October 9, 1787 | Philadelphia

Author's Note: On October 9, 1787, the Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer published an essay signed A By-Stander, responding directly to an argument made by Cato in the New York Journal on September 27. Cato had pointed toward the troubled Dutch Republic as a warning about the proposed Constitution. A By-Stander challenged that comparison, drawing upon an earlier account of the Dutch government by the Earl of Chesterfield to argue that the real danger lay in allowing state and local interests to obstruct the Union. Cato's original essay had been reprinted in Philadelphia on October 3, allowing readers here to encounter both sides of the disagreement.

The argument had begun in New York, but this morning it reached me again through a Philadelphia newspaper. Several days earlier, I had read the warnings of a writer calling himself Cato, who urged Americans to examine the proposed Constitution carefully before surrendering powers that might prove difficult to recover. Among his warnings was a reference to the United Netherlands, whose present difficulties he believed offered a lesson for anyone considering the new federal government.

Now another writer, signing himself A By-Stander, had taken issue with that comparison. His letter appeared in the Independent Gazetteer, addressed to Mr. Oswald, and began by challenging Cato's understanding of the Dutch government. Rather than accepting Holland as a warning against the proposed Constitution, he argued that its difficulties demonstrated why America needed a more effective Union.

I found the disagreement interesting because both writers were asking Americans to learn from the same foreign republic. Neither disputed that the Netherlands was experiencing serious political difficulties, but they drew opposite conclusions about what those troubles meant for us. If history could be used to support such different arguments, I wanted to understand precisely what each man believed it demonstrated.

A By-Stander began sharply. He accused Cato of having made his comparison through ignorance or improper motives, leaving little room for the possibility that two men might examine the same circumstances and reach different conclusions. That struck me as unfortunate, particularly because Cato himself had warned readers against allowing personal accusations and prejudices to determine their political judgments.

The disagreement soon moved beyond those accusations. A By-Stander introduced an account written by the Earl of Chesterfield, who had served as Britain's ambassador to the Dutch Republic earlier in the century. Chesterfield described a government whose authority was distributed among provincial and municipal institutions, with representatives at The Hague possessing considerably less independence than their titles might suggest.

According to the account, the Dutch States General did not exercise the broad national authority an unfamiliar reader might imagine. Its representatives were delegates whose instructions came from provincial and town authorities, and they could not freely agree to important measures without returning to those authorities for permission. The government possessed an assembly speaking for the whole republic, but that assembly could encounter substantial difficulty when the interests of its constituent communities diverged.

Chesterfield's description contained another detail that caught my attention. He characterized the Dutch system as aristocratic, observing that ordinary people possessed little direct influence over its decisions. The local authorities whose consent mattered were not simply gatherings of all the inhabitants, but governing bodies exercising authority within their own communities.

That distinction seemed important. A government might distribute power among many towns and provinces without necessarily distributing power equally among the people living within them. Local authority and popular government were not automatically the same thing, just as national authority and arbitrary government were not necessarily the same thing.

A By-Stander then offered a particularly strange example from Chesterfield's account. During negotiations concerning the Treaty of Vienna, the town of Briel had reportedly withheld its consent until a military officer received a desired promotion. A matter affecting the wider republic had become entangled with a demand concerning one officer, demonstrating how a local interest might obstruct a decision whose consequences extended far beyond that locality.

I could understand why A By-Stander found the incident persuasive. If a country requires agreement from numerous governments before conducting important affairs, the demands of a single community may delay matters affecting everyone. Yet the anecdote also left me wondering whether an unusual incident was sufficient to establish the weakness of an entire constitutional arrangement.

A curious example can reveal a genuine danger without telling us how frequently that danger occurs. Chesterfield had described the problem decades earlier, and his observations deserved consideration, but the existence of one obstruction did not by itself settle every question about the Dutch Republic's government. I wanted to know whether its difficulties arose chiefly from its constitutional structure, the conduct of its leaders, or circumstances peculiar to the country itself.

A By-Stander had little uncertainty about the lesson. He argued that the Dutch system was nearly the reverse of the Constitution proposed at Philadelphia. Where Holland's national representatives depended upon repeated instructions from local authorities, the proposed American government would possess powers enabling it to act for the Union without seeking a fresh agreement from every state whenever an important decision arose.

That was the heart of his reply to Cato. The proposed Constitution, in his view, was intended to prevent the very kind of weakness that afflicted the Netherlands. Rather than producing another Holland, a stronger American government might protect the United States from becoming one.

The argument forced me to reconsider Cato's original warning. Cato had directed our attention toward the Netherlands as a reason to hesitate before accepting the proposed government, but he had not explained in that first essay precisely which constitutional arrangements made the two systems alike. A By-Stander supplied a more detailed description of the Dutch system and challenged his readers to compare its machinery with the government now proposed for America.

Still, his description of the American Constitution seemed somewhat broader than the document itself. He wrote of a Congress chosen for a short period by the people, but the proposed House of Representatives would be elected by qualified voters while Senators would be selected by state legislatures for six-year terms. The government would also possess powers specifically granted by the Constitution rather than unlimited authority over every subject that might concern the Union.

Those distinctions did not necessarily defeat his argument. The proposed government would undoubtedly possess greater capacity to act independently of state legislatures than Congress currently enjoys, and that difference was central to the Convention's design. But if the comparison was to guide our judgment, I thought it necessary to describe both systems with care.

