Federalist No. 21
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Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, soldier, economist, political philosopher, one of America's first constitutional lawyers and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury...
, the twenty-first of the Federalist Papers
Federalist Papers
The Federalist Papers are a series of 85 articles or essays promoting the ratification of the United States Constitution. Seventy-seven of the essays were published serially in The Independent Journal and The New York Packet between October 1787 and August 1788...
. It was published on December 12, 1787 under the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
Publius, the name under which all the Federalist Papers were published. It is titled, "Other Defects of the Present Confederation."
In Federalist No. 21 Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, soldier, economist, political philosopher, one of America's first constitutional lawyers and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury...
focuses on the three main imperfections of government under the Articles of Confederation
Articles of Confederation
The Articles of Confederation, formally the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, was an agreement among the 13 founding states that legally established the United States of America as a confederation of sovereign states and served as its first constitution...
, and how the Constitution
Constitution
A constitution is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed. These rules together make up, i.e. constitute, what the entity is...
will rectify these problems. First, Hamilton observes that the current government has no power to enforce laws and also lacks a mutual guarantee of state rights. Under the Articles, a faction could easily take control of a state and the government would not be able to do anything about it. Then, Hamilton comments on the inefficiency of the confederation's current method of collecting taxes by quotas, and denounces it a a method by which the states may be broken apart. According to Hamilton, however, these problems are easily rectifiable, and the Constitution will fix all of them if it is approved.