13          A history of the harmful effects of a mutable government would fill a volume.  I will list a few, each of which is a source of others.

14          A mutable government forfeits the respect and confidence of other nations, and all the advantages connected with national character.

            All prudent people know that a person who frequently changes his plans or lives his life without any plan at all will quickly fall victim to his own unsteadiness and folly.  His friendly neighbors may pity him, but all will decline to connect their fortunes with his.  And more than a few people will seize the opportunity to make their fortunes out of his.

            One nation is to another as one individual is to another, with one sad difference.  Nations have fewer benevolent emotions than people.  They feel fewer restraints from taking advantage of each other. Every nation that shows a lack of wisdom and stability may expect every possible loss to the more systematic policy of their wiser neighbors.

            Unfortunately, the best example is America.  She is ridiculed by her enemies.  And she is prey to every nation that wants to speculate about her changing councils and embarrassed affairs.

15             The domestic effects of a mutable policy are even worse.  It poisons the blessings of liberty itself.

It won’t benefit the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws are so voluminous that they cannot be read or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.  Or if they are repealed or revised before they are promulgated or are changed so frequently that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow.

            Law is defined to be a rule of action.  But how can it be a rule when it is little known and less fixed?                

16          There is another effect of having laws that are not stable.  It gives the few perceptive, enterprising, and wealthy citizens an advantage over the industrious and uninformed mass of people.

Every new regulation about commerce or revenue or that affects property value is a new opportunity to those people who watch the change and can predict its consequences.  They don’t create this opportunity.  It is created by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow citizens.  When this happens, it may truthfully be said that laws are made for the few, not for the many.

17        An unstable government also hurts the economy.  When people don’t know what actions the government might take, projects where success and profit may depend on the existing laws continuing will be discouraged.

What prudent merchant will jeopardize his fortunes in a new area of commerce when he doesn’t know if his plans may be made unlawful before they can be executed?  What farmer or manufacturer will commit himself to a specific cultivation or project when he can’t be sure that his preparations and investment will not make him a victim to an inconstant government?

           In a word, if an improvement or praiseworthy enterprise needs the protection or security of a consistent national policy, it will not be pursued.

18          But the worst effect is that the people will feel less attachment and reverence to the government.   No government will be respected without being truly respectable.  And it will not be respectable if it doesn’t have some order and stability.

*quotes from The Federalist Papers: Modern English Edition Two