the states” (p. 36).

It was assumed that state sovereignty included a right of secession from the constitutional compact. “In the creation of the federal government, the states exercised the highest act of sovereignty, and they may, if they please, repeat the proof of their sovereignty, by its annihilation” (p. 37). The states “could never have conceived that they had, by their union, relinquished their sovereignties; created a supreme negative power over their laws; or established a national government . . .” (p. 37). In fact, according to Yates’s journal, the states were described at the convention as essentially being independent nations. So much so that the journal stated: “It may safely be received as an axiom in our political system, that the state governments will, in all possible contingencies, afford complete security against invasions of the publick liberty by the national authority” (Taylor, p. 70, emphasis added).

Yates’s journal further states: “Each state, in ratifying the constitution, is considered to be a sovereign body independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new constitution will be a federal and not a national constitution” (Taylor, p. 83). This means that any one state would have the right to secede from the constitutional compact. It would have been considered an absurdity to argue that the right of secession only existed by the permission of other states (which was Lincoln’s argument).

But why all the secrecy? Why did the framers of the constitution take an oath not to reveal to the public what they were up to until after they were all dead? (Madison’s notes were not published until after his death). In a recent LRC article entitled “The Most Successful Fraud in American History” Gary North suggested that “the perpetrators [of any fraud] must be bound by an oath of non-disclosure, which all of them keep until they die, yet which leaves no trail of paper for historians to discuss.” John Taylor would agree. It was all kept secret so that “the vindicators of a federal construction of the constitution are deprived of a great mass of light, and the consolidating school have gotten rid of a great mass of detection” (p. 41). Thus, “it was necessary to keep the people in the dark” so that “the people should be worked as puppets” (p. 41).

Taylor also dissects and ridicules the “paradoxical arguments” of the Hamiltonians of his day (who would soon form the Whig Party of Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln). The advocates of “consolidated sovereignties,” Taylor noted, contend that

The greater the [government] revenue the richer are the people; that frugality in the government is an evil; in the people a good; that local partialities are blessings; that monopolies and exclusive privileges are general welfare; that a division of sovereignty will raise up a class of wicked, intriguing, self-interested politicians in the states; and that human nature will be cleansed of these propensities by a sovereignty consolidated in one government.

Taylor was being excessively polite when he labeled these absurdities as merely “paradoxical.”

Taylor also provides a clear explanation of the so-called “supremacy clause” of the Constitution, which many contemporary commentators (especially Lincoln worshipping neocons) insist gives the federal government the power to do whatever it wants to the citizens of the states. The truth is that the language in the Constitution about it being “the supreme law of the land” only applies to the seventeen specific powers enumerated to the central government in Article I, Section 8. Nothing more. The states remain the ultimate sovereigns by the Constitution. “The constitutional laws of the states are equally supreme with those of the federal government” (p. 78).

John Taylor issued his warning that “the devil is in the church” in 1823. In the coming years the new generation of “consolidationists,” led by the likes of Daniel Webster and Henry Clay, were hard at work repeating Hamilton’s “paradoxical” arguments in the apparent belief that a gullible public would come to believe such arguments if they are repeated enough. They never achieved much success, however, thanks to the strength of the Jeffersonian, states’ rights tradition in America, which was the nation’s true political tradition.

The Constitution was essentially a failed attempt to overthrow the decentralized, federalist system that was created by America’s first Constitution, the Articles of Confederation. The delegates to the constitutional convention were only instructed to revise the Articles, not replace them. The first thing they did was to ignore the instructions they were given and write an entirely new constitution. But as Yates’s journal and Taylor’s book reveal, they failed. They only managed to get the citizens of the states to delegate a few enumerated powers to the central government, not to create a national government. They succeeded in replacing the Articles, but not with their ideal, monopolistic system.

It would require a brutal, uncompromising dictator to overthrow the federal system and adopt a British-style consolidated, mercantilist empire. As Taylor wrote (p. 237): “It seems to be nature’s law, that every species of concentrated sovereignty over extensive territories, whether monarchical, aristocratical, democratical, or mixed, must be despotick. In no case has a concentrated power over great territories been sustained, except by mercenary armies; and whenever power is thus sustained, despotism is the consequence.” Furthermore, “the ignorance and partiality of a concentrated form of government, can only be enforced by armies; and the peculiar ability of the states to resist, promises that resistance would be violent; so that a national government must be either precarious or despotick” (p. 238).

Yates’s notes quote James Madison as warning at the constitutional convention that “the great danger to our federal government, is the great northern and southern interests of the continent being opposed to each other” (Taylor, p. 248). Taylor quotes Madison to predict the War for Southern Independence, which would occur almost four decades later. If northern, southern, or western interests are in sharp conflict, he wrote, and “if either can acquire local advantages from a national supremacy, it will aggravate the geographical danger apprehended by a Mr. Madison, a perpetual warfare of intrigues will ensue, and a dissolution of the union will result” (p. 249).

This is where the role of the brutal, uncompromising dictator enters into American political history. The crusade for a consolidated, monopolistic government began as soon as the Revolution ended. Some seventy-five years later Taylor’s worst fear was realized: a consolidated, mercantilist empire was finally cemented into place, and it did require “a mercenary army” to succeed. Lincoln’s army included literally hundreds of thousands of conscripts and European mercenaries who finally snuffed out the Jeffersonian, federalist system of states’ rights with the bloodiest war in human history up to that point.

The New England Yankees and their Midwestern brethren continued to rewrite history in the ensuing decades so that books like Robert Yates’s journal of the constitutional convention and John Taylor’s book on the Constitution are virtually unheard of in America. The whitewash of American history has been very thorough indeed.

Thomas J. DiLorenzo [send him mail] is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and the author of The Real Lincoln; Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed To Know about Dishonest Abe andHow Capitalism Saved America. His latest book is Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution – And What It Means for America Today.

Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com

The following article is from the June 1950 issue of analysis, vol. VI, no. 8, and was reprinted on LewRockwell.com

The Constitution that came out of the Philadelphia convention in 1787 was not acclaimed a “divine document.” On the contrary, the folks were rather skeptical about it and made ratification difficult. Yet there was no organized opposition. The Constitution simply ran head on into the individualism that had defied the arrogance of British Toryism. The backcountry, which started at the outskirts of the few seaboard cities, was as suspicious of a national government as if been hostile to foreign intervention. It was this spirit of self-reliance, of wanting to be let alone, that the ratifiers had to face and to which they addressed their argument in The Federalist.

