Hugh Williamson Speaks on the Size of Government

“As you know from my “Letters of Sylvius” I have always been a strong supporter of the Federal system.  But there needs to be a balance between the central government and the economic benefits of free enterprise.  We saw this conflict in my native North Carolina when the farmers and the merchants disagreed about the amount of government control of commerce that was necessary.  While I am an unabashed advocate of Federalism, even I am amazed and appalled at the large numbers of people in and working full-time for the Federal government.  In my wildest imagination, I never envisaged that more than one in a thousand citizens would be employed full-time by the government except as soldiers during a war.

“How many people does it take to provide the services that the Federal government should provide?  When we started the Federal government there were fewer than one in ten thousand citizens employed in any capacity by the Federal government.  Today about one in a hundred (not counting the uniformed military) are Federal government employees, and many more are indirectly employed by the government as contractors performing government duties.

A substantial portion (over one-third) of government employment is the military.  The size of the military should be thought of in two parts, the first is the infrastructure required to support the operations and training.  The second is the actual combat force required to execute operations.  Both need to be sized appropriately to achieve the National objectives, whatever they currently are.  But the actual executing force is ideally called upon only when a crisis requires it.  Our model for this was the militia and today the National Guard and Reserve perform this function to some extent. 

Interestingly, a far greater portion of the US population today is in the active part of the military than we envisioned.  Simultaneously a smaller portion is in the Guard and Reserve portions (comparable to the militia.)  We envisioned that the majority of able bodied citizens would be subject to call up and trained for such duty.  The Swiss are a closer example of the model we had in mind, i.e. all able bodied citizens have been trained and equipped and are prepared for being called up to defend the nation.  This reflects a personal commitment to assuring the fundamental priorities of the nation.