Federalist 37 Paraphrased
The Federalist Number 37: The Challenge of Coming Up with a Balanced Government paraphrased into modern English
by James Madison, Jan 11, 1788.
To: the people of New York,
When we looked at the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation and realized that they could never be fixed unless we gave the government more power, we had to consider the principles of what more power might mean. Since the goal of these Federalist Papers is to demonstrate the benefits of the new Constitution clearly and thoroughly, and to explain the advantages of adopting it, our plan won't be complete until we closely consider the process of its creation, examine it from every angle, consider all of its parts, and estimate the likely effects it will have.
In order to do this in a way that seems fair and just, we must indulge in a few reflections that have already been observed.
It is a misfortune that can't be separated from the human condition that community proposals are rarely considered from a balanced frame of mind, yet balance is necessary if we're ever going to properly assess whether those proposals are more likely to advance or hinder the public good. Just when the occasion needs a balanced frame of mind the most is when a spirit of extremes is more likely to be promoted. Those who have experienced this first-hand will not be surprised that the project of the convention (in writing the Constitution), which calls for so many important changes and innovations, and will be viewed from so many different perspectives and connections, and influences the source of so many passions and interests, should find people from different sides who disagree or even object. Is it possible to have an evenhanded discussion and accurately assess the merits of the Constitution? Some people's criticisms show that they have obviously scanned the Constitution only for the purpose of disapproving and finding something to condemn. The very language of their criticisms betrays their inclination to find fault, which makes their opinions less useful in the debate. When I place more or less merit on the content of their opinions, I do not mean to insinuate that their motives may not be pure. It's only fair to observe that, as everyone admits that our situation is unusually critical and that something desperately needs to be done, a genuine supporter may be honestly concerned about serious questions and not just allowing foreboding ideas to sway his judgment. But an opponent who has already predisposed himself to protest must have some other motive. The motives of the first group may be perfectly sincere, and the motives of the second group may be wrong. Someone predisposed to find fault can't possibly have pure and sincere motives. But this Federalist Paper isn't about either of these kinds of people. The Papers are only geared towards those who are sincerely devoted to the happiness of their country, because those are the ones with the right attitude to fairly consider the best means of promoting it.
Those kinds of people will analyze the Constitution, not merely to locate and magnify its weaknesses, but with the realization that a flawless plan is impossible. They won't hold the men who wrote the Constitution to an impossible standard of perfection, but will remember that they, too, are only human, and that they shouldn't assume that they themselves are infallible when they judge the opinions of others.
They will also be equally ready to understand the many difficulties that go along with the kind of project we took on at the Constitutional Convention.
The novelty of the whole project is striking. We've shown in previous Federalist Papers that the current Articles of Confederation were created on principles that were incorrect. Therefore, the very foundation of the document had to be changed, which meant that the resulting structure also had to be modified. When we consulted decisions made by earlier confederacies, we saw that they were based on the same incorrect principles. They could do nothing more than highlight what not to do, and warn us away from a destructive path, but they couldn't offer any helpful guidelines about what we should do. In such a situation, the best we could do was to avoid past errors by looking at the mistakes that we and other countries have made, and hopefully provide a model to help those other countries remedy their own mistakes as they unfold in the future.
One of the many challenges we dealt with was how to combine sufficient stability and power in the federal government, while keeping our eye on the sacredness of liberty and republican [representational] government. If we hadn't protected liberty and republican government, we would not have accomplished our goal, nor would we have fulfilled the public's expectations. But that's not an easy thing to do, as anyone who knows anything about the subject will agree. Having sufficient authority in a government is essential to a country's security against both external and domestic threats, and is necessary for efficient and beneficial enacting of any laws that a good government needs. A stable government is essential to national character and all the advantages that go along with that, as well as the peace and confidence in the minds of the citizens, which are some of the richest blessings of a civilized society. Laws that are constantly fluctuating and changeable is an evil that the people find repulsive. Many of the people of this country are enlightened and interested in what makes a good government, and what its effects are. They will never be satisfied until some remedy is found for the fluctuations and uncertainties of various State administrations. But when we compare stability and laws that are consistent with the vital laws of liberty, we see how difficult it is to blend both together in their appropriate proportions. The genius of representative republican government seems to require that all the power should come from the people on one hand, with the representatives who are trusted with the power being dependent on the people by having short terms of office, and having the power divided up among many people during their brief time in office. On the other hand, stability requires that those who have power should keep their positions for a longer period of time. Frequent elections means a frequent change of men in office, and a frequent change of men means a frequent change in policies (i.e., less stability). But power in a government needs, not only the authority to last for a certain amount of time, but for it to be executed by a single hand.
