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Federalist No. 30

Federalist Paper by Alexander Hamilton on taxation

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 30, 2026
Entity authorityQ5440601 ↗
Source-derived summary

Federalist No. 30, titled "Concerning the General Power of Taxation", is a political essay by Alexander Hamilton and the thirtieth of The Federalist Papers. It was first published in the New-York Packet on December 28, 1787, as the twenty-ninth entry in the series under the pseudonym used for all Federalist Papers, Publius. The essay argued that the national government must have broad powers of taxation to provide for national defense and the public good. It revisited ideas that were first raised in No. 12, and the series continued on the subject of taxation through No. 36.

Federalist No. 30 criticized the system of taxation under the Articles of Confederation, which required the states to levy taxes and provide funding for the national government. Hamilton argued that the national government must be able to levy taxes because there are always further needs for government funding and it would need the power to acquire additional funds in times of war.

Editorial summary

“Federalist No. 30” enters the record as federalist Paper by Alexander Hamilton on taxation. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Federalist, Paper and Alexander can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1787—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1787-12-28. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Federalist, Paper and Alexander.
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“Federalist No. 30” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Federalist, Paper and Alexander provides the most credible route into that argument.

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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5440601. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1787.

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This entry incorporates text from “Federalist No. 30” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.