The cause of the pogrom called the "Civil" war was exposed here:

No. 3 - New Constitution Creates A National Government; Will Not Abate Foreign Influence; Dangers Of Civil War And Despotism

Like the nome de plume "Publius" used by pro Constitution writers in the Federalist Papers, several Anti-Federalists signed their writings "A FARMER. " While the occupation of the writers may not have coincided with the name given, the arguments against consolidating power in the hands of a central government were widely read. The following was published in the Maryland Gazette and Baltimore Advertiser, March 7, 1788. The true identity of the author is unknown.

There are but two modes by which men are connected in society, the one which operates on individuals, this always has been, and ought still to be called, national government; the other which binds States and governments together (not corporations, for there is no considerable nation on earth, despotic, monarchical, or republican, that does not contain many subordinate corporations with various constitutions) this last has heretofore been denominated a league or confederacy. The term federalists is therefore improperly applied to themselves, by the friends and supporters of the proposed constitution. This abuse of language does not help the cause; every degree of imposition serves only to irritate, but can never convince. They are national men, and their opponents, or at least a great majority of them, are federal, in the only true and strict sense of the word.

Whether any form of national government is preferable for the Americans, to a league or confederacy, is a previous question we must first make up our minds upon. . . .

That a national government will add to the dignity and increase the splendor of the United States abroad, can admit of no doubt: it is essentially requisite for both. That it will render government, and officers of government, more dignified at home is equally certain. That these objects are more suited to the manners, if not [the] genius and disposition of our people is, I fear, also true. That it is requisite in order to keep us at peace among ourselves, is doubtful. That it is necessary, to prevent foreigners from dividing us, or interfering in our government, I deny positively; and, after all, I have strong doubts whether all its advantages are not more specious than solid. We are vain, like other nations. We wish to make a noise in the world; and feel hurt that Europeans are not so attentive to America in peace, as they were to America in war. We are also, no doubt, desirous of cutting a figure in history. Should we not reflect, that quiet is happiness? That content and pomp are incompatible? I have either read or heard this truth, which the Americans should never forget: That the silence of historians is the surest record of the happiness of a people. The Swiss have been four hundred years the envy of mankind, and there is yet scarcely an history of their nation. What is history, but a disgusting and painful detail of the butcheries of conquerors, and the woeful calamities of the conquered? Many of us are proud, and are frequently disappointed that office confers neither respect nor difference. No man of merit can ever be disgraced by office. A rogue in office may be feared in some governments - he will be respected in none. After all, what we call respect and difference only arise from contrast of situation, as most of our ideas come by comparison and relation. Where the people are free there can be no great contrast or distinction among honest citizens in or out of office. In proportion as the people lose their freedom, every gradation of distinction, between the Governors and governed obtains, until the former become masters, and the latter become slaves. In all governments virtue will command reverence. The divine Cato knew every Roman citizen by name, and never assumed any preeminence; yet Cato found, and his memory will find, respect and reverence in the bosoms of mankind, until this world returns into that nothing, from whence Omnipotence called it.

That the people are not at present disposed for, and are actually incapable of, governments of simplicity and equal rights, I can no longer doubt. But whose fault is it? We make them bad, by bad governments, and then abuse and despise them for being so. Our people are capable of being made anything that human nature was or is capable of, if we would only have a little patience and give them good and wholesome institutions; but I see none such and very little prospect of such. Alas! I see nothing in my fellow-citizens, that will permit my still fostering the delusion, that they are now capable of sustaining the weight of SELF-GOVERNMENT: a burden to which Greek and Roman shoulders proved unequal. The honor of supporting the dignity of the human character, seems reserved to the hardy Helvetians alone.

If the body of the people will not govern themselves, and govern themselves well too, the consequence is unavoidable - a FEW will, and must govern them. Then it is that government becomes truly a government by force only, where men relinquish part of their natural rights to secure the rest, instead of an union of will and force, to protect all their natural rights, which ought to be the foundation of every rightful social compact.

