Empire of Liberty Chs 4,5,6

Again, since Pratt beats me to it, I will simply try to add a few points to what he has posted. An overall thought from these three chapters is that the struggle over a larger government with more power in the executive has been evident from the beginning. According to Article I Section 8, the Congress shall have the power "To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriaton of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years; To provide and maintain a Navy; To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces; To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions."

In my reading of Article I Section 8, the founders did not want a standing army. The militia could exist and was expected to exist at the state levels. But, a standing army was to exist for only two years at a maximum. There was to be no federal standing army. Hamilton's attempt to create such an army and use George Washington to do so should have been deemed unconstitutional. However, it appears that the Navy is a different matter.

P. 263: "At last, many Federalists believed they would have the standing army that they had long yearned for. Without an army, they believed, tyhe United States could scarcely qualify as a modern nation.....it could not wage war."

On a different matter, p. 271: "...Madison on January 7, 1800, issued a notable committee to the Virginia assembly in which he defended the earlier resoltuions and warned that the Federalist plans for a consolidation would "transform the republican system of the United States into a monarchy." If the federal government extended its "power to every subject falling wityhin the idea of the 'general welfare'."
This makes it clear that Madison and Hamilton knew, when writing the Federalist papers, that Article I Section 8 would enable the central government to grow without limit. The General Welfare clause coupled with the Commerce clause have corrupted the meaning of limited government.

Finally, it shouldn't be a surprise that all he public choice issues existing today existed in 1798.