secure its reception or rejection.
The press teemed with the productions of temperate reason, of genius,
and of passion; and it was apparent that each party believed power,
sovereignty, liberty, peace, and security;--things most dear to the
human heart;--to be staked on the question depending before the
public. From that oblivion which is the common destiny of fugitive
pieces, treating on subjects which agitate only for the moment, was
rescued, by its peculiar merit, a series of essays which first
appeared in the papers of New York. To expose the real circumstances
of America, and the dangers which hung over the republic; to detect
the numerous misrepresentations of the constitution; to refute the
arguments of its opponents; and to confirm, and increase, its friends,
by a full and able development of its principles; three gentlemen,[39]
distinguished for their political experience, their talents, and their
love of union, gave to the public a series of numbers which, collected
in two volumes under the title of the FEDERALIST, will be read and
admired when the controversy in which that valuable treatise on
government originated, shall be no longer remembered.

[Footnote 39: Colonel Hamilton, Mr. Madison, and Mr. Jay.]

To decide the interesting question which agitated a continent, the
best talents of the several states were assembled in their respective
conventions. So balanced were parties in some of them, that, even
after the subject had been discussed for a considerable time, the fate
of the constitution could scarcely be conjectured; and so small, in
many instances, was the majority in its favour, as to afford strong
ground for the opinion that, had the influence of character been
removed, the intrinsic merits of the instrument would not have secured
its adoption. Indeed, it is scarcely to be doubted that, in some of
the adopting states, a majority of the people were in the opposition.
In all of them, the numerous amendments which were proposed,
demonstrate the reluctance with which the new government was accepted;
and that a dread of dismemberment, not an approbation of the
particular system under consideration, had induced an acquiescence in
it. The interesting nature of the question, the equality of the
parties, the animation produced inevitably by ardent debate, had a
necessary tendency to embitter the dispositions of the vanquished, and
to fix more deeply, in many bosoms, their prejudices against a plan of