revolution of their government, as will establish their union, and render it the parent of tranquillity, freedom, and happiness: the next, that the asylum under which, we trust, the enjoyment of these blessings will speedily be secured in this country, may receive and console them for the catastrophe of their own.
I make no apology for having dwelt so long on the contemplation of these federal precedents. Experience is the oracle of truth; and where its responses are unequivocal, they ought to be conclusive and sacred. The important truth, which it unequivocally pronounces in the present case, is, that a sovereignty over sovereigns, a government over governments, a legislation for communities, as contradistinguished from individuals; as it is a solecism in theory, so in practice, it is subversive of the order and ends of civil polity, by substituting violence in place of law, or the destructive coercion of the sword, in place of the mild and salutary coercion of the magistracy.
Publius.
No. XXI.
By Alexander Hamilton.
Further defects of the present Constitution.
Having in the three last numbers taken a summary review of the principal circumstances and events, which depict the genius and fate of other confederate governments; I shall now proceed in the enumeration of the most important of those defects, which have hitherto disappointed our hopes from the system established among ourselves. To form a safe and satisfactory judgment of the proper remedy, it is absolutely necessary that we should be well acquainted with the extent and malignity of the disease.
The next most palpable defect of the existing confederation, is the total want of a sanction to its laws. The United States, as now composed, have no power to