Since the doctrine of States’ Rights is rooted in this early opposition to the Constitution, any effort to revive it should take into account the psychological barrier that confronted Madison and Hamilton. States’ Rights and individualism are historically related. It would seem to be good strategy, therefore, for a modern decentralization movement to plot its course by the same star. True, it is impossible to reconstruct the environment in which the individualism of early America was tempered; there is no haven of free land around. But the urge to be oneself, to work out one’s destiny without let or hindrance, is not a matter of environment; it is inherent in the human make-up. Even the socialist, for all his talk of immolation for the good of a mass, betrays by his very rebellion the altogether human urge for self-expression through free choice. We all have it in varying degrees; none is ever rid of it. The necessity of existence may impel us to make adjustment to conditions, but the ego thus put under restraint is not destroyed. The indestructibility of the ego is certified by the revolutionary movements that characterize the history of man. A States’ Rights movement is in essence a revolution, an opposition to the urgency of political power to limit choice and compel adjustment to its will and must rest its case on this fact. It is a certainty that any attempt to cut down the power of the central government is a fatuous gesture unless there is some feeling for freedom in the country.

At any rate, Hamilton and Madison and Jay were faced with the latent fear of political interference that was strong in the American of their day. It is for that reason that the logic of The Federalist is underlined with a note of supplication. In view of the high place the Constitution has attained in the hierarchy of American values, this pleading for its ratification is suggestive. Why was it necessary? For answer, we might recall what John Adams, writing in 1818, said about the revolution. It was effected, he declared, “before the war commenced. The revolution was in the hearts and minds of the people.” It was exactly what was in the hearts and minds of the people, their character, that constituted the opposition to nationalism in 1787 and explains why the Constitution put so many restrictions on the powers of the proposed government, not the least of which was the sharing of sovereignty with the state governments on a basis of equality. It could not have got by otherwise.

The Backbone of States’ Rights

Above all things these Americans cherished freedom. They had come to it by way of hardship and it stuck to their ribs. Many of them were but a generation away from indentured servitude; still quite alive was the memory of the horrors of migration; they had paid a high price for freedom. No government had given them their prized possession; they had literally hewn it out of the forest and they meant to keep it. All their experience with government, in the Europe from which they fled or in the colonies, taught them to distrust political power. Perhaps some government had its place in the scheme of life and might be tolerated – say, for organized opposition to the Indians or for the building of roads, and such things – but on the whole, the less of government the better. At best, it could never provide freedom, for that was something you got by your own effort; at worst, it could and would rob you of your freedom and therefore needed constant watching.

But how can one watch a government that operates from some distant seat, completely out of reach and behind a bulwark of laws of its own making? One has chores to do. The agrarian individualist was not taking chances. A government of neighbors, amenable to the will of neighbors, he would countenance and support, but he was intuitively opposed to a national establishment. The authors of the Constitution were thus put under the necessity of convincing him – and he was the unorganized majority – that the proposed government would in no way deprive him of the freedom he enjoyed under his home-made establishment; and for the title it would ask of him, in the way of taxes, it would provide him with services the local government could not furnish.

That is a distinguishing feature of The Federalist, a party platform replete with promises of what the party would not do. It is strange reading, when compared to modern political pledges, in its negative assurances. The delegates to the Philadelphia convention were sent there by the state governments with instructions to fix up some defects in the Articles of Confederation, for the Congress operating under that charter was not functioning satisfactorily; the general economy was laboring under the handicap of interstate tariffs, lack of a uniform money, difficulty in enforcing contractual obligations. These deficiencies were blocking trade, and trade was the great concern of the new country. But, when the delegates came up with a brand new Constitution, declaring that a mere overhauling of the Articles was impractical, suspicion was aroused. It was therefore incumbent on the framers of this Constitution to prove its harmlessness, as far as individual freedom was concerned. The new government would do what the states separately could not do and no more. Only when a state could not maintain order and called upon the government for help would it take part in local matters. In fact, the federal government would be little more than the foreign department for the state governments.

In paper number forty-five Madison writes: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce; with which last part the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State.

“The operations of the federal government will be most extensive in times of war and danger; those of the State governments in times of peace and security. As the former periods will probably bear a small proportion to the latter, the State governments will here enjoy another advantage over the federal government. . .” And so The Federalist goes on; promise after promise that the local governments shall remain immune.

Dualism and Individualism

Thus came the doctrine of States’ Rights. It came as a concession to the dominant individualism of the times, to the spirit of freedom that was in the people. Perhaps with some of the delegates it was a considered theory of government; there is reason to believe that most of them would as soon have left it out of the Constitution. Hamilton, at any rate, would most certainly have preferred a national rather than a federal government, with undivided sovereignty, but the genius of the American people was decidedly against him. The Constitution was, after all, only a political instrument, and as such had to confine its moralities to a preamble; in its working parts it had to conciliate divergent interests. The individualist was too important an interest to be ignored; he had to be appeased, and dual government was the price he demanded.

The doctrine of dualism came up for discussion many times between ratification and the Civil War. Almost always the debates were legalistic. On this ground, the nullifiers and the secessionists had the best of it, for nothing could be more certain than that the Union was conceived as a voluntary association of the thirteen states and that the states had existed as political entities for nearly a hundred and fifty years before the Constitution was thought of. Nor was there any question, as John C. Calhoun constantly insisted, that the Union was an organization of states, not of citizens; a Virginian was a Virginian before he was an American, and that was written into the Constitution as a condition of ratification.

But the debates were singularly free of the ideological background of the doctrine. States’ Rights was invoked in support of sectional and economic interests rather than to protect the immunities of the individual from federal encroachment. In 1814 the New England manufacturers brought it up; before the Civil War the South made much of nullification and secession because of its tariff disabilities. If the present embryonic movement to restore some measure of local autonomy is to achieve any success, it must go back to beginnings; it must make its appeal to the unquenchable yearning for freedom; it must convince the American that his best chance for a good and freer life is under the aegis of a government of neighbors.

The Theory of Government

It has always been the boast of States’ Righters that they were the true Constitutionalists, that they adhered to the letter as well as to the spirit of the original document. The evidence supports the claim. To be consistent, the current crop of fundamentalists might look to the basic theory of government written into the Constitution. This theory, borrowed from John Locke, holds that the only purpose of government, and its only competence, is to protect private property. If it presumes to go beyond that function it is guilty of misfeasance; if it fails to perform that function it is derelict in its duty. “The first object of government,” says Madison in the tenth number of The Federalist, is the protection of “the diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of private property originate.” From that theory, despite their willingness to make compromises, the Founding Fathers never deviated.