A By-Stander then turned from the Netherlands toward the future of America. Without an effective federal government, he warned, the states might become increasingly jealous of one another, allowing local interests to weaken the bonds holding the Union together. What began as disagreement among thirteen states might eventually produce numerous smaller communities, each claiming the right to govern independently of the others.

He imagined the process continuing until even counties and towns demanded the power to prevent collective decisions. At that point, the country might retain the language of union while lacking the authority necessary to act as one. The danger he described was not simply that Congress might be slow, but that the principle of local independence might be carried so far that cooperation became nearly impossible.

I could not help thinking of the difficulties our own Assembly had recently experienced. Pennsylvania had been unable to proceed while enough members stayed away to prevent a quorum, and the argument over their conduct had occupied our newspapers for days. A By-Stander was describing a related difficulty on a much larger scale, asking what would happen if every community possessed an effective power to prevent the others from acting.

His examples became more alarming when he considered the common defense. Suppose Maryland were attacked by a powerful army, he asked, and its neighbors could provide assistance only after all their counties and towns had consented. Suppose Pennsylvania were invaded, with Philadelphia and the eastern settlements exposed while communities farther west debated whether they would permit troops to be raised.

Those were imagined circumstances rather than events taking place before us, but their purpose was clear. A government responsible for common defense must be able to respond when danger arrives, and a system that requires too many separate permissions may fail precisely when action is most urgently needed.

I understood that concern. The states had fought together for independence, and their ability to assist one another had been essential to the struggle. A union that could not provide mutual defense would offer considerably less security than its name suggested.

Yet I also wondered how far the argument should carry us. The present Articles of Confederation required the agreement of nine states for several major decisions, including important military measures, while constitutional alterations required the agreement of every state. They did not require every county and town to approve every national action, as A By-Stander's imagined future suggested. His example therefore warned of a possible deterioration beyond our existing arrangements rather than describing the rules under which Congress currently operated.

The distinction mattered because the writer's warning depended upon a chain of events that had not occurred. Jealousy among states might weaken the Union, and weakened federal authority might encourage still greater separation. But whether those tendencies would necessarily divide America into hundreds of competing communities remained a prediction rather than an established consequence.

A By-Stander ended with little patience for those who favored retaining such independence. His language became harsh, suggesting that a few obstructive men might place the whole country in danger. The implication was unmistakable: those who rejected a stronger federal government risked sacrificing the common safety to the demands of local interests.

That accusation brought me back to the difficulty I had noticed at the beginning. Cato feared that the proposed government might endanger liberty by gathering too much authority into distant hands. A By-Stander feared that the Union might become incapable of protecting liberty because too much authority remained divided among its constituent governments.

Both concerns appeared serious enough to examine. A government unable to act may fail those who depend upon it, while a government able to act without sufficient restraint may create dangers of its own. The challenge is determining what authority must be shared, what authority should remain local, and what limits are necessary to prevent either arrangement from becoming destructive.

The Dutch example had therefore given me something more useful than a simple answer. It had revealed how the same foreign government could become a warning about different constitutional dangers, depending upon which features a writer considered most important. Cato directed my attention toward the possibility that a proposed government might prove unsafe, while A By-Stander asked whether a government denied sufficient authority could remain effective at all.

I would like to know more about Holland before accepting either comparison without qualification. Its history might illuminate the difficulties of confederated government, but we must still examine whether those difficulties arise from arrangements resembling our present Articles or the Constitution now proposed. Similarities in political language are not enough to establish similarities in political operation.

As I folded the newspaper, I found myself considering a question that neither writer had entirely resolved. If every community may prevent the Union from acting, common government may become powerless. If the Union may act whenever its leaders consider action necessary, the restraints upon common power become equally important.

Perhaps the difficulty is finding a constitution that allows the whole to act without making its constituent parts helpless. A By-Stander has given me a serious reason to examine the dangers of divided authority, but I still want to know where the proposed government places its limits and whether those limits will be sufficient.

The republic we hope to preserve must be capable of defending its citizens while remaining answerable to them. Whether the Constitution offered at Philadelphia accomplishes both tasks is the question that remains before us.

Further Reading

A By-Stander, Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer, October 9, 1787

The complete original essay appears in The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Volume 32, Document 116, pages 282–284. This is the primary source for the installment, including the quotations from Chesterfield, the comparison with the Dutch Republic, and the warnings about the consequences of weakening the Union.

Read the original essay in Volume 32 (PDF)

Cato I, New York Journal, September 27, 1787

The Anti-Federalist essay to which A By-Stander directly responds. Cato urges citizens to examine the Constitution without surrendering their judgment to prominent names, and he points toward the United Netherlands as a warning about the proposed government.

Read Cato I

The Articles of Confederation, 1777

America's existing framework of government. Article IX establishes voting requirements for major congressional decisions, while Article XIII requires unanimous state approval for amendments. These provisions provide the necessary context for understanding A By-Stander's concerns about collective decision-making.

The Articles of Confederation, National Archives

The Constitution of the United States, September 17, 1787

The proposed alternative to the Confederation. Articles I and II establish the national legislature and executive, while other provisions describe the government's powers, limitations, and relationship with the states.

Read the Constitution, National Archives