A Revolution in Favor of Government

Max M. Edling. A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of he U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Max Edling examines the ratification debate over the Constitution through the lens of a broader consideration of Federalist literature than most previous studies and scholars had offered. The result isn't just a more complete understanding of Federalist arguments for ratification, but a reconsideration of the larger program and ideology Federalists, in general, advocated for.

Edling argues that orthodox studies of the Federalist position on ratification and the Constitution have been skewed by too heavy an emphasis on the Federalist Papers in general, and the writings of James Madison especially. The Madisonian interpretation is important in American political history, and has been very influential, but "[t]hanks to the publication of The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, it is now possible to investigate the Federalist side of the debate more inclusively than has previously been the case." (7) In doing so, Edling concludes that the Madisonian argument, rather than either summarizing the main thrust of Federalist thought, or standing in the ideological center of it, was actually in many ways out of sync. While Madison was concerned primarily with structure--such matters as separation of powers, the roles of different branches, etc.--Edling argues that Federalists in general put much more emphasis not on the limits placed on government, but the powers given to it.

Those powers were not general or unspecified--they were the power to tax, and to wage war. The Federalists products of the late eighteenth-century world; a time which saw the rise of the "fiscal-military state" in Europe; according the Edling, the Federalists believed that the only way the new nation could guarantee its safety, prosperity, and continued sovereignty was to adopt the same tools which European powers relied on to create military, diplomatic, and economic power. And they had to do so within the context of a country with a deeply-rooted anti-statist tradition, as well as immature or unformed institutions.

One advantage of looking at Federalism through this interpretive lens is that the broader trends of Anti-Federalist thought actually appears more coherent and consistent than many standard interpretations allow. Edling makes a strong case that both sides were not arguing over "democracy" versus "aristocracy" or other abstract political dichotomies, but rather over the very concrete issues of whether or not the new government under the Constitution would have ultimate power over its citizens through the power to extract resources and commit men to armed conflict.

The bulk of the book considers those two issues--taxation, and a standing army--from both sides of the debate. A debate, Edling argues, which the Federalists wanted to be extensive and deliberate, in contrast to at least some interpretations which picture a well-organized Federalist minority pushing through a little-understand invention before the inchoate opposition could craft a systematic alternative.