From the standpoint of this theory of government, the Constitution has not only been violated, it has been destroyed. What exists now is only a faulty facsimile of the original document. The process of mutilation began a long time ago, in the Jackson Administration, when political gangsterism announced that “to the victors belong the spoils.” But not until the Sixteenth Amendment was incorporated into the Constitution was its character completely altered. The income tax insinuated. a theory of government quite unknown to the Founding Fathers, holding that the function of government is to act as pater familias to society as a whole. To perform that role, the government must have access to all that is produced, as a matter of right, just as a feudal baron might lay claim to the fruits of his vassals’ labor. This, of course, is a complete rejection of the right of private property; what the citizen may retain from his earnings is a concession, revocable at will. The citizen thus becomes a subject. For Constitutional support, this theory of government takes recourse in the ambiguous “general welfare” clause.

The “general welfare” clause meant different things to different members of the Constitutional Convention; according to Madison it was the subject of much bitter debate. But of one thing we can be sure, and that is that it meant nothing like the New Deal interpretation to any of them. It could not have justified in their minds the investment of tax-money in government ventures competing with private industry, or the regulating and restricting of enterprise even to the extent of stifling it; and a system of doles was simply unthinkable. For, the economic thinking of the day was singularly laissez faire, and the idea of government intervention in one’s way of making a living was abhorrent to these recent revolutionists. In the context of their economic philosophy the general welfare was promoted only by production. The wealth of the nation is the sum total of the wealth of the citizens; the government might extract from it but could not contribute anything to it. To them the only thing the government could do to promote the general welfare, in the economic field, was to provide protection “for the diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate.” Having done that it should get out of the way.

The Business of Politics

If, as Charles A. Beard has so clearly shown, the Constitution was an “economic instrument,” if “every fundamental appeal in it is to some material and substantial interest,” does that invalidate its basic theory of government? To be sure, the Founding Fathers made concessions to the slave trade, the landed gentry, the money speculators and the protection-seeking industrialists. In so doing they simply accepted what the mores sanctioned. The business of the politician is not to improve upon the intelligence and conscience of his times, but rather to take what he finds and write and enforce the rules of the game accordingly. Whenever he tries to make men better than they are, or their understanding permits them to be, he is assuming a capacity he does not have and is courting trouble. The Founding Fathers made concessions to pressure-groups, to be sure; but when did politicians do otherwise? Can they do anything else? Even where the politician presumably abolishes all special privilege, as in totalitarian regimes, he simply makes of himself the sole beneficiary of all special privilege. The moralist’s passion for a society free of special privilege will be satisfied, if it ever is, by some mutation in the nature or intelligence of man; it will never come by way of politics.

It is beside the point to criticize the Founding Fathers for failure to distinguish between property got by one’s own labor and property got by privilege. The distinction was quite unknown then and, except in the ivory tower of moral philosophy, is quite unknown now. The Constitution concerned itself with the principle of private property, not with a definition of it, and our present concern should be with that principle. Is the individual in better case under a regime that guarantees security of possession and enjoyment, or does he prosper better under a regime that confiscates all production and doles it out according to a formula of its own design? Putting aside the iniquities that grow up under the institution of private property, or the perversion of it, is it not, nevertheless, more conducive to the general welfare than State Capitalism? A States’ Rights movement must face that question squarely.

Origin of Private Property

The answer to that question must be sought in first principles. Why does a man produce? Obviously, to satisfy his desires, and desires are personal, not collective. If he is deprived of the fruits of his labors, by marauders or the government, the profit in laboring is gone, and if the defalcations persist he loses interest in production. The need of living impels him to produce what he can consume immediately, but the uncertainty of possession dissuades him from accumulating; he does not save, he does not put by any capital. Under compulsion, as in slavery or a totalitarian regime, he will exert himself to produce more than he consumes only because of the desire to avoid pain, but his output will be in proportion to the constancy of surveillance and the certainty of punishment. The slave is a poor producer simply because he has no interest in production.

On the other hand, if possession and enjoyment is secure, the urge to produce knows no bounds. For the desires of man are without limit. His first need is food, but with a plenitude of that commodity on hand, or easily obtainable, he conjures up from his imagination a desire for tablecloth, napkin, and, at long last, music with his meals. The humble hut that was the pioneer’s castle is replaced with a mansion ablaze with electric light and equipped with hot-and-cold running water – only because he has been able, under private property, to accumulate a superfluity of wealth. The progress of civilization, the advancement in the sciences and arts, is in proportion to the degree of private property permitted in the going modus vivendi, and retrogression follows from the discouragement of production where confiscation is the general practice. A society of thieves cannot prosper.

The principle of private property, then, stems from the composition of the human being. And the general welfare, or the aggregate of production, is promoted only by the certainty of possession and enjoyment. That is the underlying thought of the laissez faire philosophy which, at the time the Constitution was framed, was accepted as axiomatic.

It was, indeed, a mass attack on private property that spurred the Founding Fathers in their work and furnished them with ammunition in their fight for ratification. In Massachusetts, a mob of farmers, burdened with mortgages and taxation, had attempted to force the state government to issue fiat money with which they could rid themselves of their obligations. Whether or not their grievances were justifiable, their action was a threat to the principle of private property, to which even these farmers held; they would have been in the forefront of a fight to retain possession of their holdings. However, the danger of mob action put the Fathers on their guard; they wrote into the Constitution provisions which, they expected, would prevent a majority, having got hold of the reins of government, from executing a policy of confiscation. The system of checks and balances was designed as a bulwark of private property.

States’ Rights and Private Property

Under these restrictions, which tended to keep the federal government weak and off-balance, the country did well for a century and a half. Private property was fairly safe and the wealth of the nation multiplied; the general welfare improved. But the spirit of spoliation grew apace, ever encouraged and exploited by self-seeking politicians. By means of amendments, interpretations and political subterfuge, the checks and balances were finally eased out of the Constitution. The “mob” so feared by Madison and Hamilton did in our time get control of political power and proceeded to use it as predicted; finding justification in a perversion of the “general welfare” clause, political gangsterism has put the government machinery to purposes other than the protection of “the diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate.” Private property is no longer a tenet of the American creed.

Because the human being is ever intent on improving his circumstances, striving always despite handicaps and hindrances, the effect on the general welfare from the disregard of private property is slow in showing itself. It will do so in due time. Already labor is looked upon as a useless occupation when doles are available, and investment in enterprise of a long-term nature is regarded as folly. That the American standard of living must decline, that our civilization must sink to a lower and lower level, is a certainty to which the history of intervention testifies. Politics may deny private property but it cannot prevent the consequences of its action.

