28, titled "The Same Subject Continued: The Idea of Restraining the Legislative Authority in Regard to the Common Defense Considered", is a political essay by Alexander Hamilton and the twenty-eighth of The Federalist Papers.

Failing that, he believed that state governments and the people would be in an advantageous position over a federal military when engaging in the natural right to self-defense.

Hamilton begins by acknowledging truth in the argument that military force will sometimes be necessary in the course of governing, though he rejects the idea that it will be the standard method by which the law is enforced.

He argues that a military is necessary for a country with representative government, or that it will be subject to the same instability that affected previous republics.

Hamilton then proposes a scenario of several distinct confederacies of states, arguing that the same problem would still exist and that federal militaries would still be necessary.

Hamilton concludes that the practical aspects of military repression by the federal government make such concerns unreasonable.

28, Hamilton concedes the point made by anti-federalists that there are times in which military force will be used to enforce federal law.

Hamilton approached the issue in this essay from a perspective of political realism, describing when such a contingency would be acceptable rather than denying it outright.

He insists upon the use of military force to challenge an insurrection at the local level or a state government that becomes tyrannical.

[6] Much of his argumentation is in favor of the point that a federal military would supplement state militias that he considered ill-equipped to handle large-scale insurrections.

[3][8] This applied in particular to the United States, as the large population and land area would make defense considerably easier than in a smaller country.

28 has been invoked in multiple Supreme Court cases to analyze Hamilton's view of the relationship between the military and the government.

[9][10] Hamilton's arguments regarding the use of force may be reconsidered following the development of modern militaries and weapons of mass destruction in the 20th century.

Particularly inapplicable to the 21st century is Hamilton's argument that state militias and private citizens would have access to the same military resources as the federal army.