Whether national government will be productive of internal peace, is too uncertain to admit of decided opinion. I only hazard a conjecture when I say, that our state disputes, in a confederacy, would be disputes of levity and passion, which would subside before injury. The people being free, government having no right to them, but they to government, they would separate and divide as interest or inclination prompted - as they do at this day, and always have done, in Switzerland. In a national government, unless cautiously and fortunately administered, the disputes will be the deep-rooted differences of interest, where part of the empire must be injured by the operation of general law; and then should the sword of government be once drawn (which Heaven avert) I fear it will not be sheathed, until we have waded through that series of desolation, which France, Spain, and the other great kingdoms of the world have suffered, in order to bring so many separate States into uniformity, of government and law; in which event the legislative power can only be entrusted to one man (as it is with them) who can have no local attachments, partial interests, or private views to gratify.

That a national government will prevent the influence or danger of foreign intrigue, or secure us from invasion, is in my judgment directly the reverse of the truth. The only foreign, or at least evil foreign influence, must be obtained through corruption. Where the government is lodged in the body of the people, as in Switzerland, they can never be corrupted; for no prince, or people, can have resources enough to corrupt the majority of a nation; and if they could, the play is not worth the candle. The facility of corruption is increased in proportion as power tends by representation or delegation, to a concentration in the hands of a few. . . .

As to any nation attacking a number of confederated independent republics . . . it is not to be expected, more especially as the wealth of the empire is there universally diffused, and will not be collected into any one overgrown, luxurious and effeminate capital to become a lure to the enterprizing ambitious.

That extensive empire is a misfortune to be deprecated, will not now be disputed. The balance of power has long engaged the attention of all the European world, in order to avoid the horrid evils of a general government. The same government pervading a vast extent of territory, terrifies the minds of individuals into meanness and submission. All human authority, however organized, must have confined limits, or insolence and oppression will prove the offspring of its grandeur, and the difficulty or rather impossibility of escape prevents resistance. Gibbon relates that some Roman Knights who had offended government in Rome were taken up in Asia, in a very few days after. It was the extensive territory of the Roman republic that produced a Sylla, a Marius, a Caligula, a Nero, and an Elagabalus. In small independent States contiguous to each other, the people run away and leave despotism to reek its vengeance on itself; and thus it is that moderation becomes with them, the law of self-preservation. These and such reasons founded on the eternal and immutable nature of things have long caused and will continue to cause much difference of sentiment throughout our wide extensive territories. From our divided and dispersed situation, and from the natural moderation of the American character, it has hitherto proved a warfare of argument and reason.

A FARMER

@Josf-Kelley

I was referring to the 1867 publishing of Das Kapital.

The article you supplied is difficult to read I assume that it is an argument over state rights. I certainly agree that the civil war was fought over states rights not slavery but the South had been granted states rights and they were reaffirmed by Lincoln. The question was if new States could be incorporated with a state constitution that guaranteed slavery. It seems like a minor issue but the national government was already controlled to large extent by the more populous North. Leaving the South with technical rights that were practically impotent if legislation was passed economically damaging Southern institutions at the national level.

Even at the time of the framing of the constitution, as you point out, slavery was an unpopular institution. That said or precisely because of this fact the Southern states would not have agreed to a constitution that didn't guarantee slavery. It was a case of slavery or no Federal government. You can make a good argument for a confederation in terms of self determination but a State can be as tyrannical as a federal government.

@wolfhnd

"It was a case of slavery or no Federal government."

If the word federal meant one thing and not two things, then I'd say that your statement is clearly wrong.

There was a federal government between 1774 and 1789 and it was anti-slavery.

14th of October, 1774
"On the same day, Congress unanimously resolved, “that the respective colonies are entitled to the common law of England, and more especially to the great and inestimable privilege of being tried by their peers of the vicinage according to the course of that law.” They further resolved, “that they were entitled to the benefit of such of the English statutes as existed at the time of their colonization, and which they have, by experience, respectively found to be applicable to their several and local circumstances.” They also resolved, that their ancestors, at the time of their immigration, were “entitled to all the rights, liberties, and immunities, of free and natural-born subjects within the realms of England.”

That means (in clear enough words) that the law of the land in all the federated states was the common law with trial by jury whereby the people can veto slavery as they please in court.

On the 20th day of October 1774
"This agreement contained a clause to discontinue the slave trade, and a provision not to import East India tea from any part of the world. In the article respecting non-exportations, the sending of rice to Europe was excepted."