The issue is clear. Is it possible to stem the tide by a strengthening of our state governments? Can our state governments provide some protection for private property, now denied by the federal government? As a patriotic gesture, and in the interest of future generations, the effort should be made. A States’ Rights movement dedicated to that effort could well call upon the shades of the Founding Fathers for support; they favored a federal government because they saw in it a protection for private property; now that the federal government has become an instrument of spoliation, would not the Founding Fathers join up with a States’ Rights movement so dedicated? Even Hamilton should be a States’ Righter these days.

Frank Chodorov (1887-1966), one of the great libertarians of the Old Right, was the founder of the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists and author of such books as The Income Tax: Root of All Evil. Here he is on “Taxation Is Robbery.” And here is Murray Rothbard’s obituary of Chodorov.

Editor’s Note: Samuel Adams, American Patriot and Revolutionary Leader, was born on September 27, 1722. In celebration of his birth, we present the following letter, sent by him to Elbridge Gerry, on August 22, 1789.

I wrote to you hastily two days ago, and as hastily ventured an Opinion concerning the Right of Congress to control a Light-house erected on Land belonging to this sovereign and independent State for its own Use and at its own Expense.

I say sovereign and independent, because I think the State retains all the Rights of Sovereignty which it has not expressly parted with to the Congress of the United States–a federal Power instituted solely for the Support of the federal Union.

The Sovereignty of the State extends over every part of its Territory. The federal Constitution expresses the same Idea in Sec. 8, Art. 1.

A Power is therein given to Congress “to exercise like Authority,” that is to exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, “over all places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature in which the same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, and other needful Buildings,” among which Light-houses may be included.

Is it not the plain Conclusion from this Clause in the Compact, that Congress have not the Right to exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, nor even to purchase or control any part of the Territory within a State for the Erection of needful Buildings unless it has the Consent of its Legislature.

If there are any such Buildings already erected, which operate to the General Welfare of the U S, and Congress by Virtue of the Power vested in them have taken from a State for the general Use, the necessary Means of supporting such Buildings it appears to be reasonable & just that the U S should maintain them; but I think that it follows not from hence, that Congress have a right to exercise any Authority over those buildings even to make Appointments of officers for the immediate Care of them or furnishing them with necessary Supplies. I wish to have your Opinion if you can find Leisure.

I hope Congress, before they adjourn, will take into very serious Consideration the necessary Amendments of the Constitution. Those whom I call the best–the most judicious & disinterested Federalists, who wish for the perpetual Union, Liberty & Happiness of the States & their respective Citizens, many of them if not all are anxiously expecting them.

They wish to see a Line drawn as clearly as may be, between the federal Powers vested in Congress and the distinct Sovereignty of the several States upon which the private & personal Rights of the Citizens depend.

Without such Distinction there will be Danger of the Constitution issuing imperceptibly and gradually into a consolidated Government over all the States; which, although it may be wished for by some was reprobated in the Idea by the highest Advocates for the Constitution as it stood without Amendments.

I am fully persuaded that the population of the U S living in different Climates, of different Education and Manners, and possesed of different Habits & feelings under one consolidated Government can not long remain free, or indeed remain under any kind of Government but despotism.

You will not forget our old Friend Devens, and if you please mention him to Mr R H Lee.

Adieu my dear Friend and believe me to be sincerely yours,

P. S. The joint regards of Mrs A & myself to Mrs Gerry.

Jefferson once wrote, “When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.” To resist this centralizing trend, the sage of Monticello was convinced, the states needed some kind of corporate defense mechanism.

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This year, hundreds of thousands of citizens have met in Tea Party rallies across our nation and have given a voice to the Jeffersonian tradition. The crowds support the reduction of federal power and an end to undisciplined government spending. This approach to government is the philosophy advocated by our third president, Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson was one of the early proponents of the “strict constructionist” view of the Constitution. This view affirms that any powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government by the Constitution, nor prohibited to the states, should be reserved to the states and to the people. This is the essence of the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which was part of the Constitution Jefferson swore to uphold in his oath of office.

Jefferson defended the rights of the common man over the prerogatives of the state. His view on the subject is stated succinctly in a letter to Elbridge Gerry, a signer of the U.S. Constitution and one-time governor of Massachusetts. The letter was dated 1799, a year before Jefferson was elected president.

“I am for preserving to the States the powers not yielded by them to the Union, & to the legislature of the Union [Congress], its constitutional share in the division of powers; and I am not for transferring all the powers of the States to the general government, & all those of that government to the Executive branch.”

In his first Inaugural Address, Jefferson also touched on this subject when he listed his “essential principles of our government.”

“…the support of the state governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies…”

Jefferson would start another revolution were he alive today, for what he opposed occurred in the twentieth century. The federal government assumed more and more authority in every area of government policy, from building roads to educating children. Jefferson would have left these matters to be handled at the state level; he would not have enlarged the federal government to administer them in Washington.

Executive branch departments and so-called independent agencies control the program delivery systems and administrative rule-making powers that define federal policy today. Meanwhile, state officials must go to Washington, D.C. and beg for federal money and federal programs.

The states should tell the Feds to keep their programs and their money, but that would be difficult politically and financially. States would have to raise state and local taxes to make up for the loss in federal funds and the federal government would lose control over the states and the populace.

Of course, this would mean the federal budget could be balanced and the national debt retired, over time. This is the program of reform that Congress would enact if it really wanted to serve the people and carefully steward the taxpayers’ money.

Jefferson’s strict constructionist view put him at odds with Alexander Hamilton, who advocated the opposing doctrine of implied powers, which gave the federal government a much more expansive field of authority.

Jefferson and Hamilton were both members of the Cabinet during George Washington’s presidency. The two men sharply disagreed over the question of public debt. Hamilton saw it as a positive tool that could be used to establish credit for the United States, while Jefferson saw public debt as an affront to the liberty of the citizens.

Hamilton believed a national debt to be a blessing. Jefferson, however, was of a different mind. He wrote to James Madison in 1789 regarding the nation of France, “. . . would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years?”

In his 1799 letter to Elbridge Gerry, Jefferson commented on frugal government and eliminating public debt.

“I am for a government rigorously frugal & simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt; and not for a multiplication of officers & salaries merely to make partisans, & for increasing, by every device, the public debt, on the principle of its being a public blessing.”

