Posted on 05/10/2010 7:49:32 AM PDT by Publius
Madison, the earnest professor of history, delves into ancient history to find parallels to Greece, where faction led to failure and conquest. Perhaps concerned about his earlier history lesson and its pedantic style, Madison turns to his friend Hamilton to liven up the prose.
1 To the People of the State of New York:
2 Among the confederacies of antiquity, the most considerable was that of the Grecian republics associated under the Amphictyonic Council.
3 From the best accounts transmitted of this celebrated institution, it bore a very instructive analogy to the present Confederation of the American states.
4 The members retained the character of independent and sovereign states and had equal votes in the federal council. 5 This council had a general authority to propose and resolve whatever it judged necessary for the common welfare of Greece: to declare and carry on war, to decide in the last resort all controversies between the members, to fine the aggressing party, to employ the whole force of the confederacy against the disobedient, to admit new members.
6 The Amphictyons were the guardians of religion and of the immense riches belonging to the temple of Delphos where they had the right of jurisdiction in controversies between the inhabitants and those who came to consult the oracle.
7 As a further provision for the efficacy of the federal powers, they took an oath mutually to defend and protect the united cities, to punish the violators of this oath, and to inflict vengeance on sacrilegious despoilers of the temple.
8 In theory and upon paper, this apparatus of powers seems amply sufficient for all general purposes.
9 In several material instances, they exceed the powers enumerated in the articles of confederation.
10 The Amphictyons had in their hands the superstition of the times, one of the principal engines by which government was then maintained; they had a declared authority to use coercion against refractory cities and were bound by oath to exert this authority on the necessary occasions.
11 Very different, nevertheless, was the experiment from the theory.
12 The powers, like those of the present Congress, were administered by deputies appointed wholly by the cities in their political capacities and exercised over them in the same capacities.
13 Hence the weakness, the disorders and finally the destruction of the confederacy.
14 The more powerful members, instead of being kept in awe and subordination, tyrannized successively over all the rest.
15 Athens, as we learn from Demosthenes, was the arbiter of Greece seventy-three years.
16 The Lacedaemonians next governed it twenty-nine years; at a subsequent period, after the battle of Leuctra, the Thebans had their turn of domination.
17 It happened but too often, according to Plutarch, that the deputies of the strongest cities awed and corrupted those of the weaker, and that judgment went in favor of the most powerful party.
18 Even in the midst of defensive and dangerous wars with Persia and Macedon, the members never acted in concert and were, more or fewer of them, eternally the dupes or the hirelings of the common enemy.
19 The intervals of foreign war were filled up by domestic vicissitudes convulsions and carnage.
20 After the conclusion of the war with Xerxes, it appears that the Lacedaemonians required that a number of the cities should be turned out of the confederacy for the unfaithful part they had acted.
21 The Athenians, finding that the Lacedaemonians would lose fewer partisans by such a measure than themselves and would become masters of the public deliberations, vigorously opposed and defeated the attempt.
22 This piece of history proves at once the inefficiency of the union, the ambition and jealousy of its most powerful members, and the dependent and degraded condition of the rest.
23 The smaller members, though entitled by the theory of their system to revolve in equal pride and majesty around the common center, had become, in fact, satellites of the orbs of primary magnitude.
24 Had the Greeks, says the Abbe Milot, been as wise as they were courageous, they would have been admonished by experience of the necessity of a closer union and would have availed themselves of the peace which followed their success against the Persian arms to establish such a reformation.
25 Instead of this obvious policy, Athens and Sparta, inflated with the victories and the glory they had acquired, became first rivals, and then enemies, and did each other infinitely more mischief than they had suffered from Xerxes.
26 Their mutual jealousies, fears, hatreds and injuries ended in the celebrated Peloponnesian War, which itself ended in the ruin and slavery of the Athenians who had begun it.
27 As a weak government, when not at war, is ever agitated by internal dissensions, so these never fail to bring on fresh calamities from abroad.
28 The Phocians, having ploughed up some consecrated ground belonging to the temple of Apollo, the Amphictyonic Council, according to the superstition of the age, imposed a fine on the sacrilegious offenders.
29 The Phocians, being abetted by Athens and Sparta, refused to submit to the decree.
30 The Thebans, with others of the cities, undertook to maintain the authority of the Amphictyons and to avenge the violated god.
31 The latter, being the weaker party, invited the assistance of Philip of Macedon, who had secretly fostered the contest.
32 Philip gladly seized the opportunity of executing the designs he had long planned against the liberties of Greece.
33 By his intrigues and bribes, he won over to his interests the popular leaders of several cities, by their influence and votes gained admission into the Amphictyonic Council, and by his arts and his arms made himself master of the confederacy.
34 Such were the consequences of the fallacious principle on which this interesting establishment was founded.
35 Had Greece, says a judicious observer on her fate, been united by a stricter confederation and persevered in her union, she would never have worn the chains of Macedon and might have proved a barrier to the vast projects of Rome.
36 The Achaean League, as it is called, was another society of Grecian republics which supplies us with valuable instruction. ***
37 The union here was far more intimate and its organization much wiser than in the preceding instance.
38 It will accordingly appear that though not exempt from a similar catastrophe, it by no means equally deserved it.
39 The cities composing this league retained their municipal jurisdiction, appointed their own officers and enjoyed a perfect equality.
40 The senate in which they were represented had the sole and exclusive right of peace and war, of sending and receiving ambassadors, of entering into treaties and alliances, of appointing a chief magistrate or praetor, as he was called, who commanded their armies, and who with the advice and consent of ten of the senators not only administered the government in the recess of the senate but had a great share in its deliberations when assembled.
41 According to the primitive constitution, there were two praetors associated in the administration, but on trial a single one was preferred.
42 It appears that the cities had all the same laws and customs, the same weights and measures, and the same money.
43 But how far this effect proceeded from the authority of the federal council is left in uncertainty.
44 It is said only that the cities were in a manner compelled to receive the same laws and usages.
45 When Lacedaemon was brought into the league by Philopoemen, it was attended with an abolition of the institutions and laws of Lycurgus and an adoption of those of the Achaeans.
46 The Amphictyonic Confederacy, of which she had been a member, left her in the full exercise of her government and her legislation.
47 This circumstance alone proves a very material difference in the genius of the two systems.
48 It is much to be regretted that such imperfect monuments remain of this curious political fabric.
49 Could its interior structure and regular operation be ascertained, it is probable that more light would be thrown by it on the science of federal government than by any of the like experiments with which we are acquainted.
50 One important fact seems to be witnessed by all the historians who take notice of Achaean affairs.
51 It is that as well after the renovation of the league by Aratus, as before its dissolution by the arts of Macedon, there was infinitely more of moderation and justice in the administration of its government and less of violence and sedition in the people than were to be found in any of the cities exercising singly all the prerogatives of sovereignty.
52 The Abbe Mably, in his observations on Greece, says that the popular government, which was so tempestuous elsewhere, caused no disorders in the members of the Achaean republic, because it was there tempered by the general authority and laws of the confederacy.
53 We are not to conclude too hastily, however, that faction did not, in a certain degree, agitate the particular cities, much less that a due subordination and harmony reigned in the general system.
54 The contrary is sufficiently displayed in the vicissitudes and fate of the republic.
55 Whilst the Amphictyonic Confederacy remained, that of the Achaeans, which comprehended the less important cities only, made little figure on the theater of Greece.
56 When the former became a victim to Macedon, the latter was spared by the policy of Philip and Alexander.
57 Under the successors of these princes, however, a different policy prevailed.
58 The arts of division were practiced among the Achaeans.
59 Each city was seduced into a separate interest; the union was dissolved.
60 Some of the cities fell under the tyranny of Macedonian garrisons, others under that of usurpers springing out of their own confusions.
61 Shame and oppression ere long awaken their love of liberty.
62 A few cities reunited.
63 Their example was followed by others, as opportunities were found of cutting off their tyrants.
64 The league soon embraced almost the whole Peloponnesus.
65 Macedon saw its progress but was hindered by internal dissensions from stopping it.
66 All Greece caught the enthusiasm and seemed ready to unite in one confederacy when the jealousy and envy in Sparta and Athens of the rising glory of the Achaeans threw a fatal damp on the enterprise.
67 The dread of the Macedonian power induced the league to court the alliance of the kings of Egypt and Syria who, as successors of Alexander, were rivals of the king of Macedon.
68 This policy was defeated by Cleomenes, king of Sparta, who was led by his ambition to make an unprovoked attack on his neighbors, the Achaeans, and who, as an enemy to Macedon, had interest enough with the Egyptian and Syrian princes to effect a breach of their engagements with the league.
70 The latter expedient was adopted.
71 The contests of the Greeks always afforded a pleasing opportunity to that powerful neighbor of [meddling] in their affairs.
72 A Macedonian army quickly appeared.
73 Cleomenes was vanquished.
74 The Achaeans soon experienced, as often happens, that a victorious and powerful ally is but another name for a master.
75 All that their most abject compliance could obtain from him was a toleration of the exercise of their laws.
76 Philip, who was now on the throne of Macedon, soon provoked by his tyrannies fresh combinations among the Greeks.
77 The Achaeans, though weakened by internal dissensions and by the revolt of Messene, one of its members, being joined by the Aetolians and Athenians, erected the standard of opposition.
78 Finding themselves, though thus supported, unequal to the undertaking, they once more had recourse to the dangerous expedient of introducing the succor of foreign arms.
79 The Romans, to whom the invitation was made, eagerly embraced it.
80 Philip was conquered, Macedon subdued.
81 A new crisis ensued to the league.
82 Dissensions broke out among its members.
83 These the Romans fostered.
84 Callicrates and other popular leaders became mercenary instruments for inveigling their countrymen.
85 The more effectually to nourish discord and disorder, the Romans had, to the astonishment of those who confided in their sincerity, already proclaimed universal liberty * throughout Greece.
86 With the same insidious views, they now seduced the members from the league by representing to their pride the violation it committed on their sovereignty.
87 By these arts, this union, the last hope of Greece, the last hope of ancient liberty, was torn into pieces and such imbecility and distraction introduced that the arms of Rome found little difficulty in completing the ruin which their arts had commenced.
88 The Achaeans were cut to pieces and Achaia loaded with chains, under which it is groaning at this hour.
89 I have thought it not superfluous to give the outlines of this important portion of history, both because it teaches more than one lesson and because, as a supplement to the outlines of the Achaean constitution, it emphatically illustrates the tendency of federal bodies rather to anarchy among the members than to tyranny in the head.
[*] This was but another name more specious for the independence of the members on the federal head.
Hamilton’s and Madison’s Critique
It is difficult to tell whether the purpose of this particular essay was to demonstrate the deficiencies of the Confederation, its ostensible purpose, or reassure the reader that its authors were taking historical precedent into account when forming the plan of the Constitution. Many of their contemporary readers would have enjoyed a greater familiarity with Greek history that is afforded by most modern educations, but even for them, this level of erudition would have encouraged a visit to Franklin’s innovation, a lending library, or a friend with a treasured shelf of Plutarch, Thucydides and Xenophon.
Any comparison between the political organizations chronicled by those ancients and the existing Confederation is argument by analogy, and the authors admit as much.
3 From the best accounts transmitted of this celebrated institution, it [the Amphictyonic Council] bore a very instructive analogy to the present Confederation of the American states.
What, then, was this Council? There were actually several of them, their origins disappearing into mythological antiquity. The period that Madison and Hamilton are citing, however, was the 5th Century BC, when that Council had grown from its original focus on the protection of two religious establishments – and the disposition of their considerable wealth – into a quasi-political organization not unlike the present United Nations, in which more or less independent Greek city-states formed alliances and created diplomatic alignments in pursuit of the goals of their various factions.
5 This council had a general authority to propose and resolve whatever it judged necessary for the common welfare of Greece: to declare and carry on war, to decide in the last resort all controversies between the members, to fine the aggressing party, to employ the whole force of the confederacy against the disobedient, to admit new members.
Despite this rather sweeping description of its duties, this Amphictyonic Council was in no sense a federal government, a body which the Greeks never did manage to create in all their storied political history. Madison's and Hamilton's point is, neither was the American Confederation. However, the latter came much closer to one than anything in Greek history, and if the power of argument by analogy lies in the points of congruence between the two entities compared, one must submit that Hamilton's and Madison's is, in this respect, somewhat suspect. But that isn't precisely their point.
8 In theory and upon paper, this apparatus of powers seems amply sufficient for all general purposes.
11 Very different, nevertheless, was the experiment from the theory.
That is a refreshing admission from two skilled and erudite political theorists. Their point is that a specific weakness of the Amphictyonic Council is likely to be present within the present American Confederation. The issue was predominance within a body of nominal equals.
14 The more powerful members, instead of being kept in awe and subordination, tyrannized successively over all the rest.
One learns from the Greek orator Demosthenes that in turn Athens, Sparta and Thebes acted as the more powerful influences within that league, with colliding objectives, and that as a result the Council fell prey to internal fissures.
The period mentioned is subsequent to the Persian Wars, concluded in 480 BC, and cited is a move by Sparta to eject certain members of the Council that Sparta's representatives accused of being too pro-Persian. It was a naked power play; all of these were allies of Athens, and the result would have been a permanent Spartan majority within the Council. Athens, it seems unnecessary to point out, was decidedly unimpressed.
What would happen next in Greek history was the great Peloponnesian War (26) between Athens and her allies, and Sparta and hers, in which Sparta would be perfectly happy to contract her own alliances with Persia, in which democratic Athens would prove a ruthless imperial power funding timeless and priceless works of art through open expropriation of public funds intended for the common defense of the Delian League, in which smaller cities would be enlisted against the popular will or crushed, in which a catastrophic campaign would be fought as far away as Sicily, and Persian gold would recover swaths of Ionia that Persian arms could not. Certainly the Amphictyonic Council had failed to prevent this historical watershed, but then it was never designed to do so in the first place. It was no failure in either organization or apportionment of power; it was, on the contrary, one of a number of instances of a characteristic and infuriating Greek capacity for self-destruction.
It is notable that Madison and Hamilton mention the following as a failure of the Council and, by extension, a potential failure of the American Confederation.
9 In several material instances, they [the powers seized] exceed the powers enumerated in the articles of confederation.
But other political organizations might be threatened as well by constituent members seizing more than the enumerated powers. Madison and Hamilton mean the states by this, but what if the constituent members exceeding those enumerated powers are, on the contrary, the very branches of the government proposed under the new Constitution? It is a point their opponents would be quick to pick up.
The reader moves forward, suddenly and seamlessly, a hundred years to the point at which that same Council, still riven by internecine warfare, finds Athens and Sparta allied to diminish the power of Thebes, who responds by inviting a northern King named Philip of Macedon into the mix, with results that would change Greece and the surrounding ancient world forever. Philip's son Alexander the Great would soon conquer most of the known world at the time, leaving behind him Macedonian-Greek-Hellenistic governments from Persia to Egypt.
35 Had Greece, says a judicious observer on her fate, been united by a stricter confederation and persevered in her union, she would never have worn the chains of Macedon and might have proved a barrier to the vast projects of Rome.
This is historical speculation of the highest and most suspect order. Greece never had a union, and had she, it is still difficult to imagine the Macedonian army that dipped its spears into the Indus being held back on the Peloponnesus.
Nevertheless, the topic of Rome has been broached. The reader suddenly moves ahead another hundred years into a world very different from the one in which Alexander was yet to be born. Now Greece is beset by the same old enemies under new, Hellenist management, and Macedonia, whose foreign conquests have been fragmented, is still a powerful neighbor to the north of Greece. Far to the west is an upstart republic – a republic, mind you – named Rome.
In the face of this challenge another League is formed, the Achaean League.
36 The Achaean League, as it is called, was another society of Grecian republics which supplies us with valuable instruction.
37 The union here was far more intimate and its organization much wiser than in the preceding instance.
This was much closer to Hamilton's and Madison's ideal.
42 It appears that the cities had all the same laws and customs, the same weights and measures, and the same money.
43 But how far this effect proceeded from the authority of the federal council is left in uncertainty.
Indeed, its members may have to some extent started out that way. But the authority of that council was, in fact, sufficient to make that demand of new members (45): the same laws and customs, the same weights and measures, the same money. Here the authors make a subtle comparison to America, which had at that point achieved none of these.
Alas, this League met the fate of so many of its predecessors, if not quite as deservedly (38). Incurring Spartan hostility, it allied itself first with the Hellenistic rivals of Macedon, Egypt and Syria (67), and when Sparta, also an ally of those powers, decided to attack, it was left with the alternative of submission to Sparta or invitation of Macedon to enter the fray (68). Fatally, it chose the latter. Philip V beat Sparta (73) and took over the League's cities as well. The League managed to move from the mouth of the wolf to the jaws of the tiger – it invited the Romans (78). The Romans defeated the Macedonians and, to the surprise of no one at all except perhaps the League's leaders, took over (85).
Apparently learning nothing from all this, the League determined to rebel from Roman control, and the upshot of this Third Macedonian War was the Roman general Lucius Mummius taking Corinth, putting all the men of the city to the sword, selling the women and children into slavery, sacking the city and then burning it to the ground, a result that left very little room for further diplomatic maneuver.
The point Madison and Hamilton have made out of all of this is that despite the best of intentions, and even with certain internal structural strengths, these Greek political organizations succumbed to internal fracture, aided and abetted by external enemies. The implication is clear: the American Confederation would soon find itself beset with foreign meddling whose object would be to set the states at one another's throats.
89 I have thought it not superfluous to give the outlines of this important portion of history, both because it teaches more than one lesson and because...it emphatically illustrates the tendency of federal bodies rather to anarchy among the members than to tyranny in the head.
Despite the imperfect analogy, the reader gets the point. One of those lessons is that a proper federation must be internally consistent in laws, customs and the appurtenances of commerce. Another is that its members must never find internecine squabbling a temptation to invite ruin through foreign intervention. Finally, it must speak with one united voice, lest it be fractured and eaten piecemeal. Hamilton and Madison could hardly be clearer in this criticism of the existing Confederation, or in the implication that the solution was the proposed Constitution. However, that would need to be more than an implication, and the potential for “tyranny in the head” would need to be discussed in detail before the debate was over.
Discussion Topic
Earlier threads:
FReeper Book Club: The Debate over the Constitution
5 Oct 1787, Centinel #1
6 Oct 1787, James Wilson’s Speech at the State House
8 Oct 1787, Federal Farmer #1
9 Oct 1787, Federal Farmer #2
18 Oct 1787, Brutus #1
22 Oct 1787, John DeWitt #1
27 Oct 1787, John DeWitt #2
27 Oct 1787, Federalist #1
31 Oct 1787, Federalist #2
3 Nov 1787, Federalist #3
5 Nov 1787, John DeWitt #3
7 Nov 1787, Federalist #4
10 Nov 1787, Federalist #5
14 Nov 1787, Federalist #6
15 Nov 1787, Federalist #7
20 Nov 1787, Federalist #8
21 Nov 1787, Federalist #9
23 Nov 1787, Federalist #10
24 Nov 1787, Federalist #11
27 Nov 1787, Federalist #12
27 Nov 1787, Cato #5
28 Nov 1787, Federalist #13
29 Nov 1787, Brutus #4
30 Nov 1787, Federalist #14
1 Dec 1787, Federalist #15
4 Dec 1787, Federalist #16
5 Dec 1787, Federalist #17
Are we so naive or careless to believe the ship of State will right itself? It is tilting over badly ... in danger of floundering. MO
God help us in our day, in Jesus name, amen.
The lesson is that there was nothing to prevent the states from allying themselves with foreign powers.
For instance, the Northeastern mercantile states could join in treaty with Great Britain.
The southern agricultural states by necessity would have to counter such a move, perhaps with France or Spain.
Adios to the American confederacy.
A BTT for the afternoon crowd. This one carries an additional lesson over and above the correct distribution of powers within a political body, and it’s that the best theoretical construction in the world won’t help you if a thug with a very large army comes along. First the Persians, then the Phil & Alex Show, and then right after them came the Romans. Then the Arabs, and then the Turks. Tough territory.
The possibilities are endless but I very much doubt that today there would be a country stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific and down to the Gulf of Mexico called the United States.
...or if the United States had successfully broken up in 1861, with respect to internecine warfare and the intervention of foreign powers? Use your imagination.
Again the possibilities are endless but I suspect that in this case the differences between the two factions would have overcome over time and that the country would have been reunited by the dawn of the twentieth century. Many excellent books have been written in which this subject is explored. The authors of those made guesses just as good as any I might make here.
Isn't it ironic that the current President, instead of praising those advances, decries them as being "distractions"?
For decades, the Progressives systematically and surreptitiously removed (censored) the ideas and principles of liberty from America's textbooks and from the "public square," replacing them with their own counterfeit ideas of "democracy" and utopian schemes.
In recent decades, to read the documents, speeches and writings explaining the ideas essential to preserving liberty, one had to go to remote and dusty stacks hidden away in large libraries.
Just when the Far Left thought it had snuffed out the light of liberty by hiding the Founders' ideas from schoolchildren and the general population, a miracle called the Internet arrived! Lo, and behold, a burst of light appeared in homes and offices all across the nation! With the click of a mouse, the clear and unmistakable message of 1776 and 1787, as well as all the other words of freedom generated by that miraculous period in human history, are available to the so-called "common man."
That scares the daylights out of the so-"Progressive" political elite of the world and America! They must not have their power-hungry goals for domination of ordinary citizens thwarted by such "distractions" as Ipods, Ipads, Laptops, and other such freedom-friendly tools.
One must conclude that if, as the Founders believed, Divine Providence was instrumental in the happenings in America in 1776 and 1787--events which led to the greatest burst of freedom, opportunity and progress in the history of civilization--then, surely, Divine Providence may have inspired those whose technology has enabled current generations to rediscover the ideas of liberty just as they were about to be censored from public view.
That may be why the current spokesman/leader of the "regressives" (also known as "Progressives") and his surrogates, must minimize, demonize, and otherwise belittle, the use of such technology to animate a new generation for liberty, because the ideas of the Left are bankrupt. They have failed in every century and in every nation where they have been tried.
Just found these threads - thanks so much for posting. Now my only hope is that the weather stays rainy so I don’t feel guilty about reading them all:)
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