If opposition to the national government should arise from the
disorderly conduct of refractory or seditious individuals, it could
be overcome by the same means which are daily employed against the
same evil under the State governments. The magistracy, being
equally the ministers of the law of the land, from whatever source
it might emanate, would doubtless be as ready to guard the national
as the local regulations from the inroads of private licentiousness.
As to those partial commotions and insurrections, which sometimes
disquiet society, from the intrigues of an inconsiderable faction,
or from sudden or occasional illhumors that do not infect the great
body of the community the general government could command more
extensive resources for the suppression of disturbances of that kind
than would be in the power of any single member. And as to those
mortal feuds which, in certain conjunctures, spread a conflagration
through a whole nation, or through a very large proportion of it,
proceeding either from weighty causes of discontent given by the
government or from the contagion of some violent popular paroxysm,
they do not fall within any ordinary rules of calculation. When
they happen, they commonly amount to revolutions and dismemberments
of empire. No form of government can always either avoid or control
them. It is in vain to hope to guard against events too mighty for
human foresight or precaution, and it would be idle to object to a
government because it could not perform impossibilities.
PUBLIUS.


FEDERALIST No. 17

The Same Subject Continued
(The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the