In getting Congress to accept all Revolutionary War debts at face value, Hamilton obligated the government to pay for years on the principal and interest. In order to make payments on the debt, several new taxes were necessary. These taxes included tariffs or import duties and excise taxes on such things as alcohol, refined sugars, auctions, and licenses. Once in office, Jefferson and his allies in the Congress worked to repeal the excise taxes.

During his presidency, Congress, at Jefferson’s request, abolished the internal revenue service, which had been established to collect the excise taxes. This branch of the Treasury Department should not be confused with the modern Internal Revenue Service.

The agency in Jefferson’s day consisted of about five hundred employees who were involved in collecting excise taxes. (The income tax had not yet been established.) With the excise taxes repealed, there was no need for this tax-collecting agency. Jefferson and his Treasury secretary also persuaded Congress to cut government spending and make substantial payments to reduce the war debt.

According to Americans for Prosperity, a free-market advocacy organization, our government has already spent trillions in its attempt to solve our economic problems. This is more than the cost of World War II. In addition, the government has committed to spend trillions more over the next few years, which will bring the grand total to an unbelievable $11.6 trillion in new spending – more than 26 times the size of the New Deal.

It is time for citizens to engage their public servants and demand a stop to this madness. It is time for the Washington liberals to wake up and do what common sense demands. Fiscal responsibility is a big key to solving our problems. Now is the time to make the changes that will re-establish American liberty.

Jim Jess has participated in politics as an activist, writer, and nonprofit organization leader for 30 years. He worked in the office of Governor Sonny Perdue and is a member of several conservative groups. Jim writes for Examiner.com and maintans the website ConstitutionalEducation.org.

This article was originally published as “Jefferson’s Philosophy” in Faith & Freedom, March 1951.

Jeffersonian or Hamiltonian? Every college student, indeed every literate person, is expected to choose up sides and pin a label on himself in the Great Debate. Most people today consider themselves as Jeffersonians. Groups as diverse as the States’ Rights (or Dixiecrat) movement and the Communists consider themselves heirs to the Jeffersonian mantle.

At one and the same time, conservative southerners refer to themselves as “Jeffersonian Democrats,” while the leading revolutionary Marxist school in the country is called the “Jefferson School of Social Science.” Amidst this welter of confusion, to find the true picture of Jefferson the man and political philosopher is an extraordinarily difficult task.

A Bewildering Mosaic

Analysis of Jefferson is made far more difficult by the complex nature of Jefferson’s personality and career. A man of brilliant intellect; keenly interested in the whole range of human thought, from economics to architecture to scientific farming; active, dynamic, and spirited in an amazing multitude of enterprises, and moreover a political leader the greater part of his life, necessarily presents to posterity a bewildering mosaic. Politics itself is a day-to-day affair, imposing by its very nature on the politician a series of shifts and compromises.

Thus, Jefferson combined within himself the qualities of a soaring intellectual spirit, searching for political principle, busy man of affairs, and political boss. When it is further remembered that Jefferson dominated the stage during the most vital years of the Republic (Revolution, Independence, Constitution, Growth, War, etc.), it becomes more understandable that so many contrasting groups can pick out of his immense record of writings and actions support for their own ideologies.

A Mere Scribbler?

But to an unbiased observer who explores Thomas Jefferson, his principles stand out indelible and crystal clear. His political philosophy has been imbedded deep into the very soul of America, and has imprinted itself on the minds of innumerable Americans of later generations. His achievement has been sneered at by Hamiltonians of our day as well as his.

Hamilton, they claim, was a constructive and practical man of action. He funded the national debt, reformed the administration of government, established a national bank, etc. Jefferson was a mere phrase-maker and scribbler. These “practical men” fail to grasp that the forces which generate the actions of men, and therefore human history, are, for good or bad, the ideas of men. It is ideas, political, economic, ethical, esthetic, religious, that have prime significance for human action in the present and over the centuries. It is ludicrous to claim that Hamilton’s financial measures were of comparable importance to the Declaration of Independence or the Kentucky Resolutions.

The battle between Jefferson and Hamilton, however, is of very great significance, and precisely because it represented a clash between two fundamentally contrasting systems of political principle.

Jefferson’s political philosophy is summed up in the phrase: ”That government is best which governs least.” It received its finest expression in our own Declaration of Independence: man is endowed by God with certain natural rights; “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and when government becomes destructive of that end, the people have the right to change the form of government accordingly.

Thus Jefferson, as John Locke had done a century before, drastically shifted the moral emphasis from the State to the individual. In the absolutist and feudal era from which the world was beginning to emerge, divine right settled only on the kings, the nobility; in short, the State and its rulers. To Jefferson, the divine rights were conferred on each and every individual, not on rulers of government.

The Great Jeffersonian Lesson

What were these natural rights? The fundamental right, from which all others are deduced, is the right to life. Each individual has the moral right to live without coercive interference by others. To live, he must be free to work and acquire property, to “pursue happiness.” In political terms, the one important natural right is self-defense; defense of one’s life, liberty, and property from invasive attack.

Government’s function, then, is to use its power of force to prevent and combat attempts to use force in the society. If the Government extends its powers beyond this “cop-on-the-corner” function, it in itself becomes the greatest tyrant and plunderer of them all. Since the Government has virtual monopoly of force, its potentialities for evil are far greater than that of any other institution.

The people must constantly keep their Government small and local, and even then must watch it with great vigilance lest it run amok. That is the great Jeffersonian lesson, and it is one that all Americans must begin to learn again.

From this basic cornerstone, the rest of the Jeffersonian edifice is easily deduced. It explains his passionate, lifelong adherence to States’ Rights, his determined opposition to John Marshall in the latter’s successful campaign to make the Constitution more elastic so as to permit wider extension of federal power, his very distrust of the Constitution itself and insistence upon incorporating a Bill of Rights.

Jefferson’s position on foreign policy stemmed from the same source. He did not believe that our government, or any government, is equipped to remake the world by force to our own liking. He was frankly a whole-hearted patriot, whose natural love of the soil and his country was reinforced by the fact that America constituted the Great Experiment in Liberty.

His foreign policy was expressed in this classic phrase: “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none.” Particularly marked was his perceptive distrust of the wily imperialism of Great Britain.

The Fundamental Cleavage

In the economic sphere, Jefferson was not anti-capitalist, as his enemies charged. He believed in genuine freedom of enterprise, unencumbered by government regulation or grants of monopoly privilege. His opposition to paper money and a central bank were based on profound insight into the then new science of economics.

