Publius' Argument
A major aspect of Federalist No. 9 is Hamilton's response to the common Anti-Federalist argument based on the theories of Montesquieu, who wrote famously in his The Spirit of the Laws that "it is natural to a republic to have only a small territory, otherwise it cannot long subsist." The Anti-Federalist took his arguments to mean that the federal Union was bound to fail. Hamilton responded that if Montesquieu were taken literally, then since he was thinking of dimensions far smaller even than those of the states, the Americans would have to split themselves into "an infinity of little, jealous, clashing tumultuous commonwealths." More seriously, Hamilton contends that the confederated federal system described in the proposed Constitution would not suffer as Montesquieu predicted because of its confederated, rather than centralized, design.
Read more about this topic: Federalist No. 9
Famous quotes containing the word argument:
“Argument is conclusive ... but ... it does not remove doubt, so that the mind may rest in the sure knowledge of the truth, unless it finds it by the method of experiment.... For if any man who never saw fire proved by satisfactory arguments that fire burns ... his hearer’s mind would never be satisfied, nor would he avoid the fire until he put his hand in it ... that he might learn by experiment what argument taught.”
—Roger Bacon (c. 1214–1294)