The Federalist Papers - Alexander Hamilton [124]
What are the chief sources of expense in every government? What has occasioned that enormous accumulation of debts with which several of the European nations are oppressed? The answer plainly is, wars and rebellions; the support of those institutions which are necessary to guard the body politic against these two most mortal diseases of society. The expenses arising from those institutions which are relative to the mere domestic police of a state, to the support of its legislative, executive, and judiciary departments, with their different appendages, and to the encouragement of agriculture and manufactures (which will comprehend almost all the subjects of state expenditures) are insignificant in comparison with those which relate to the national defense.
In the kingdom of Great Britain, where all the ostentatious apparatus of monarchy is to be provided for, not above a fifteenth part of the annual income of the nation is appropriated to the class of expenses last mentioned; the other fourteen fifteenths are absorbed in the payment of the interest of debts contracted for carrying on the wars in which that country has been engaged, and in the maintenance of fleets and armies. If, on the one hand, it should be observed that the expenses incurred in the prosecution of the ambitious enterprises and vainglorious pursuits of a monarchy are not a proper standard by which to judge of those which might be necessary in a republic, it ought, on the other hand, to be remarked that there should be as great a disproportion between the profusion and extravagance of a wealthy kingdom in its domestic administration, and the frugality and economy which in that particular become the modest simplicity of republican government. If we balance a proper deduction from one side against that which it is supposed ought to be made from the other, the proportion may still be considered as holding good.
But let us take a view of the large debt which we have ourselves contracted in a single war, and let us only calculate on a common share of the events which disturb the peace of nations, and we shall instantly perceive, without the aid of any elaborate illustration, that there must always be an immense disproportion between the objects of federal and state expenditure. It is true that several of the States, separately, are encumbered with considerable debts, which are an excrescence of the late war. But this cannot happen again, if the proposed system be adopted; and when these debts are discharged, the only call for revenue of any consequence which the State governments will continue to experience will be for the mere support of their respective civil lists; to which, if we add all contingencies, the total amount in every State ought not to exceed two hundred thousand pounds.
If it cannot be denied to be a just principle that in framing a constitution of government for a nation we ought, in those provisions which are designed to be permanent, to calculate, not on temporary, but on permanent causes of expense; our attention would be directed to a provision in favor of the State governments for an annual sum of about 200,000 pounds; while the exigencies of the Union could be susceptible of no limits, even in imagination. In this view of the subject, by what logic can it be maintained that the local governments ought to command, in perpetuity, an exclusive source of revenue for any sum beyond the extent of 200,000 pounds? To extend its power further, in exclusion of the authority of the Union, would be to take the resources of the community out of those hands which stood in need of them for the public welfare in order to put them into other hands which could have no just or proper occasion for them.
Suppose, then, the convention had been inclined to proceed upon the principle of a repartition of the objects of revenue between the Union and its members in proportion to their comparative necessities; what particular fund could have been selected for the use of the States that would not either have been too much or too little—too little for