Jefferson’s almost unknown writings on banking, money, and depressions demonstrate that he was head and shoulders over the allegedly “practical men” who opposed him. What has since been interpreted as anti-capitalist rhetoric was simply expression on Jefferson’s part of a personal preference for the soil and a distaste for the life of the cities.

The importance of the Jefferson-Hamilton struggle has been unfortunately obscured. It is a struggle which, in one form or another, has continued to mark our country since its inception. Hamilton and the Federalists believed in ever-expanding power of the federal government, a myriad of governmental regulations, controls, and special privileges in economic life, the crushing of the states, and limiting the rights of the individual.

Their ideal was the British model — a strong monarch ruling the country in behalf of the “general welfare”; failing the adoption of a monarch, a strong President to act as benevolent despot. In foreign affairs, the Federalists looked to the British Empire as friend and ally. Hamiltonian Federalism was, in the profoundest sense, un-American; it represented a conscious harking back to the imperial British mode, a retention of the typically European forms of strong central government and semi-socialist “planned economy.”

Our Constitution was forged as a compromise between the Jefferson and Hamilton forces, with James Madison acting as the eternal tightrope-walker and fence-straddler between the two camps. The trappings, the rhetoric, the specific issues have changed, but the fundamental cleavage remains, unresolved, on the American scene.

Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) was dean of the Austrian School. He was an economist, economic historian, and libertarian political philosopher. See his article archives.

As a Democratic-Republican he was selected as the fifth Vice President of the United States of America, serving under James Madison, from March 4, 1813 until his death.  He was the first Vice President not to run for President of the United States.

The following are excerpts from “Observations On the New Constitution, and On the Federal and State Conventions,” written by Gerry in 1788.

On patriotism and the power of the People
by Elbridge Gerry

When patriotism is discountenanced and publick virtue becomes the ridicule of the sycophant—when every man of liberality, firmness and penetration who cannot lick the hand stretched out to oppress, is deemed an enemy to the State—then is the gulph of despotism set open, and the grades to slavery, though rapid, are scarce perceptible

Self defence is a primary law of nature, which no subsequent law of society can abolish; this primæval principle, the immediate gift of the Creator, obliges every one to remonstrate against the strides of ambition, and a wanton lust of domination, and to resist the first approaches of tyranny, which at this day threaten to sweep away the rights for which the brave sons of America have fought with an heroism scarcely paralleled even in ancient republicks.

It may be repeated, they have purchased it with their blood, and have gloried in their independence with a dignity of spirit, which has made them the admiration of philosophy, the pride of America, and the wonder of Europe.

On these shores freedom has planted her standard, diped in the purple tide that flowed from the veins of her martyred heroes; and here every uncorrupted American yet hopes to see it supported by the vigour, the justice, the wisdom and unanimity of the people, in spite of the deep-laid plots, the secret intrigues, or the bold effrontery of those interested and avaricious adventurers for place, who intoxicated with the ideas of distinction and preferment have prostrated every worthy principle beneath the shrine of ambition.

Yet these are the men who tell us republicanism is dwindled into theory—that we are incapable of enjoying our liberties—and that we must have a master.

All writers on government agree, and the feelings of the human mind witness the truth of these political axioms, that man is born free and possessed of certain unalienable rights—that government is instituted for the protection, safety and happiness of the people, and not for the profit, honour, or private interest of any man, family, or class of men

That the origin of all power is in the people, and that they have an incontestible right to check the creatures of their own creation, vested with certain powers to guard the life, liberty and property of the community.

And if certain selected bodies of men, deputed on these principles, determine contrary to the wishes and expectations of their constituents, the people have an undoubted right to reject their decisions, to call for a revision of their conduct, to depute others in their room, or if they think proper, to demand further time for deliberation on matters of the greatest moment: it therefore is an unwarrantable stretch of authority or influence, if any methods are taken to preclude this peaceful and reasonable mode of enquiry and decision.

And it is with inexpressible anxiety, that many of the best friends of the Union of the States—to the peaceable and equal participation of the rights of nature, and to the glory and dignity of this country, behold the insiduous arts, and the strenuous efforts of the partisans of arbitrary power, by their vague definitions of the best established truths, endeavoring to envelope the mind in darkness the concomitant of slavery, and to lock the strong chains of domestic despotism on a country, which by the most glorious and successful struggles is but newly emancipated from the spectre of foreign dominion.

But, Paine was more than just a pamphleteer for the cause of freedom. He was a serious political philosopher, as the following excerpt from The Rights of Man demonstrates.

Society is a Blessing, But Government is Evil
by Thomas Paine

A great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It had its origin in the principles of society, and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man has in man and all the parts of a civilized community upon each other create that great chain of connection which holds it together.

The landholder, the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and every occupation prospers by the aid which each receives from the other, and from the whole. Common interest regulates their concerns, and forms their laws; and the laws which common usage ordains, have a greater influence than the laws of government. In fine, society performs for itself almost everything that is ascribed to government.

To understand the nature and quantity of government proper for man it is necessary to attend to his character. As nature created him for social life, she fitted him for the station she intended. In all cases she made his natural wants greater than his individual powers. No one man is capable, without the aid of society, of supplying his own wants; and those wants acting upon every individual impel the whole of them into society, as naturally as gravitation acts to a center.

But she has gone further. She has not only forced man into society by a diversity of wants, which the reciprocal aid of social affections, which, though not necessary to his existence, are essential to his happiness. There is no period in life when this love for society ceases to act. It begins and ends with our being.

If we examine, with attention, into the composition and constitution of man, the diversity of talents in different men for reciprocally accommodating the wants of each other, his propensity to society, and consequently to preserve the advantages resulting from it, we shall easily discover that a great part of what is called government is mere imposition.

Government is no further necessary than to supply the few cases to which society and civilization are not conveniently competent; and instances are not wanting to show that everything which government can usefully add thereto, has been performed by the common consent of society, without government.

For upwards of two years from the commencement of the American war, and a longer period in several of the American states, there were no established forms of government. The old governments had been abolished, and the country was too much occupied in defense to employ its attention in establishing new governments; yet, during this interval, order and harmony were preserved as inviolate as in any country in Europe. There is a natural aptness in man, and more so in society, because it embraces a greater variety of abilities and resources, to accommodate itself to whatever situation it is in. The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security.