Whether the men who wrote the Constitution succeeded in this part of their task will be evident when one has a more accurate view of it. Even the superficial explanation I've given here must make it obvious that finding that balance was a particularly challenging part of our task.
Just as challenging was finding the appropriate boundary between the federal government and the State governments. Anyone can understand how tricky this was, depending on how accustomed he is to analyzing and discriminating between subjects that are broad and complicated. The different parts of the human mind itself still haven't been sorted out and defined with sufficient precision, even with the efforts of the sharpest metaphysical philosophers. The senses, perception, judgment, desire, the will, memory, imagination -- these are only separated by the most delicate shades and minuscule nuances, so that even the most subtle investigations have never been able to define their boundaries. They are still a fertile topic for creative discussion and controversy. The boundaries between the kingdoms of nature and how they're divided into orders and species illustrate a similar difficulty. The most brilliant and hard-working naturalists haven't yet been able to find the definite line that separates the plant kingdom from similar kinds of inorganic matter, or where the difference lies between the plant kingdom and the animal kingdom. It's even more difficult to identify the distinctive characteristics that sort different species classified within those kingdoms.
Yet the differences between species are unchanging and precise. It's only man's imperfect ability to isolate those differences that makes classification so puzzling. The subject itself seems bewildering to us, and we need to be patient because of the limits of our own wisdom. Experience has shown that no political analyst has yet been able to isolate and define with any certainty the three great areas of government -- legislature, executive, and judicial -- nor even the privileges and powers that each of those branches has. Every day brings questions as political decisions are made. That just shows the complication that surrounds those subjects. Even the most brilliant minds in political science are puzzled.
All the experience of ages, including the combined and ongoing work of the brightest legislators and lawyers, has been unsuccessful at defining the various entities and limits of different codes of laws and judicial courts. Even England, which has studied such subjects more keenly than anyone else, hasn't yet sorted out and determined the nuances between common law based on precedent, statute law based on legislation, maritime law governing ships at sea, ecclesiastical law affecting church leadership, corporate law regulating businesses, and other local laws and traditions. The boundaries of England's general and local courts, and their jurisdictions over regulations, justice, and naval litigation have been a source of frequent and tangled discussions to figure out their various limits. New laws, even when they're drafted with admirable technical skill, and passed after the most reasoned and thorough debate, prove to be unclear and vague in practice, and have to be analyzed and made sure through additional deliberations and settled verdicts. It isn't just the complexity of the subject itself and the imperfect human minds wrangling over the questions. The medium of communication and the very words we use to express ideas adds another layer of complexity. Clarity requires that ideas should not only be expressed distinctly, but the words used should be distinct and exclusive in their meaning. But no language has enough different words and phrases to accurately express every complex idea, and no language is so perfect that some words can't express more than one idea. So it's inevitable that, no matter how distinctly an idea might be specified, and no matter how clearly the words describing the idea can be understood, the definition may end up being inaccurate because the terms can carry different shades of meaning. The more complicated and unique the idea, the more likely this limitation of language is to make the definition prone to inaccuracy. Even when God Almighty lowers Himself to communicate to mankind in man's own language, His meaning, no matter how bright and glorious, loses something in the translation and seems vague and doubtful because of the insufficient words by which it has to be communicated.
Here are three ways that vague and imprecise definitions can happen: the subject itself is vague; the mind trying to grasp the idea is imperfect; and the language transmitting the idea is inadequate. Any one of these will result in a certain degree of vagueness. When the men who wrote the Constitution tried to define the boundary between federal authority and State authority, they undoubtedly experienced all three of those disadvantages.
In addition to all the challenges already mentioned, there was the added interference from the larger and smaller States. The larger States were pressuring for a bigger share of participation in the new government proportionate to their greater wealth and importance, and the smaller States were just as persistent to make sure they were equally represented. Of course, neither side would give in to the other. The only solution was to find a compromise. Yet it's very likely that, after the ratio of representatives had been adjusted for each State in an effort at compromise, that very compromise would have both sides arguing anew to alter this or that part of the government, and change the way the powers are divided in an effort to try to increase powers in a way that would benefit their own State. There are parts of the Constitution that justify each of those possibilities, and where compromises have been made, it shows that the men writing the Constitution had to sacrifice the ideal of perfect theoretical decorum to more peripheral practical matters.