That is the Federal (not National) congress outlawing slavery in America in 1774.

On the 1st of April, 1775
"On this occasion, the importation of slaves was expressly prohibited."

That is the Federal (not National) congress again outlawing slavery in America, now in 1775.

Here now is a MEANING for the word FEDERATION during the deliberation in the FEDERAL congress in 1776 as to the right (natural right) of publishing a Declaration of Independence (a common law right dating back to antiquity):

"That the question was not whether, by a declaration of independence, we should make ourselves what we are not; but whether we should declare a fact which already exists:
"That, as to the people or Parliament of England, we had always been independent of them, their restraints on our trade deriving efficacy from our acquiescence only, and not from any rights they possessed of imposing them; and that, so far, our connection had been federal only, and was now dissolved by the commencement of hostilities:
"That, as to the king, we had been bound to him by allegiance, but that this bond was now dissolved by his assent to the late act of Parliament, by which he declares us out of his protection, and by his levying war on us a fact which had long ago proved us out of his protection, it being a certain position in law, that allegiance and protection are reciprocal, the one ceasing when the other is withdrawn:"

Federation (not Nation) is a Voluntary Association (a.k.a. NOT SUBSIDIZED SLAVERY)

Here is Thomas Jefferson on Slavery written into the First Draft of the Declaration of Independence after the Federal Congress determined the right of publishing the document, and Thomas Jefferson executed the task:

Thomas Jefferson
Declaration of Independence
"he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another."

Here is (in the FEDERAL congressional record) Thomas Jefferson explaining the reasons why the original Declaration of Independence was censored:

In the Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. I. p. 10
"The clause, too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also, I believe felt a little tender under those censures; for, though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others."

Here are your words again:

"It was a case of slavery or no Federal government."

No, the Federal Government was in force between 1774 and 1789 as a Federal Governement (voluntary mutual defense association) and slaves were running from the south and finding sanctuary (liberty) in other places like Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Here is why a Federal Government is better than a National government:

Reclaiming the American Revolution: The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions and Their Legacy
by William Watkins
"Second, federalism permits the states to operate as laboratories of democracy-to experiment with various policies and Programs. For example, if Tennessee wanted to provide a state-run health system for its citizens, the other 49 states could observe the effects of this venture on Tennessee's economy, the quality of care provided, and the overall cost of health care. If the plan proved to be efficacious other states might choose to emulate it, or adopt a plan taking into account any problems surfacing in Tennessee. If the plan proved to be a disastrous intervention, the other 49 could decide to leave the provision of medical care to the private sector. With national plans and programs, the national officials simply roll the dice for all 284 million people of the United States and hope they get things right.
"Experimentation in policymaking also encourages a healthy competition among units of government and allows the people to vote with their feet should they find a law of policy detrimental to their interests. Using again the state-run health system as an example, if a citizen of Tennessee was unhappy with Tennessee's meddling with the provisions of health care, the citizen could move to a neighboring state. Reallocation to a state like North Carolina, with a similar culture and climate, would not be a dramatic shift and would be a viable option. Moreover, if enough citizens exercised this option, Tennessee would be pressured to abandon its foray into socialized medicine, or else lose much of its tax base. To escape a national health system, a citizen would have to emigrate to a foreign country, an option far less appealing and less likely to be exercised than moving to a neighboring state. Without competition from other units of government, the national government would have much less incentive than Tennessee would to modify the objectionable policy. Clearly, the absence of experimentation and competition hampers the creation of effective programs and makes the modification of failed national programs less likely."

