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compass and points the course which we are to steer through the ocean of time opening on us. And never could we embark on it under circumstances more auspicious. Our first and fundamental maxim should be, never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe. Our second, never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with the cis-Atlantic affairs. America, North and South, has a set of interests distinct from those of Europe, and peculiarly her own. She should therefore have a system of her own, separate and apart from that of Europe. While the last is laboring to become the domicile of despotism, our endeavor should surely be, to make our hemisphere that of freedom. One nation,3 most of all, could disturb us in this pursuit; she now offers to lead, aid, and accompany us in it. By acceding to her proposition, we detach her from the bands, bring her mighty weight into the scale of free government, and emancipate a continent at one stroke, which might otherwise linger long in doubt and difficulty. Great Britain is the nation which can do us the most harm of any one, or all on earth; and with her on our side we need not fear of the whole world. With her then, we should most sedulously cherish a cordial friendship; and nothing would tend more to knit our affections than to be fighting once more, side by side, in the same cause. Not that I would purchase even her amity at the price of taking part in her wars. But the war in which the present proposition might engage us, should that be its consequence, is not her war, but ours. Its object is to introduce and establish the American system, of keeping out of our land all foreign powers, of never permitting those of Europe to intermeddle with the affairs of our nations. It is to maintain our own principle, not to depart from it. And if, to facilitate this, we can effect a division in the body of the European powers, and draw over to our side its most powerful member, surely we should do it. But I am clearly of Mr. Canning's1 opinion, that it will prevent instead of provoking war. With Great Britain withdrawn from their scale and shifted into that of our two continents, all Europe combined would not undertake such a war. For how would they propose to get at either enemy without superior fleets? Nor is the occasion to be slighted which this proposition offers, of declaring our protest against the atrocious violations of the rights of nations, by the interference of any one in the internal affairs of another, so flagitiously begun by Bonaparte, and now continued by the equally lawless Alliance, calling itself Holy.

But we have first to ask ourselves a question. Do we wish to acquire to our own confederacy any one or more of the Spanish provinces? I candidly confess, that I have ever looked on Cuba as the

3. England.

4. George Canning (1770-1827) had just become British foreign secretary, and within the year led the movement to

recognize the independence of the revolted Spanish colonies in South America.

most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of States. The control which, with Florida Point, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico, and the countries and isthmus bordering on it, as well as all those whose waters flow into it, would fill up the measure of our political well-being. Yet, as I am sensible that this can never be obtained, even with her own consent, but by war; and its independence, which is our second interest, (and especially its independence of England,) can be secured without it, I have no hesitation in abandoning my first wish to future chances, and accepting its independence, with peace and the friendship of England, rather than its association, at the expense of war and her enmity.

I could honestly, therefore, join in the declaration proposed, that we aim not at the acquisition of any of those possessions, that we will not stand in the way of any amicable arrangement between them and the Mother country; but that we will oppose, with all our means, the forcible interposition of any other power, as auxiliary, stipendiary, or under any other form or pretext, and most especially, their transfer to any power by conquest, cession, or acquisition in any other way. I should think it, therefore, advisable, that the Executive should encourage the British government to a continuance in the dispositions expressed in these letters, by an assurance of his concurrence with them as far as his authority goes; and that as it may lead to war, the declaration of which requires an act of Congress, the case shall be laid before them for consideration at their first meeting, and under the reasonable aspect in which it is seen by himself.

I have been so long weaned from political subjects, and have so long ceased to take any interest in them, that I am sensible I am not qualified to offer opinions on them worthy of any attention. But the question now proposed involves consequences so lasting, and effects so decisive of our future destinies, as to rekindle all the interest I have heretofore felt on such occasions, and to induce me to the hazard of opinions, which will prove only my wish to contribute still my mite towards anything which may be useful to our country. And praying you to accept it at only what it is worth, I add the assurance of my constant and affectionate friendship and respect.

THE FEDERALIST
(1787-1788)

The essays of The Federalist were the product of an American crisis, written under pressure, as Hamilton said, "in the cabin of

a Hudson River sloop; by the dim candle of country inn." The immediate urgency, in 1787, was for ratification of the Constitu

tion of the United States, a document which had resulted from extended debate and vast compromises of opposed opinion in the Constitutional Convention. The eighty-five Federalist essays, all but eight of them published in New York periodicals between October, 1787, and May, 1788, accomplished much more than the influencing of ratification in New York or other doubtful states. Recognized as the fundamental commentary on the Constitution, they have influenced American constitutional law from the time of the first chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Jay, who wrote at least five of them. They have served political science the world over as a principal statement of the theory of a republic; and finally, they have won lasting approval in the world literature of political philosophy.