And it isn't only the small and large States that would be opposed over certain points. Other local concerns in different States with different circumstances would have created additional conflict. Every individual State is divided into different districts with citizens of different classes, and they'll all have various conflicting interests and local jealousies, and, on a larger scale, different regions of the nation also have various conflicting interests and local jealousies. For reasons we've already mentioned in a previous Federalist Paper, these various interests actually have a beneficial influence on the way the government is formed, but it must be evident that providing for all these opposing interests was not an easy task.
Under the pressures of all these challenges, is it any surprise that the men writing the Constitution were forced to make some compromises that deviated from the perfect conceptual model that might have been formed by a creative theorist imagining an abstract Constitutional ideal? The real surprise is that we were able to overcome so many of these challenges -- not only overcome them, but with unanimous consent, which is unheard of and unexpected. It's impossible for any fair-minded person to think about this without feeling astonished. Any Christian can't help seeing God's hand in it, just as we've seen God's hand so often and manifestly outstretched to help us at critical periods of the Revolutionary War.
In an earlier Federalist Paper, we had the opportunity to mention the unsuccessful attempts that the Netherlands made to reform the ruinous and prominent flaws in their own constitution. Throughout history, almost all the great councils and conferences ever held among mankind in order to reconcile conflicting opinions, relieve their mutual jealousies, and settle their various interests have been full of divisions, arguments, and disappointments. They serve as dark examples of the weaknesses and depravities of human character. The few bright spots serve as exceptions that remind us of the universal truth, and their glimmer only accentuates the darkness in contrast. In considering what caused these exceptions, and how we might apply that to our own project, we came to two conclusions. First, our convention seems to have been uniquely exempted from the destructive influence of party politics that usually goes along with group discussions, and almost always taints their proceedings. And, second, all the various groups of men writing the Constitution were content with the final arrangement, or at least agreed to it because they understood the need to sacrifice their personal opinions and self-interests in order to benefit the greater public good, and they realized the public need was too important to cause further delays or try additional experiments.
Signed, "Publius Valerius Publicola."
Paraphrased by Leslie Noelani Laurio, May 2020
All Federalist Paper Paraphrases
by James Madison, Jan 11, 1788.
To: the people of New York,
When we looked at the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation and realized that they could never be fixed unless we gave the government more power, we had to consider the principles of what more power might mean. Since the goal of these Federalist Papers is to demonstrate the benefits of the new Constitution clearly and thoroughly, and to explain the advantages of adopting it, our plan won't be complete until we closely consider the process of its creation, examine it from every angle, consider all of its parts, and estimate the likely effects it will have.
In order to do this in a way that seems fair and just, we must indulge in a few reflections that have already been observed.
It is a misfortune that can't be separated from the human condition that community proposals are rarely considered from a balanced frame of mind, yet balance is necessary if we're ever going to properly assess whether those proposals are more likely to advance or hinder the public good. Just when the occasion needs a balanced frame of mind the most is when a spirit of extremes is more likely to be promoted. Those who have experienced this first-hand will not be surprised that the project of the convention (in writing the Constitution), which calls for so many important changes and innovations, and will be viewed from so many different perspectives and connections, and influences the source of so many passions and interests, should find people from different sides who disagree or even object. Is it possible to have an evenhanded discussion and accurately assess the merits of the Constitution? Some people's criticisms show that they have obviously scanned the Constitution only for the purpose of disapproving and finding something to condemn. The very language of their criticisms betrays their inclination to find fault, which makes their opinions less useful in the debate. When I place more or less merit on the content of their opinions, I do not mean to insinuate that their motives may not be pure. It's only fair to observe that, as everyone admits that our situation is unusually critical and that something desperately needs to be done, a genuine supporter may be honestly concerned about serious questions and not just allowing foreboding ideas to sway his judgment. But an opponent who has already predisposed himself to protest must have some other motive. The motives of the first group may be perfectly sincere, and the motives of the second group may be wrong. Someone predisposed to find fault can't possibly have pure and sincere motives. But this Federalist Paper isn't about either of these kinds of people. The Papers are only geared towards those who are sincerely devoted to the happiness of their country, because those are the ones with the right attitude to fairly consider the best means of promoting it.