Here is why a National Government is worse than a Federal government:

The Covenant with Death and How It Was Made
By Paul Finkelman, 2000
"The abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison thought the U.S. Constitution was the result of a terrible bargain between freedom and slavery. Calling the Constitution a "covenant with death" and "an agreement with Hell," he refused to participate in American electoral politics because to do so meant supporting "the pro-slavery, war sanctioning Constitution of the United States." Instead, under the slogan "No Union with Slaveholders," the Garrisonians repeatedly argued for a dissolution of the Union.
"Part of Garrison's opposition to continuing the Union stemmed from a desire to avoid the corruption that came from participating in a government created by the proslavery Constitution. But this position was also at least theoretically pragmatic. The Garrisonians were convinced that the legal protection of slavery in the Constitution made political activity futile, while support for the Constitution merely strengthened the stranglehold slavery had on America. In 1845 Wendell Phillips pointed out that in the years since the adoption of the Constitution, Americans had witnessed "the slaves trebling in numbers—slaveholders monopolizing the offices and dictating the policy of the Government-prostituting the strength and influence of the Nation to the support of slavery here and elsewhere—trampling on the rights of the free States, and making the courts of the country their tools." Phillips argued that this experience proved "that it is impossible for free and slave States to unite on any terms, without all becoming partners in the guilt and responsible for the sin of slavery."

Here is also why a National Government is worse than a Federal government:

"New Constitution Creates A National Government; Will Not Abate Foreign Influence; Dangers Of Civil War And Despotism
Maryland Gazette and Baltimore Advertiser, March 7, 1788

"There are but two modes by which men are connected in society, the one which operates on individuals, this always has been, and ought still to be called, national government; the other which binds States and governments together (not corporations, for there is no considerable nation on earth, despotic, monarchical, or republican, that does not contain many subordinate corporations with various constitutions) this last has heretofore been denominated a league or confederacy. The term federalists is therefore improperly applied to themselves, by the friends and supporters of the proposed constitution. This abuse of language does not help the cause; every degree of imposition serves only to irritate, but can never convince. They are national men, and their opponents, or at least a great majority of them, are federal, in the only true and strict sense of the word.
"Whether any form of national government is preferable for the Americans, to a league or confederacy, is a previous question we must first make up our minds upon. . . .
"Whether national government will be productive of internal peace, is too uncertain to admit of decided opinion. I only hazard a conjecture when I say, that our state disputes, in a confederacy, would be disputes of levity and passion, which would subside before injury. The people being free, government having no right to them, but they to government, they would separate and divide as interest or inclination prompted - as they do at this day, and always have done, in Switzerland. In a national government, unless cautiously and fortunately administered, the disputes will be the deep-rooted differences of interest, where part of the empire must be injured by the operation of general law; and then should the sword of government be once drawn (which Heaven avert) I fear it will not be sheathed, until we have waded through that series of desolation, which France, Spain, and the other great kingdoms of the world have suffered, in order to bring so many separate States into uniformity, of government and law; in which event the legislative power can only be entrusted to one man (as it is with them) who can have no local attachments, partial interests, or private views to gratify."
A FARMER

So...and again:

"It was a case of slavery or no Federal government."

It was a case of NATIONAL government hidden behind a false front, false flag, of FEDERATION, as a matter of fact, and that is fact that matters.

Slavery was all but exterminated in America before 1789, then it was subsidized Nationally.

@Josf-Kelley

Well that was well written but as I say the theoretical and the actual are quite different. The constitution clearly gave the federal government the power to regulate commerce and the Southern States rightfully recognized that technically having rights is different than being able to exercise them. If the regulation of commerce made slavery impractical then having the right to own slaves as a matter of states rights would be meaningless.

When Britain decided to exit the EU it had come to the same conclusion the Southern States had. Having equally rights in a democracy is impossible as the majority rules. For example unfair trade arrangements can strangle an economy even if they are imposed "democratically". Both Britian and the Southern States decided that if they could be economically isolated then they just as well be independent.

That is the problem with federations, they sound good on paper but are practically impossible to implement due to conflicting interests.

Now you may not have noticed but in other threads I have promoted the idea of returning to city states. Some sort of federation along the lines you are suggesting would obviously be needed but that didn't work out any better than democracy for the Greeks. The devil as always is in the management details.

@wolfhnd

I had to stop reading the reply at the following message:

"The constitution clearly gave the federal government..."

I don't know what the problem is, but I can guess that the problem is deception. When I use the word "Federal" I mean something specific. When I use the word "Federal" I don't mean something that can mean one thing one minute and the next minute the meaning can be opposite the original meaning. I'll read on.

I had to stop here:

"Having equally rights in a democracy..."

