Federalist No. 21

Alexander Hamilton, author of Federalist No. 21

Federalist No. 21 is an essay by Alexander Hamilton, the twenty-first of The Federalist Papers. It was published on December 12, 1787 under the pseudonym Publius, the name under which all The Federalist Papers were published. It is titled, "Other Defects of the Present Confederation."

In Federalist No. 21 Alexander Hamilton focuses on the three main imperfections of government under the Articles of Confederation, and how the Constitution will rectify these problems. First, Hamilton observes that the current government has no power to enforce laws and also lacks a mutual guarantee of state rights. Under the Articles, a faction could easily take control of a state and the government would not be able to do anything about it. Then, Hamilton comments on the inefficiency of the confederation's current method of collecting taxes by quotas, and denounces it as a method by which the states may be broken apart. According to Hamilton, however, these problems are easily rectifiable, and the Constitution will fix all of them if it is approved.

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Wikisource has original text related to this article: Federalist No. 21

• The Federalist No. 21 Text