A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State William Pencak (bio) A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State. By Max M. Edling. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xii, 333. Cloth, $35.00.) At the very least, Max M. Edling has written the most important book on the adoption of the United States Constitution to appear since Forrest McDonald refuted Charles Beard in We the People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution (1958). Edling, a Swede educated at Cambridge University under the direction of the late Mark Kaplanoff, has brought a fresh, international perspective to the events of the late 1780s. United States historians usually stress the mechanics of compromise and representation at the constitutional and state ratifying conventions as the central elements of controversy: the power of the legislature versus the executive, the role of state versus federal government, the manner of election, and the compromises over slavery and between the large and the small states. Edling stresses instead that the leading Federalists wished to create a strong national state capable of commanding national resources to raise an army and tax the population. Even the Federalists' opponents supported at minimum a federal impost on imported goods to fund a central government that had only obtained $662 from all thirteen states in its final requisition before the convention and the nationalization of the militia in case of war or invasion. The Federalists' task thus was "to develop a conceptual framework [End Page 123] that made it possible to accommodate the creation of a powerful national government to the strong anti-statist current in the American political tradition" (219). In short, we American historians have both put the cart before the horse, or, to bring the old adage up to date, we have been so busy examining the engine that we forget the car it was intended to drive. And a magnificent machine it was, a miracle at Philadelphia at least equal to the construction of the motor. Edling calls to our attention that the Federalists realized that unless a federal government was unobtrusive and weighed lightly on the population, the constitution in theory and the new government in practice did not stand a chance. Just as innovative as Madison's defense of a large republic was the new nation's resolution of the paradox that a free nation could defend and support itself—at least until the twentieth century—without burdening its inhabitants. Import duties and (a very distant second) excise taxes were the perfect way to fund such a government: taxes would fall primarily on importers and consumers of luxury items, an ironic twist since the very commercial folks who gave the Federalists their strongest support would foot the bill. Land and poll taxes, the principal means state governments used to raise revenue during the Confederation period, fell more broadly and regressively on the general population. Edling is alive to the irony that had the antifederalists won, the locally minded farmers who supported them would have continued—based on existing research done on North Carolina and Massachusetts—to pay taxes that were several times higher than they were once the federal government assumed the debt that consumed most government expenditures. Edling thus revises as well, and brilliantly, what the assumption and payment of the state and national debt really meant: instead of the entire population being taxed to accommodate speculators, the nation's creditors accepted indefinite postponement of their claims in return for interest payments they themselves largely funded. Realizing that Britain's enormous debt was the key to its worldwide power—the debt could not have existed had not the government a track record of paying the interest faithfully—both the Federalists and, to a greater extent, Jefferson in buying Louisiana and Madison in fighting the War of 1812, borrowed with abandon, another instance in which the Jeffersonians outfederalized the Federalists. Customs revenues funded the great majority of all federal expenditures until World War I. As to providing for the common defense, the Federalists successfully refuted their opponents' contention that the militia...