If we cannot agree that the meaning of the word "Federation" has one and not two opposite meanings, then my guess is that we cannot also agree that the word Democracy has one meaning and not two opposite meanings.

Example:

Federation: voluntary mutual defense association as demonstrated between 1774 and 1789 in America
Federation: legal fiction fraud, subsidized slavery of everyone, a corporate fiction entity run by criminals who employ deception, threat of violence (extortion), subsidized slavery, rape, torture, murder, and mass murder to maintain a profitable monopoly where people are deemed heriditary property.

Pick one or two, or keep on writing as if both are the same thing, as you please.

Example 2:

Democracy: the people as sovereign individuals rule as if the people are one as best they can, given the fact that people are prone to error and evil if given the opportunity.

Democracy: Majority, Minority, Elite, Aristocrats, Demigods, Fascists, Communists, Tyrants, Mob bosses RULE by criminal means while claiming that they alone speak for everyone.

Again, pick one or two, or keep on writing as if both are the same thing, as you please.

I can read on with the reply until I find cause to respond.

"Having equally rights in a democracy is impossible as the majority rules."

Perhaps you have no clue as to the original meaning of the word democracy and your use of the word is strictly the counterfeited meaning.

As to the original meaning here are two pieces of evidence:

The Athenian Constitution:
Government by Jury and Referendum
by Roderick T. Long

"The practice of selecting government officials randomly (and the Athenians developed some fairly sophisticated mechanical gadgets to ensure that the selection really was random, and to make cheating extremely difficult) is one of the most distinctive features of the Athenian constitution. We think of electoral politics as the hallmark of democracy; but elections were almost unknown at Athens, because they were considered paradigmatically anti-democratic. Proposals to replace sortition with election were always condemned as moves in the direction of oligarchy.
"Why? Well, as the Athenians saw it, under an electoral system no one can obtain political office unless he is already famous: this gives prominent politicians an unfair advantage over the average person. Elections, they thought, favor those wealthy enough to bribe the voters, powerful enough to intimidate the voters, flashy enough to impress the voters, or clever enough to deceive the voters. The most influential political leaders were usually Horsemen anyway, thanks to their social prominence and the political following they could obtain by dispensing largesse among the masses. (One politician, Kimon, won the loyalty of the poor by leaving his fields and orchards unfenced, inviting anyone who was hungry to take whatever he needed.) If seats on the Council had been filled by popular vote, the Horsemen would have disproportionately dominated it — just as, today, Congress is dominated by those who can afford expensive campaigns, either through their own resources or through wealthy cronies. Or, to take a similar example, in the United States women have had the vote for over half a century, and yet, despite being a majority of the population, they represent only a tiny minority of elected officials. Obviously, the persistence of male dominance in the economic and social sphere has translated into women mostly voting for male candidates. The Athenians guessed, probably rightly, that the analogous prestige of the upper classes would lead to commoners mostly voting for aristocrats.
"That is why the Athenians saw elections as an oligarchical rather than a democratic phenomenon. Above all, the Athenians feared the prospect of government officials forming a privileged class with separate interests of their own. Through reliance on sortition, random selection by lot, the Council could be guaranteed to represent a fair cross-section of the Athenian people — a kind of proportional representation, as it were. Random selection ensured that those selected would be representatives of the people as a whole, whereas selection by vote made those selected into mere representatives of the majority."

That is demonstrably (demonstrated by the original democrats) not Majority Rule.

Evidence 2:

Thomas Paine Rights of Man
Chapter III
Page 176

"Mr. Burke is so little acquainted with constituent principles of government, that he confounds democracy and representation together. Representation was a thing unknown in the ancient democracies. In those the mass of the people met and enacted laws (grammatically speaking) in the first person. Simple democracy was no other than the common hall of the ancients. It signifies the form, as well as the public principle of the government. As those democracies increased in population, and the territory extended, the simple democratical form became unwieldy and impracticable; and as the system of representation was not known, the consequence was, they either degenerated convulsively into monarchies, or became absorbed into such as then existed. Had the system of representation been then understood, as it now is, there is no reason to believe that those forms of government, now called monarchical or aristocratical, would ever have taken place. It was the want of some method to consolidate the parts of society, after it became too populous, and too extensive for the simple democratical form, and also the lax and solitary condition of shepherds and herdsmen in other parts of the world, that afforded opportunities to those unnatural modes of government to begin.

