r the encouragement given
to any particular cultivation or establishment, when he can have no
assurance that his preparatory labors and advances will not render him
a victim to an inconstant government? In a word, no great improvement
or laudable enterprise can go forward which requires the auspices of a
steady system of national policy.

But the most deplorable effect of all is that diminution of attachment
and reverence which steals into the hearts of the people, towards
a political system which betrays so many marks of infirmity, and
disappoints so many of their flattering hopes. No government, any
more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly
respectable; nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain
portion of order and stability.

PUBLIUS

FEDERALIST No. 63

The Senate Continued

For the Independent Journal. Saturday, March 1, 1788

MADISON

To the People of the State of New York:

A FIFTH desideratum, illustrating the utility of a senate, is the want
of a due sense of national character. