Emmanuel Calton
Dr. Upham
Politics
16 October 2014
Constitution: The Stronger Vessel
PARAGRAPH I In the Federalist Papers, the pseudonymous author “Publius” was more than prepared to defend the new constitution against the anti-federalist.
No argument against the ratified constitution was valid
-because of how weak the articles of confederation was.
The answer to everything is simple: The Articles of Confederation is weak and freezes the government of it’s necessary power, but the ratified constitution provides that power.
PARAGRAPH II The first way that the Articles of Confederation showcase their inferiority is that congress didn’t have the power to tax.
The idea to restrict taxing was born from the dictator mindset of the prior leadership, the people were scared to repeat that horrid situation.
The people should look past that and understand that in order for the government to properly meet all the needs, taxes are quite essential. If taxes are just a recommendation and not enforced, this leaves the government weak and unable to function efficiently for the people.
Madison argues that the people’s logic against the ratified constitution isn’t even legitimate, because firstly they can’t stick to one refutation and cohesively agree as a whole on it and secondly they constantly complain that there is a problem, but when a cure for the problem is brought up they immediately turn their noses against it.
PARAGRAPH III The next fatal flaw of the Articles of Confederation is that there was no national court system.
-Due to this absence, states would dispute like children amongst each other with no neutral guidance over the situation, making it sometimes seemingly impossible to resolve matters amongst states due to settle cases if each state had separate rulings in their own courts. This was a handful for the states themselves, because something could be clearly illegal in one state, but completely acceptable in the neighboring state.
The anti-federalist claimed that construction of a national government had holes, but Madison will reply back to them that there is corruption in absence, and he’d rather have a flawed system than no true system at all. The void of federalism was rather apparent in the eyes of the wise, but it was troublesome to explain the simplistic concept to the people for Madison.
PARAGRAPH IV Lastly, a third problem with the Articles of Confederation was that there had to be a unanimous