974
Souter, J., dissenting
Two such examples of anticipated state collection of federal revenue are instructive, each of which is put forward to counter fears of a proliferation of tax collectors. In No. 45, Hamilton says that if a State is not given (or declines to exercise) an option to supply its citizens' share of a federal tax, the "eventual collection [of the federal tax] under the immediate authority of the Union, will generally be made by the officers, and according to the rules, appointed by the several States." Id., No. 45, at 313. And in No. 36, he explains that the National Government would more readily "employ the State officers as much as possible, and to attach them to
Court's question (and objection), then, is that Madison was expressly choosing one example of state officer agency, not purporting to exhaust the examples possible.
There is, therefore, support in Madison's No. 44 for the straightforward reading of Hamilton's No. 27 and, so, no occasion to discount the authority of Hamilton's views as expressed in The Federalist as somehow reflecting the weaker side of a split constitutional personality. Ante, at 915-916, n. 9. This, indeed, should not surprise us, for one of the Court's own authorities rejects the "split personality" notion of Hamilton and Madison as being at odds in The Federalist, in favor of a view of all three Federalist writers as constituting a single personality notable for its integration:
"In recent years it has been popular to describe Publius [the nominal author of The Federalist] as a 'split personality' who spoke through Madison as a federalist and an exponent of limited government, [but] through Hamilton as a nationalist and an admirer of energetic government. . . . Neither the diagnosis of tension between Hamilton and Madison nor the indictment of each man for self-contradiction strikes me as a useful or perhaps even fair-minded exercise. Publius was, on any large view—the only correct view to take of an effort so sprawling in size and concentrated in time—a remarkably 'whole personality,' and I am far more impressed by the large area of agreement between Hamilton and Madison than by the differences in emphasis that have been read into rather than in their papers. . . . The intellectual tensions of The Federalist and its creators are in fact an honest reflection of those built into the Constitution it expounds and the polity it celebrates." C. Rossiter, Alexander Hamilton and the Constitution 58 (1964).
While Hamilton and Madison went their separate ways in later years, see id., at 78, and may have had differing personal views, the passages from The Federalist discussed here show no sign of strain.
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