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:
“Our argument ... will result, not upon logic by itself—though without logic we should never have got to this point—but upon the fortunate contingent fact that people who would take this logically possible view, after they had really imagined themselves in the other man’s position, are extremely rare.”
—Richard M. Hare (b. 1919)