MADISON

To the People of the State of New York:

HAVING shown that no one of the powers transferred to the federal
government is unnecessary or improper, the next question to be
considered is, whether the whole mass of them will be dangerous to the
portion of authority left in the several States.

The adversaries to the plan of the convention, instead of considering
in the first place what degree of power was absolutely necessary for
the purposes of the federal government, have exhausted themselves in a
secondary inquiry into the possible consequences of the proposed degree
of power to the governments of the particular States. But if the Union,
as has been shown, be essential to the security of the people of America
against foreign danger; if it be essential to their security against
contentions and wars among the different States; if it be essential to
guard them against those violent and oppressive factions which embitter
the blessings of liberty, and against those military establishments
which must gradually poison its very fountain; if, in a word, the
Union be essential to the happiness of the people of America, is it not
preposterous, to urge as an objection to a government, without which
the objects of the Union cannot be attained, that such a government
may derogate from the importance of the governments of the individual
States? Was, then, the American Revolution effected, was the American
Confederacy formed, was the precious blood of thousands spilt, and
the hard-earned substance of millions lavished, not that the people of
America should enjoy peace, liberty, and safety, but that the government
of the individual States, that particular municipal establishments,
might enjoy a certain extent of power, and be arrayed with certain
dignities and attributes of sovereignty? We have heard of the impious
doctrine in the Old World, that the people were made for kings, not
kings for the people. Is the same doctrine to be revived in the New, in
another shape that the solid happiness of the people is to be sacrificed
to the views of political institutions of a different form? It is too
early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good,
the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object
to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever has any other
value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object. Were
the plan of the convention adverse to the public ha