Those kinds of people will analyze the Constitution, not merely to locate and magnify its weaknesses, but with the realization that a flawless plan is impossible. They won't hold the men who wrote the Constitution to an impossible standard of perfection, but will remember that they, too, are only human, and that they shouldn't assume that they themselves are infallible when they judge the opinions of others.
They will also be equally ready to understand the many difficulties that go along with the kind of project we took on at the Constitutional Convention.
The novelty of the whole project is striking. We've shown in previous Federalist Papers that the current Articles of Confederation were created on principles that were incorrect. Therefore, the very foundation of the document had to be changed, which meant that the resulting structure also had to be modified. When we consulted decisions made by earlier confederacies, we saw that they were based on the same incorrect principles. They could do nothing more than highlight what not to do, and warn us away from a destructive path, but they couldn't offer any helpful guidelines about what we should do. In such a situation, the best we could do was to avoid past errors by looking at the mistakes that we and other countries have made, and hopefully provide a model to help those other countries remedy their own mistakes as they unfold in the future.
One of the many challenges we dealt with was how to combine sufficient stability and power in the federal government, while keeping our eye on the sacredness of liberty and republican [representational] government. If we hadn't protected liberty and republican government, we would not have accomplished our goal, nor would we have fulfilled the public's expectations. But that's not an easy thing to do, as anyone who knows anything about the subject will agree. Having sufficient authority in a government is essential to a country's security against both external and domestic threats, and is necessary for efficient and beneficial enacting of any laws that a good government needs. A stable government is essential to national character and all the advantages that go along with that, as well as the peace and confidence in the minds of the citizens, which are some of the richest blessings of a civilized society. Laws that are constantly fluctuating and changeable is an evil that the people find repulsive. Many of the people of this country are enlightened and interested in what makes a good government, and what its effects are. They will never be satisfied until some remedy is found for the fluctuations and uncertainties of various State administrations. But when we compare stability and laws that are consistent with the vital laws of liberty, we see how difficult it is to blend both together in their appropriate proportions. The genius of representative republican government seems to require that all the power should come from the people on one hand, with the representatives who are trusted with the power being dependent on the people by having short terms of office, and having the power divided up among many people during their brief time in office. On the other hand, stability requires that those who have power should keep their positions for a longer period of time. Frequent elections means a frequent change of men in office, and a frequent change of men means a frequent change in policies (i.e., less stability). But power in a government needs, not only the authority to last for a certain amount of time, but for it to be executed by a single hand.
Whether the men who wrote the Constitution succeeded in this part of their task will be evident when one has a more accurate view of it. Even the superficial explanation I've given here must make it obvious that finding that balance was a particularly challenging part of our task.
Just as challenging was finding the appropriate boundary between the federal government and the State governments. Anyone can understand how tricky this was, depending on how accustomed he is to analyzing and discriminating between subjects that are broad and complicated. The different parts of the human mind itself still haven't been sorted out and defined with sufficient precision, even with the efforts of the sharpest metaphysical philosophers. The senses, perception, judgment, desire, the will, memory, imagination -- these are only separated by the most delicate shades and minuscule nuances, so that even the most subtle investigations have never been able to define their boundaries. They are still a fertile topic for creative discussion and controversy. The boundaries between the kingdoms of nature and how they're divided into orders and species illustrate a similar difficulty. The most brilliant and hard-working naturalists haven't yet been able to find the definite line that separates the plant kingdom from similar kinds of inorganic matter, or where the difference lies between the plant kingdom and the animal kingdom. It's even more difficult to identify the distinctive characteristics that sort different species classified within those kingdoms.
Yet the differences between species are unchanging and precise. It's only man's imperfect ability to isolate those differences that makes classification so puzzling. The subject itself seems bewildering to us, and we need to be patient because of the limits of our own wisdom. Experience has shown that no political analyst has yet been able to isolate and define with any certainty the three great areas of government -- legislature, executive, and judicial -- nor even the privileges and powers that each of those branches has. Every day brings questions as political decisions are made. That just shows the complication that surrounds those subjects. Even the most brilliant minds in political science are puzzled.
