The Federalist Papers - Alexander Hamilton [326]
Federalist 11
p. 81. in relation to operations in theWest Indies: The West Indies are islands in the eastern Caribbean Sea between North and South America. At one time or another Spain, England, France, and Holland all asserted imperial claims to some of the islands.
p. 84. The more southern States furnish in greater abundance certain kinds ofnaval stores…: Naval stores are products such as tar, pitch, turpentine, and rosin that are derived from the resins of living pine or other coniferous trees. These materials were used in the production and maintenance of wooden sailing ships, and were thus of vital commercial and military interest.
p. 85. thateven dogs cease to barkafter having breathed awhile in our atmosphere: The reference is to the three-volume work by the Dutch writer Cornelius de Pauw (1739–1799), titled Recherches philosophiques sur les Americains: Memoires interessants pour servir a l’histoire de l’espece humaine, published in 1770. The so-called degeneracy thesis, which held that animals in the New World were smaller, less vital, and less handsome than those in Europe, and that all living things transplanted from Europe to America would degenerate accordingly, was on the cutting edge of scientific thought in late eighteenth-century Europe. Its originator was George Louis Leclerc, the Count de Buffon (1707–1788), to whom Thomas Jefferson replied in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1785).
Federalist 12
p. 89. Mr. Neckarcomputes the number of these patrols…: Jacques Necker (1732–1804) was a Swiss financier and prime minister of France. Having acquired a large fortune in French banking, he retired early from business and began to pursue public honors. He wrote a eulogy on Colbert (minister of finance under Louis XIV) in 1773 that won the prize of the French Academy. In 1776, he was appointed director of the treasury and, during the following year, director-general of the finances. Bringing order, publicity, and economy to French national finances, he managed to restore public credit, but in the process he acquired many enemies who forced his resignation in 1781. With the convocation of the States-General in 1788, Necker was recalled to national service. His sympathy for the Third Estate (i.e. commoners as distinct from nobles and clergy), however, placed him at odds with the king, who dismissed him in 1789. In response to this measure, the citizens of Paris took up arms and successfully stormed the Bastille. Although the king was then forced to reinstate his minister of finance, Necker proved too conservative for the revolutionaries and resigned for the last time in 1790.
p. 91. excisesin their true signification are too little in unison with the feelings of the people…: An excise is a tax levied upon the manufacture, sale, or consumption of a commodity within a country. In the usual case, the excise is paid first by the maker, wholesaler, or retailer of the product, but then shifted, in the form of a higher final price, to the ultimate consumer.
Federalist 13
p. 94. to avoid being theFlanders of America: One of the independent feudal states that originally comprised the Low Countries, the county of Flanders became an important center of textile production during the early Middle Ages. By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however, the cities of the northern provinces had overtaken those of Flanders in the competition for European and Asian