"As it is necessary to clear away the rubbish of errors, into which the subject of government has been thrown, I will proceed to remark on some others.

"It has always been the political craft of courtiers and courtgovernments, to abuse something which they called republicanism; but what republicanism was, or is, they never attempt to explain. let us examine a little into this case.

"The only forms of government are the democratical, the aristocratical, the monarchical, and what is now called the representative.

"What is called a republic is not any particular form of government. It is wholly characteristical of the purport, matter or object for which government ought to be instituted, and on which it is to be employed, Res-Publica, the public affairs, or the public good; or, literally translated, the public thing. It is a word of a good original, referring to what ought to be the character and business of government; and in this sense it is naturally opposed to the word monarchy, which has a base original signification. It means arbitrary power in an individual person; in the exercise of which, himself, and not the res-publica, is the object.

"Every government that does not act on the principle of a Republic, or in other words, that does not make the res-publica its whole and sole object, is not a good government. Republican government is no other than government established and conducted for the interest of the public, as well individually as collectively. It is not necessarily connected with any particular form, but it most naturally associates with the representative form, as being best calculated to secure the end for which a nation is at the expense of supporting it.

"Various forms of government have affected to style themselves a republic. Poland calls itself a republic, which is an hereditary aristocracy, with what is called an elective monarchy. Holland calls itself a republic, which is chiefly aristocratical, with an hereditary stadtholdership. But the government of America, which is wholly on the system of representation, is the only real Republic, in character and in practice, that now exists. Its government has no other object than the public business of the nation, and therefore it is properly a republic; and the Americans have taken care that this, and no other, shall always be the object of their government, by their rejecting everything hereditary, and establishing governments on the system of representation only. Those who have said that a republic is not a form of government calculated for countries of great extent, mistook, in the first place, the business of a government, for a form of government; for the res-publica equally appertains to every extent of territory and population. And, in the second place, if they meant anything with respect to form, it was the simple democratical form, such as was the mode of government in the ancient democracies, in which there was no representation. The case, therefore, is not, that a republic cannot be extensive, but that it cannot be extensive on the simple democratical form; and the question naturally presents itself, What is the best form of government for conducting the Res-Publica, or the Public Business of a nation, after it becomes too extensive and populous for the simple democratical form? It cannot be monarchy, because monarchy is subject to an objection of the same amount to which the simple democratical form was subject.

"It is possible that an individual may lay down a system of principles, on which government shall be constitutionally established to any extent of territory. This is no more than an operation of the mind, acting by its own powers. But the practice upon those principles, as applying to the various and numerous circumstances of a nation, its agriculture, manufacture, trade, commerce, etc., etc., a knowledge of a different kind, and which can be had only from the various parts of society. It is an assemblage of practical knowledge, which no individual can possess; and therefore the monarchical form is as much limited, in useful practice, from the incompetency of knowledge, as was the democratical form, from the multiplicity of population. The one degenerates, by extension, into confusion; the other, into ignorance and incapacity, of which all the great monarchies are an evidence. The monarchical form, therefore, could not be a substitute for the democratical, because it has equal inconveniences.

"Much less could it when made hereditary. This is the most effectual of all forms to preclude knowledge. Neither could the high democratical mind have voluntarily yielded itself to be governed by children and idiots, and all the motley insignificance of character, which attends such a mere animal system, the disgrace and the reproach of reason and of man.

"As to the aristocratical form, it has the same vices and defects with the monarchical, except that the chance of abilities is better from the proportion of numbers, but there is still no security for the right use and application of them.

"Referring them to the original simple democracy, it affords the true data from which government on a large scale can begin. It is incapable of extension, not from its principle, but from the inconvenience of its form; and monarchy and aristocracy, from their incapacity. Retaining, then, democracy as the ground, and rejecting the corrupt systems of monarchy and aristocracy, the representative system naturally presents itself; remedying at once the defects of the simple democracy as to form, and the incapacity of the other two with respect to knowledge.