All the experience of ages, including the combined and ongoing work of the brightest legislators and lawyers, has been unsuccessful at defining the various entities and limits of different codes of laws and judicial courts. Even England, which has studied such subjects more keenly than anyone else, hasn't yet sorted out and determined the nuances between common law based on precedent, statute law based on legislation, maritime law governing ships at sea, ecclesiastical law affecting church leadership, corporate law regulating businesses, and other local laws and traditions. The boundaries of England's general and local courts, and their jurisdictions over regulations, justice, and naval litigation have been a source of frequent and tangled discussions to figure out their various limits. New laws, even when they're drafted with admirable technical skill, and passed after the most reasoned and thorough debate, prove to be unclear and vague in practice, and have to be analyzed and made sure through additional deliberations and settled verdicts. It isn't just the complexity of the subject itself and the imperfect human minds wrangling over the questions. The medium of communication and the very words we use to express ideas adds another layer of complexity. Clarity requires that ideas should not only be expressed distinctly, but the words used should be distinct and exclusive in their meaning. But no language has enough different words and phrases to accurately express every complex idea, and no language is so perfect that some words can't express more than one idea. So it's inevitable that, no matter how distinctly an idea might be specified, and no matter how clearly the words describing the idea can be understood, the definition may end up being inaccurate because the terms can carry different shades of meaning. The more complicated and unique the idea, the more likely this limitation of language is to make the definition prone to inaccuracy. Even when God Almighty lowers Himself to communicate to mankind in man's own language, His meaning, no matter how bright and glorious, loses something in the translation and seems vague and doubtful because of the insufficient words by which it has to be communicated.
Here are three ways that vague and imprecise definitions can happen: the subject itself is vague; the mind trying to grasp the idea is imperfect; and the language transmitting the idea is inadequate. Any one of these will result in a certain degree of vagueness. When the men who wrote the Constitution tried to define the boundary between federal authority and State authority, they undoubtedly experienced all three of those disadvantages.
In addition to all the challenges already mentioned, there was the added interference from the larger and smaller States. The larger States were pressuring for a bigger share of participation in the new government proportionate to their greater wealth and importance, and the smaller States were just as persistent to make sure they were equally represented. Of course, neither side would give in to the other. The only solution was to find a compromise. Yet it's very likely that, after the ratio of representatives had been adjusted for each State in an effort at compromise, that very compromise would have both sides arguing anew to alter this or that part of the government, and change the way the powers are divided in an effort to try to increase powers in a way that would benefit their own State. There are parts of the Constitution that justify each of those possibilities, and where compromises have been made, it shows that the men writing the Constitution had to sacrifice the ideal of perfect theoretical decorum to more peripheral practical matters.
And it isn't only the small and large States that would be opposed over certain points. Other local concerns in different States with different circumstances would have created additional conflict. Every individual State is divided into different districts with citizens of different classes, and they'll all have various conflicting interests and local jealousies, and, on a larger scale, different regions of the nation also have various conflicting interests and local jealousies. For reasons we've already mentioned in a previous Federalist Paper, these various interests actually have a beneficial influence on the way the government is formed, but it must be evident that providing for all these opposing interests was not an easy task.
Under the pressures of all these challenges, is it any surprise that the men writing the Constitution were forced to make some compromises that deviated from the perfect conceptual model that might have been formed by a creative theorist imagining an abstract Constitutional ideal? The real surprise is that we were able to overcome so many of these challenges -- not only overcome them, but with unanimous consent, which is unheard of and unexpected. It's impossible for any fair-minded person to think about this without feeling astonished. Any Christian can't help seeing God's hand in it, just as we've seen God's hand so often and manifestly outstretched to help us at critical periods of the Revolutionary War.
In an earlier Federalist Paper, we had the opportunity to mention the unsuccessful attempts that the Netherlands made to reform the ruinous and prominent flaws in their own constitution. Throughout history, almost all the great councils and conferences ever held among mankind in order to reconcile conflicting opinions, relieve their mutual jealousies, and settle their various interests have been full of divisions, arguments, and disappointments. They serve as dark examples of the weaknesses and depravities of human character. The few bright spots serve as exceptions that remind us of the universal truth, and their glimmer only accentuates the darkness in contrast. In considering what caused these exceptions, and how we might apply that to our own project, we came to two conclusions. First, our convention seems to have been uniquely exempted from the destructive influence of party politics that usually goes along with group discussions, and almost always taints their proceedings. And, second, all the various groups of men writing the Constitution were content with the final arrangement, or at least agreed to it because they understood the need to sacrifice their personal opinions and self-interests in order to benefit the greater public good, and they realized the public need was too important to cause further delays or try additional experiments.
Signed, "Publius Valerius Publicola."
Paraphrased by Leslie Noelani Laurio, May 2020
All Federalist Paper Paraphrases
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