‘An Accumulation of Guilt’

As President Obama gets set to deliver his big speech in respect of jobs, we found ourselves wondering what kind of answer might be given from the Republican side in respect of money. Could it be that someone will turn to 44 Federalist? This is the 44th essay in the series of newspaper columns written by James Madison, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton in their effort — successful — to win ratification of the Constitution in New York. It contains a paragraph that goes to the quick of the current angst.The essay itself — Madison wrote it — is about Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution. Article 1, Section 8 is the part that gave the Congress its powers. Article 1, Section 9 is the part that laid down certain absolute prohibitions on the Congress, things it could just never do (like grant a title of nobility). Article 1, Section 10 lays down the things the states can never do. Some of them overlap the prohibitions on the Congress; the states, too, may never grant a title of nobility. But some are unique to the states.The one that leaps out at the moment is that the states may never issue paper money, or, as they called it at the time, bills of credit. Section 10 also prohibits them from even coining money. The coining power was handed over to the Congress itself in Section 8 and was taken away from the states. But section 10 also prohibits the states from issuing bills of credit, which Madison — in 44 Federalist — applauded by saying the prohibition “must give pleasure to every citizen, in proportion to his love of justice and knowledge of the true springs of public prosperity.”Then he wrote of the loss that America had recently sustained “from the pestilent effects of paper money on the necessary confidence between man and man, on the necessary confidence in the public councils, on the industry and morals of the people, on the character of republican government.” He called the loss “an enormous debt against the States” and also “an accumulation of guilt.” It was a guilt so serious that, Madison reckoned, it could be “expiated no otherwise than by a voluntary sacrifice on the altar of justice, of the power which has been the instrument of it.”Reading Madison by the fire over Labor Day weekend, we were struck with that phrase “an accumulation of guilt.” It strikes is as an apt phrase not only in respect of the debasement of paper money during the revolutionary era but also today. It’s not so easy to pin point the blame or, even, to identify the moment when the errors were made. Certainly one wouldn’t want to suggest that the revolution should never have been made. Or that, say, the war to save the union, the costs of which were underwritten by the creation of the greenback, should never have been fought.For Madison, it was not necessary, when he sat down to quill the 44th Federalist, to particularize the errors. It was enough simply to observe that the guilt had accumulated. Rather than parcel out the blame, he, and the other Founders, had simply concluded that the power to make the errors, the power to issue paper money, had to be removed from the states that made the errors. So they were barred from ever issuing paper money or minting their own coins. The strategy reflected not only the wisdom of the Founders but also, though they were young, their astonishing maturity.This is a strategy for our time. There are those of us who do not believe the founders intended to give the federal government the power to issue paper money in the first place. That’s because they enumerated the powers they wanted the Congress to have, and issuing bills of credit wasn’t one of them. The courts have found differently, with the consequence being the very “pestilent effects” that Madison wrote of in 44 Federalist. Those effects may yet convince the court to revisit the question. Like Madison, we’re not so interested in fixing blame. We’re more of a mind to seek the “sacrificing on the altar of justice” the supposed power for the federal government to issue paper money itself, just the way the Founders dealt with the accumulation of guilt among the states. Wouldn’t that be a platform plank for the coming campaign.

‘An Accumulation of Guilt’

‘An Accumulation of Guilt’

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