So far is it from being true, as has been pretended, that the abolition of any formal government is the dissolution of society, it acts by contrary impulse, and brings the latter the closer together. All that part of its organization which it had committed to its government, devolves again upon itself, and acts as from reciprocal benefits, have habituated themselves to social and civilized life, there is always enough of its principles in practice to carry them through any changes they may find necessary or convenient to make in their government. In short, man is so naturally a creature of society that it is almost impossible to put him out of it.

Formal government makes but a small part of civilized life; and when even the best that human wisdom can devise is established, it is a thing more in name and idea than in fact. It is to the great and fundamental principles of society and civilization – to the common usage universally consented to, and mutually and reciprocally maintained – to the unceasing circulation of interest, which passing through its innumerable channels, invigorates the whole mass of civilized man – it is to these things, infinitely more than anything which even the best instituted government can perform, that the safety and prosperity of the individual and of the whole depends.

The more perfect civilization is, the less occasion has it for government, because the more does it regulate its own affairs, and govern itself; but so contrary is the practice of old governments to the reason of the case, that the expenses of them increase in the proportion they ought to diminish. It is but few general laws that civilized life requires, and those of such common usefulness, that whether they are enforced by the forms of government or not, the effect will be nearly the same. If we consider what the principles are that first condense man into society, and what the motives that regulate their mutual intercourse afterwards, we shall find, by the time we arrive at what is called government, that nearly the whole of the business is performed by the natural operation of the parts upon each other.

Man, with respect to all those matters, is more a creature of consistency than he is aware of, or that governments would wish him to believe. All the great laws of society are the laws of nature. Those of trade and commerce, whether with respect to the intercourse of individuals or of nations, are laws of mutual and reciprocal interest. They are followed and obeyed because it is the interest of the parties so to do, and not on account of any formal laws their governments may impose or interpose.

But how often is the natural propensity to society disturbed or destroyed by the operations of government! When the latter, instead of being engrafted on the principles of the former, assumes to exist for itself, and acts by partialities of favor and oppression, it becomes the cause of the mischiefs it ought to prevent.

If we look back to the riots and tumults which at various times have happened in England, we shall find, that they did not proceed from the want of a government, but that government was itself the generating cause; instead of consolidating society, it divided it; it deprived it of its natural cohesion, and engendered discontents and disorders, which otherwise would not have existed. In those associations which men promiscuously form for the purpose of trade or of any concern, in which government is totally out of the question, and in which they act merely on the principles of society, we see how naturally the various parties unite; and this shows, by comparison, that governments, so far from always being the cause or means of order, are often the destruction of it. The riots of 1780 had no other source than the remains of those prejudices that the government itself had encouraged. But with respect to England there are also other causes.

Excess and inequality of taxation, however disguised in the means, never fail to appear in their effect. As a great mass of the community are thrown thereby into poverty and discontent, they are constantly on the brink of commotion; and, deprived, as they unfortunately are, of the means of information, are easily heated to outrage. Whatever the apparent cause of any riots may be, the real one is always want of happiness. It shows that something is wrong in the system of government, which injures the felicity by which society is to be preserved.

Having thus endeavored to show, that the social and civilized state of man is capable of performing within itself, almost everything necessary to its protection and government, it will be proper, on the other hand, to take a review of the present old governments, and examine whether their principles and practice are correspondent thereto.

It is impossible that such governments as have hitherto existed in the world, could have commenced by any other means than a total violation of every principle, sacred and moral. The obscurity, in which the origin of all the present old governments is buried, implies the iniquity and disgrace with which they began. The origin of the present governments of America and France will ever be remembered, because it is honorable to record it; but with respect to the rest, even flattery has consigned them to the tomb of time, without an inscription.

It could have been no difficult thing in the early and solitary ages of the world, while the chief employment of men was that of attending flocks and herds, for a banditti of ruffians to overrun a country, and lay it under contribution. Their power being thus established, the chief of the band contrived to lose the name of robber in that of monarch; and hence the origin of monarchy and kings.

The origin of the government of England, so far as it relates to what is called its line of monarchy, being one of the latest, is perhaps the best recorded. The hatred which the Norman invasion and tyranny begat, must have been deeply rooted in the nation, to have outlived the contrivance to obliterate it. Though not a courtier will talk of the curfew bell, not a village in England has forgotten it.

Those bands of robbers having parceled out the world, and divided it into dominions, began, as is naturally the case, to quarrel with each other. What at first was obtained by violence was considered by others as lawful to be taken, and a second plunderer succeeded the first. They alternately invaded the dominions which each had assigned to himself, and the brutality with which they treated each other explains the original character of monarchy. It was ruffian torturing ruffian.

The conqueror considered the conquered not as his prisoner, but his property. He led him in triumph rattling in chains, and doomed him, at pleasure, to slavery or death. As time obliterated the history of their beginning, their successors assumed new appearances, to cut off the entail of their disgrace, but their principles and objects remained the same. What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue; and the power they originally usurped, they affected to inherit.

From such beginning of governments, what could be expected, but a continual system of war and extortion? It has established itself into a trade. The vice is not peculiar to one more than to another, but is the common principle of all. There does not exist within such governments a stamina whereon to engraft reformation; and the shortest and most effectual remedy is to begin anew.

What scenes of horror, what perfection of iniquity, present themselves in contemplating the character, and reviewing the history of such governments! If we would delineate human nature with a baseness of heart, and hypocrisy of countenance, that reflection would shudder at and humanity disown, it is kings, courts, and cabinets that must sit for the portrait. Man, as he is naturally, with all his faults about him, is not up to the character.

Can we possibly suppose that if government had originated in a right principle, and had not an interest in pursuing a wrong one, that the world could have been in the wretched and quarrelsome condition we have seen it? What inducement has the farmer, while following the plow, to lay aside his peaceful pursuits and go to war with the farmer of another country? Or what inducement has the manufacturer? What is dominion to them or to any class of men in a nation? Does it add an acre to any man’s estate, or raise its value? Are not conquest consequence? Though this reasoning may be good to a nation, it is not so to a government. War is the faro table of governments, and nations the dupes of the game.

If there is anything to wonder at in this miserable scene of governments, more than might be expected, it is the progress that the peaceful arts of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce have made, beneath such a long accumulating load of discouragement and oppression. It serves to show that instinct in animals does not act with stronger impulse than the principles of society and civilization operate in man. Under all discouragements, he pursues his object, and yields to nothing but impossibilities.

Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind.

