The Federalist Papers - Alexander Hamilton [9]
In Nos. 9 and 10, however, Publius shows that the Union, besides being necessary for our survival, is also useful to liberty. But even these famous papers remain in decisive respects within the horizon of the first volume. According to No. 10, the protection of the unequal faculties of men is "the first object of government" (p. 73), though earlier we had been instructed that "safety" is the first object of a people’s attention. Self-preservation may be first in the sense of being the earliest or most urgent object of government, then, but what is first in time need not remain first in rank. The protection of the unequal faculties of men "from which the rights of property originate" may thus become "the first object of government" once safety has been attended to; government does have higher, though not more urgent, ends than the protection of mere life. Still, in No. 10 these higher ends embrace essentially the rights of property and the protection of the diverse faculties of men that give rise to these rights. In other words, the ends of government or of the Constitution appear more or less confined to the objects of the Union, which he defines as "the common defense of the members," "the preservation of the public peace," "the regulation of commerce with other nations and between the States," and the conduct of foreign policy (No. 23, p. 149).
It is only in The Federalist’s second volume, which turns to the merits of the proposed Constitution as such, that Publius begins consistently to look at matters from a higher point of view. Here we learn that the Constitution strives to secure "the common good of the society," "the happiness of the people," and a complex "public good" that incorporates such elements as "a due sense of national character," the cultivation of "the deliberate sense of the community," and even "extensive and arduous enterprises for the public benefit" that will be championed by future presidents (No. 57, p. 348; No. 62, p. 378; No. 63, p. 380; No. 71, p. 430; No. 72, p. 436). Security against foreign danger, which earlier had been singled out as the first object of a wise and free people’s attention, is downgraded to "one of the primitive objects of civil society" (No. 3, p. 36; No. 41, p. 252). From this point of view, the protection of the diverse "faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate" (No. 10, p. 73) appears now as an intermediate goal, somewhere between securing the mere "safety" and the "happiness" of society.
The change in tone is heralded in the concluding paragraph of the first volume: "a further and more critical investigation," Publius promises, "will serve to recommend [the Constitution] still more to every sincere and disinterested advocate for good government." This "more critical and thorough survey of the work of the convention," as he calls it in Federalist No. 37, occupies the rest of the book, and is addressed to "the candid and judicious part of the community," those who "add to a sincere zeal for the happiness of their country, a temper favorable to a just estimate of the means of promoting it" (No. 36, p. 220; No. 37, p. 222). Rather than teaching men to heed their passions so that they may gratify their fundamental passion for self-preservation—rather than using necessity as an effective substitute for moderation, in other words—Publius chooses to speak in moderate tones to moderate men. He encourages his readers to listen to moderation’s counsel and, bit by bit, to yield to it.
The "sincere and disinterested advocate for good government" will not be satisfied with proofs of the necessity of the plan, because in order for government to be "good" it should be worthy of choice. Accordingly, the question posed in Nos. 37–85 is whether and why the proposed Constitution is choiceworthy. Whereas in the first volume Publius tries to show that the American people have no choice (in any rational sense) but to preserve the