The signature of "Publius" temporarily masked the collaboration of three powerful American statesmen. The authorship of a number of the essays is still in doubt, and a few may have resulted from collaboration. Hamilton certainly instigated the project and is credited with thirty-five or more of the papers; Madison probably wrote thirty; and Jay, as before mentioned, certainly five.

These three men represented, in temperament and experience, the gaping diversities of opinion that had been resolved in the Constitutional Convention. The weakness of the Confederation (1778), which vested the principal sovereignty in the individual states, had convinced nearly all leaders of the need to en

large the federal sovereignty; to secure, as Hamilton said (Federalist, No. XXXVII), "stability and energy in government, with the inviolable attention due to liberty and to the republican form." But the liberal Madison had differed widely from such conservatives as Hamilton respecting the degree of individual and local sovereignty that must be relinquished. Like Jefferson a planter-aristocrat deeply read in the liberal philosophy of the time, he was an individualist who cherished the idea that government was at best but a necessary evil, continually subject to the free social consent of the individual. He had a physiocrat's confidence in the land as the source of wealth; he had fostered, in the Virginia constitution, those principles of civil liberty which he later helped to enlarge into the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the federal Constitution. Thomas Jefferson, whose ideals have been the foundation stone of American freedom, was all this time absent as American minister to France, but he could have had no better spokesman than James Madison.

Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, on the contrary, represented the conservatism of the mercantile and banking interests centered in New York, and both were allied by marriage with powerful and conservative New York families. Both were fundamentally devoted to republican principles, but neither one was temperamentally able to have confidence in the people as a whole. Each had hoped for what Hamilton, in the Constitutional

Convention, had demanded: demanded: "One General Government [of] complete sovereignty, [because] two sovereignties cannot exist within the same limits." As for the people, Hamilton declared that the powers of government should rest with "the wealthy, the good, and the wise," while Jay later summed up his economic philosophy with the dictum that "those who own the country ought to govern it."

Yet in order to secure a republic with adequate federal sovereignty, men of this opinion had been willing to make compromises with the views of many who felt as Jefferson or Madison did. The Federalist was the final proof that both parties were convinced of the effectiveness of these adjustments, and the resulting system of checks and balances provided in the Constitution to express the correspondence of the two American ideals -individualism, and effective action, by consensus, for the general good of the whole federal society.

In its entirety The Federalist discusses the theory and the proposed function of almost every

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The Federalist papers were first collected in The Federalist: A Collection of Essays written in Favour of the New Constitution ***, New York, 1788. Standard editions are those of Henry Cabot Lodge, 1891, P. L. Ford, 1898, and E. M. Earle, 1938. Selections, with a useful introduction and bibliography, are found in Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson: Representative Selections, edited by F. C. Prescott, 1934. J. E. Cooke's complete edition (1960) is printed from the original text, with annotations. The Papers of James Madison is in progress (U. of Chicago Press, 1964 et seq.).

No. II

[One Union Indivisible]

TO THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEw York:1

When the people of America reflect that they are now called upon to decide a question, which, in its consequences, must prove one of the most important that ever engaged their attention, the propricty of their taking a very comprehensive, as well as a very serious, view of it, will be evident.

Nothing is more certain than the indispensable necessity of gov1. The Federalist, No. II (written by John Jay) appeared in the Independent Journal, New York, October 31, 1787.

ernment, and it is equally undeniable that, whenever and however it is instituted, the people must cede to it some of their natural rights, in order to vest it with requisite powers. It is well worthy of consideration therefore, whether it would conduce more to the interest of the people of America that they should, to all general purposes, be one nation, under one federal government, or that they should divide themselves into separate confederacies, and give to the head of each the same kind of powers which they are advised to place in one national government.

It has until lately been a received and uncontradicted opinion that the prosperity of the people of America depended on their continuing firmly united, and the wishes, prayers, and efforts of our best and wisest citizens have been constantly directed to that object. But politicians now appear, who insist that this opinion is erroneous, and that instead of looking for safety and happiness in union, we ought to seek it in a division of the States into distinct confederacies or sovereignties. However extraordinary this new doctrine may appear, it nevertheless has its advocates; and certain characters who were much opposed to it formerly are at present of the number. Whatever may be the arguments or inducements which have wrought this change in the sentiments and declarations of these gentlemen, it certainly would not be wise in the people at large to adopt these new political tenets without being fully convinced that they are founded in truth and sound policy.

It has often given me pleasure to observe that independent America was not composed of detached and distant territories, but that one connected, fertile, wide-spreading country was the portion of our western sons of liberty. Providence has in a particular manner blessed it with a variety of soils and productions, and watered it with innumerable streams, for the delight and accommodation of its inhabitants. A succession of navigable waters forms a kind of chain round its borders, as if to bind it together; while the most noble rivers in the world, running at convenient distances, present them with highways for the easy communication of friendly aids, and the mutual transportation and exchange of their various commodities.

With equal pleasure I have so often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people-a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.

This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence that an

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