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) was an English pamphleteer, revolutionary, radical, and classical liberal. Born in the market town of Thetford, England, he migrated to the American colonies at the age of 37, just in time to take part in the American Revolution. His main contribution was as the author of the powerful, widely read pamphlet, “Common Sense” (1776), advocating independence for the American colonies from Great Britain. He is also known for “The American Crisis” (1776–1783), a series of pamphlets supporting the American Revolution, and “The Rights of Man” (1791) defending the early French Revolution.

The previous essay is an excerpt from the writings of Thomas Paine which can be found in the third chapter of Liberty and the Great Libertarians, edited by Charles T. Sprading.

The founders of the American Republic knew their Latin.

That is why they carefully chose the word “federal.” In James Madison’s original draft of a proposed new Constitution (the “Virginia Plan”), the word “national” was used to describe the proposed new Union. However, this word was explicitly rejected by the Constitutional Convention, specifically because the founders did not see the United States as a “nation” but rather as a “federation.” Their vision was for the United States to be a union of sovereign states as opposed to a consolidation of the states into “one nation, indivisible” – and this reality is embedded in the very word “federal.”

Convention delegate Gouverneur Morris addressed this distinction in the debates on May 30, 1787.

The Latin motto “e pluribus unum” also captures the plural nature of the Union. It was never meant to be collapsed and rolled into into “one nation.” This is even evident in common grammatical usage, for while the architects of the Union were still living, the singular verb “is” was not paired up with the plural subject “United States.”

But within decades, the federal government became increasingly heavy-handed with the states.

The struggle between the forces of centralization and decentralization intensified between 1830 and 1861, when political compromises failed, and the Union fell into disunion. Seven states of the deep south had seceded and formed a new federation, acting on what is often called the “compact theory” of the American union of 1789. This approach to the Constitution holds that the states are sovereign, and that the Union is a “compact” between them. The compact theory holds that unless power is delegated to the federal government, that power remains reserved to the states or to the people – a concept written directly into the Constitution itself as the Tenth Amendment. A clear and concise overview of the compact theory and its historical implications, past and present, can be found in chapters three and four of Thomas Woods’s Politically Incorrect Guide to American History.

In spite of the Tenth Amendment and the intent of the founders, by the 1860s, those who opposed secession and who ultimately annexed the seceded states by raw military force were denying the compact theory, and offered instead its diametric opposite: the “nationalist theory.” Though this theory had been around for decades, it was a minority view without teeth until Lincoln and his associates put it into force by force. This alternative view saw the Union as “one nation” that gave birth to the states and not vice versa – though one will hunt in vain for the words “nation” and “national” used to describe the Union in the Constitution itself.

After the conclusion of the War to Suppress Southern Independence, the compact theory was largely discredited (if not derided as treason) and cast aside in favor of the highly-centralized and seemingly invincible “nationalist” model. Even those who defend this radical shift in federal-state relations describe it as nothing short of a “revolution.”

We all know which side won the War of 1861–1865. But as President Jefferson Davis of the Confederate States of America pointed out: “A question settled by violence, or in disregard of law, must remain unsettled forever.” In other words, might does not make right – might only suppresses discussion. I believe most Americans today simply accept the outcome of the war to be a legal and salutary affirmation of our republic as a “nation,” as though the Constitution can be legally amended at bayonet point. Furthermore, it is now common, and even expected, to make the grammatical error of mixing the plural subject “United States” with the singular verb “is.”

And while Lincoln apologists who love Big Government and central planning use every sort of historical revisionism, appeals to emotion, patriotism, and pure sophistry to deny the compact theory of constitutionally limited government and states’ rights, they can’t change the reality of the word “federal.” For while the English language is continuously being twisted and turned, strained and spat out again by politically correct propagandists and thought-police, Latin is thankfully for the most part a “dead language.” It is not subject to political mutation and manipulation. It means what it says.

The word “federal” comes into English from the Latin word foedus (genitive: foederis). And in this light, there is no ambiguity whatsoever when it comes to what the founders meant by rejecting the word “nation” and replacing it with the word “federal.” When one understands this, all the clever and pompous pronouncements from academicians and government bureaucrats (who want Washington, DC to plan and manage every aspect of our lives) fall by the wayside. For the word “foedus, foederis” means: “a league, treaty, charter, compact.”

Thus, federal governance is, by very definition, a compact. The Constitution is a compact. The Union is a compact – not a nation. The founders knew their Latin even as most of our modern-day “educators” and bureaucrats do not. Coincidentally, Jefferson Davis’s middle name was “Finis,” Latin for “end” or “boundary.” His generation’s passing marked the end of education that emphasized Latin and history and classical ideals, and the beginning of Big Government’s brand of “public schools.”

Today, very few people are in a position to even know that the Federal government is, by definition, a compact. Most give it no thought at all.

To show how language has been perverted to the detriment of truth since the time of the American Republic’s founding, a standard modern collegiate dictionary today defines “federal” as involving “surrender [of] their individual sovereignty to a central authority but retain[ing] limited residuary powers of government” (compare this to the text of the Tenth Amendment!) and marks the definition “of or relating to a compact or treaty” as “archaic.”

Thus the “living” language of English covers the sins of the advocates of the “living” document theory of the Constitution. This is “change” we have been brainwashed to believe in. Federal is national, just as war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.

However, perhaps Jeff Davis was wrong about one thing. Maybe this question of the nature of our federal government that was “settled by violence” won’t remain unanswered “for ever.” Even as Latin and classical education are making a comeback, and as people are once more looking to the Constitution for guidance and to history for lessons about government and liberty, it seems that the states and the people, increasingly alarmed at federal intrusions into their affairs, are once again finding their voice in the form of a renewed interest in the Tenth Amendment and even a resurgent nullification movement.

Deo gratias that the founders knew their Latin. And even more so, thank God they knew the danger of centralized power, leading them to establish a federation and to reject a nation. And hopefully We The People, Deo vindice, will once more see the Union as a federation in light of the compact written to limit government and defend our God-given rights, instead of continuing in our ignorance to be bullied, tricked, and manipulated into accepting the great lie of the expansive and boundless “one nation, indivisible” that must be worshiped and obeyed as a god.

Maybe we are ready to join the founders and say unambiguously, “Satis est!”

Rev. Larry Beane [send him mail] serves as pastor and teaches junior high Latin and Religion classes at Salem Evangelical Lutheran Church and School in Gretna, LA. Visit his blog.

Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States of America, was an architect, a philosopher, a Deist and an impeccable prose stylist. His passionate appeal to dissolve ties with England—the Declaration of Independence—led the early colonies to war and ultimately freedom. As president, he earned respect for his sound principles and industrious nature, though his private life has been subjected to intense scrutiny.

Early Days