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Federalist No. 22 Explained: We the People, Not the States
The diagnosis of America's first government gets its final, devastating chapter. Hamilton piles on the defects that finish off the Articles of Confederation: a government that cannot control trade while the states quietly tax each other into enemies, an army raised by a bidding war for soldiers, a voting rule that lets a handful of tiny states freeze the entire country, a wide-open door to foreign bribery, and no national courts to make the law mean one thing. From the rivers of Germany choked by tolls, to the slow death of Poland, to a Swedish king who became absolute in a single day, the…
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