A Revolution in Favor of Government

"Max Edling, a young Swedish scholar, who has just finished a sabbatical at Stanford this year, did this book originally as a doctoral dissertation in England. For a foreign scholar to write a thesis that significantly shifts how established scholars think about the American Constitution is quite a feat. Max Edling restores the Hamiltonian part of the framing story. Most scholars, myself included, have privileged James Madison, who was most concerned about the protection of rights and the proper structure of constitutional government. Edling explains that Alexander Hamilton and a group of other men who had served in the Continental Army, were concerned by the weakness that the American government demonstrated during the revolutionary war and were deeply aware that Great Britain, our former colonial master, was advantaged by having the most efficient state in the Atlantic world. Their view of the dangers that the United States would face as a new republic shaped the framing. Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress had no genuine independent sources of revenue; it had to ask the states to collect taxes. Hamilton and others saw that this was a terrible way to run a national government, particularly in wartime. The Constitution gives Congress an almost unlimited authority to tax. It deepened Congress’s authority over the army, the navy and even state militias. Hamilton and those around him understood how important it was to put the United States Congress in the position to act efficiently and effectively."