"Simple democracy was society governing itself without the aid of secondary means. By ingrafting representation upon democracy, we arrive at a system of government capable of embracing and confederating all the various interests and every extent of territory and population; and that also with advantages as much superior to hereditary government, as the republic of letters is to hereditary literature.

"It is on this system that the American government is founded. It is representation ingrafted upon democracy. It has fixed the form by a scale parallel in all cases to the extent of the principle. What Athens was in miniature America will be in magnitude. The one was the wonder of the ancient world; the other is becoming the admiration of the present. It is the easiest of all the forms of government to be understood and the most eligible in practice; and excludes at once the ignorance and insecurity of the hereditary mode, and the inconvenience of the simple democracy.

"It is impossible to conceive a system of government capable of acting over such an extent of territory, and such a circle of interests, as is immediately produced by the operation of representation. France, great and populous as it is, is but a spot in the capaciousness of the system. It is preferable to simple democracy even in small territories. Athens, by representation, would have outrivalled her own democracy.

"That which is called government, or rather that which we ought to conceive government to be, is no more than some common center in which all the parts of society unite. This cannot be accomplished by any method so conducive to the various interests of the community, as by the representative system. It concentrates the knowledge necessary to the interest of the parts, and of the whole. It places government in a state of constant maturity. It is, as has already been observed, never young, never old. It is subject neither to nonage, nor dotage. It is never in the cradle, nor on crutches. It admits not of a separation between knowledge and power, and is superior, as government always ought to be, to all the accidents of individual man, and is therefore superior to what is called monarchy."

I can read on:

"That is the problem with federations, they sound good on paper but are practically impossible to implement due to conflicting interests."

How is anyone supposed to decipher that message given the fact that there are at least two opposing meanings for the word you choose: "federations?"

Do you mean to say:

"That is the problem with voluntary associations, they sound good on paper but are practically impossible to implement due to criminal interests."

Is that your claim?

"The devil as always is in the management details."

Slaves do tend to develope a dislike for being slaves. I can agree to that, if that is your actual message once the dogma is stripped away.

@Josf-Kelley

If people are not slaves in the sense you mean it then they are just as likely to be slaves to their passions.

I don't usually take part in these political debates because we are talking about a complex chaotic system. Since reduction is impossible the experience of theoretically similar and dissimilar system are uncontrolled experiments. Just as I see no successful socialist system I see no successful libertarian system from which we can evaluate your theories.

Since complex chaotic systems are unpredictable I'm in favor for the most part of reform not revolution. We could head in a direction or try small scale experiments but don't sign me up as someone who thinks Ayn Rand was a genius.

@wolfhnd

"Since complex chaotic systems are unpredictable I'm in favor for the most part of reform not revolution. We could head in a direction or try small scale experiments but don't sign me up as someone who thinks Ayn Rand was a genius."

The Law was, is, and can always be "reform." I am borrowing your word choice.

Reform can't be reform if "reform" means A: reform, and B: the opposite of reform.

Therefore a good place to start reforming chaos caused by deception is a method by which facts are found as a goal.

If instead the goal is adding the cause of chaos, which is deception, and therefore the goal is adding more lies to the already existing pile of lies, then it stands to reason, experience, logic, and even science that if the goal is to add deception, then there will be even more chaos.

_____quote:
For more than six hundred years—that is, since Magna Carta, in 1215—there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge of the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws.

Unless such be the right and duty of jurors, it is plain that, instead of juries being a “palladium of liberty”—a barrier against the tyranny and oppression of the government—they are really mere tools in its hands, for carrying into execution any injustice and oppression it may desire to have executed.

But for their right to judge of the law, and the justice of the law, juries would be no protection to an accused person, even as to matters of fact; for, if the government can dictate to a jury any law whatever, in a criminal case, it can certainly dictate to them the laws of evidence. That is, it can dictate what evidence is admissible, and what inadmissible, and also what force or weight is to be given to the evidence admitted. And if the government can thus dictate to a jury the laws of evidence, it can not only make it necessary for them to convict on a partial exhibition of the evidence rightfully pertaining to the case, but it can even require them [6] to convict on any evidence whatever that it pleases to offer them.

That the rights and duties of jurors must necessarily be such as are here claimed for them, will be evident when it is considered what the trial by jury is, and what is its object.

“The trial by jury,” then, is a “trial by the country”—that is, by the people—as distinguished from a trial by the government.

It was anciently called “trial per pais”—that is “trial by the country.” And now, in every criminal trial, the jury are told that the accused “has, for trial, put himself upon the country; which country you (the jury) are.”
The object of this trial “by the country,” or by the people, in preference to a trial by the government, is to guard against every species of oppression by the government. In order to effect this end, it is indispensable that the people, or “the country,” judge of and determine their own liberties against the government; instead of the government’s judging of and determining its own powers over the people. How is it possible that juries can do anything to protect the liberties of the people against the government, if they are not allowed to determine what those liberties are?

Any government, that is its own judge of, and determines authoritatively for the people, what are its own powers over the people, is an absolute government of course. It has all the powers that it chooses to exercise. There is no other—or at least no more accurate—definition of a despotism than this.

On the other hand, any people, that judge of, and determine authoritatively for the government, what are their own liberties against the government, of course retain all the liberties they wish to enjoy. And this is freedom. At least, it is freedom to them; because, although it may be theoretically imperfect, it, nevertheless, corresponds to their highest notions of freedom.

To secure this right of the people to judge of their own liberties against the government, the jurors are taken, (or must be, to make them lawful jurors,) from the body of the people, by lot, or by some process that precludes any previous knowledge, choice, or selection of them, on the part of the government. [7] This is done to prevent the government’s constituting a jury of its own partisans or friends; in other words, to prevent the government’s packing a jury, with a view to maintain its own laws, and accomplish its own purposes.

It is supposed that, if twelve men be taken, by lot, from the mass of the people, without the possibility of any previous knowledge, choice, or selection of them, on the part of the government, the jury will be a fair epitome of “the country” at large, and not merely of the party or faction that sustain the measures of the government; that substantially all classes of opinions, prevailing among the people, will be represented in the jury; and especially that the opponents of the government, (if the government have any opponents,) will be represented there, as well as its friends; that the classes, who are oppressed by the laws of the government, (if any are thus oppressed,) will have their representatives in the jury, as well as those classes, who take sides with the oppressor—that is, with the government.

It is fairly presumable that such a tribunal will agree to no conviction except such as substantially the whole country would agree to, if they were present, taking part in the trial. A trial by such a tribunal is, therefore, in effect, “a trial by the country.” In its results it probably comes as near to a trial by the whole country, as any trial that it is practicable to have, without too great inconvenience and expense. And as unanimity is required for a conviction, it follows that no one can be convicted, except for the violation of such laws as substantially the whole country wish to have maintained. The government can enforce none of its laws, (by punishing offenders, through the verdicts of juries,) except such as substantially the whole people wish to have enforced. The government, therefore, consistently with the trial by jury, can exercise no powers over the people, (or, what is the same thing, over the accused person, who represents the rights of the people,) except such as substantially the whole people of the country consent that it may exercise. In such a trial, therefore, “the country,” or the people, judge of and determine their own liberties against the government, instead of the [8] government’s judging of and determining its own powers over the people.
But all this “trial by the country” would be no trial at all “by the country,” but only a trial by the government, if the government could either declare who may, and who may not, be jurors, or could dictate to the jury anything whatever, either of law or evidence, that is of the essence of the trial.

If the government may decide who may, and who may not, be jurors, it will of course select only its partisans, and those friendly to its measures. It may not only prescribe who may, and who may not, be eligible to be drawn as jurors; but it may also question each person drawn as a juror, as to his sentiments in regard to the particular law involved in each trial, before suffering him to be sworn on the panel; and exclude him if he be found unfavorable to the maintenance of such a law.

[oll.libertyfund.org]

U.S. Supreme Court
RESPUBLICA v. SHAFFER, 1 U.S. 236, 1788
1 U.S. 236 (Dall.)
Court of Oyer and Terminer, at Philadelphia
February Sessions, 1788
M'Kean, Chief Justice.

"It is a matter well known, and well understood, that by the laws of our country, every question which affects a man's life, reputation, or property, must be tried by twelve of his peers; and that their unanimous verdict is, alone, competent to determine the fact in issue."