Federalist No. 60 was written by Alexander Hamilton under the name Publius and published in the New York Packet on February 26, 1788. In this essay, Hamilton continues defending Congress’s power to regulate federal elections in the last resort.
This paper matters because Hamilton now answers a narrower fear. Critics had argued that even if Congress did not destroy elections outright, it might manipulate election rules to favor a preferred class of men, especially “the wealthy and the well-born.” Hamilton’s answer is that this fear is largely imaginary: the federal government is too structurally diverse, the country’s interests are too mixed, and the power granted is too limited to make such a class plot plausible.
1. Hamilton starts from the prior point: exclusive state control is unsafe
“an uncontrollable power over the elections to the federal government could not, without hazard, be committed to the State legislatures.”
He opens by carrying forward Federalist No. 59. The danger of exclusive state control remains real, but now he turns to the opposite danger.
2. The new fear is class favoritism through election rules
“promote the election of some favorite class of men in exclusion of others”
That is the heart of the objection. The fear is not total abolition of elections, but rigging the rules to skew who actually gets chosen.
3. Hamilton calls the theory wildly unrealistic
“Of all chimerical suppositions, this seems to be the most chimerical.”
Classic Hamilton. He is not gently doubtful. He thinks the objection is fantasy-level paranoia.
4. A scheme this extreme would trigger immediate resistance
“an immediate revolt of the great body of the people, headed and directed by the State governments.”
That is one of his strongest practical points. If Congress tried something this brazen, it would not be quietly tolerated.
5. A deliberate attack on broad suffrage would be politically explosive
“so fundamental a privilege”
“without occasioning a popular revolution”
“is altogether inconceivable and incredible.”
Hamilton says the right at stake is too basic for the country to watch it get strangled without a violent reaction.
6. The national government is too internally diverse for a neat class conspiracy
“The dissimilarity in the ingredients which will compose the national government”
This is a major structural argument. Different branches are formed differently, so coordination on behalf of one favored class is harder than critics pretend.
7. Different states have different property patterns, habits, and interests
“diversity in the state of property, in the genius, manners, and habits of the people”
Hamilton says America is too mixed and uneven for one simple class preference to dominate everywhere at once.
8. The branches are constituted too differently to share one class bias easily
“The House of Representatives being to be elected immediately by the people, the Senate by the State legislatures, the President by electors”
That diversity of selection methods makes common favoritism less natural and less stable.
9. Senate election rules would not help a class scheme much anyway
“time and manner”
“can affect the spirit which will direct the choice of its members”
Hamilton argues that the Senate, chosen by state legislatures, is especially unlikely to be reshaped by these election mechanics.
10. He asks the central practical question: favored against whom?
“Will it lean in favor of the landed interest, or the moneyed interest, or the mercantile interest, or the manufacturing interest?”
Great line. Hamilton forces critics to stop speaking in spooky abstractions and name the supposed favorite class.
11. The fashionable scare phrase gets named directly
“the wealthy and the well-born”
That phrase clearly had legs in the public debate, and Hamilton goes straight at it instead of dancing around it.
12. A national class preference is less likely than a local one
“it is infinitely less likely that either of them should gain an ascendant in the national councils, than that the one or the other of them should predominate in all the local councils.”
This is a very Federalist move. The broader republic dilutes narrow domination better than local politics often does.
13. Agriculture will naturally remain powerful in America
“In a country consisting chiefly of the cultivators of land”
“the landed interest must, upon the whole, preponderate in the government.”
Hamilton says the social reality of the country itself makes certain anti-agrarian conspiracy theories weak.
14. The Senate especially would reflect state legislative majorities
“the national Senate… will generally be a faithful copy of the majorities of those assemblies.”
So if the landed interest remains strong in the states, it will not vanish in the national structure.
15. Commerce is too important to be deliberately crippled
“the utility of commerce”
“The importance of commerce, in the view of revenue alone”
Hamilton says no sensible national government would gratuitously wound commerce, because commerce is too vital to public prosperity and revenue.
16. The “wealthy and well-born” are not all gathered in one place
“Are ‘the wealthy and the well-born’… confined to particular spots in the several States?”
This is one of the sharpest parts of the essay. If the rich are geographically scattered, manipulating election locations will not reliably privilege them as a class.
17. Hamilton says every intelligent reader knows they are dispersed
“scattered over the face of the country”
That kills the logic of the objection. You cannot privilege a class through location tricks if that class is not concentrated.
18. The only direct way to privilege the rich would be property qualifications
“there is no method of securing to the rich the preference apprehended, but by prescribing qualifications of property”
That is a major line. Hamilton says the critics are blaming the wrong constitutional power.
19. But Congress does not get that power here
“Its authority would be expressly restricted to the regulation of the TIMES, the PLACES, the MANNER of elections.”
This is the legal core of the paper. Congress may regulate procedure, not qualifications.
20. Qualifications are fixed elsewhere and are unalterable by Congress
“defined and fixed in the Constitution, and are unalterable by the legislature.”
That sharply narrows the real danger critics are imagining.
21. If rulers were strong enough to trample rights, they would not bother with election-law games
“Would they not rather boldly resolve to perpetuate themselves in office by one decisive act of usurpation”
This is pure Hamilton. He says the objection imagines tyrants using clumsy little procedural tricks when outright usurpation would be the more natural path.
22. Election rigging is a strangely timid scheme for supposed tyrants
“precarious expedients”
He mocks the theory by saying it gives the would-be oppressors both too much power and too little nerve at the same time.
23. Citizens would swarm to overturn such a scheme
“citizens… would flock from the remote extremes of their respective States to the places of election”
Hamilton closes with a very muscular picture of public resistance. Americans, in his view, would not sit politely while essential electoral rights were dismantled.
Why Federalist No. 60 Works for Highlights
Federalist No. 60 works especially well as a highlights page because Hamilton dismantles the objection from multiple angles at once:
- political reality
- social geography
- constitutional text
- branch structure
- and sheer common sense.
It is also a strong Hamilton paper because he does not merely say the abuse would be wrong. He says it would be impractical, self-defeating, structurally difficult, and far less likely than the critics claim.
Strong Meme Candidates from Federalist No. 60
The strongest quote-image or meme candidates are probably these:
- “the most chimerical”
- “an immediate revolt of the great body of the people”
- “a popular revolution”
- “the wealthy and the well-born”
- “scattered over the face of the country”
- “qualifications of property”
- “defined and fixed in the Constitution”
- “one decisive act of usurpation”
- “precarious expedients”
- “to overthrow their tyrants”
Related Links
- Federalist No. 60 Full Text
- Federalist No. 59 Full Text
- Alexander Hamilton
- Federalist Papers
- United States Constitution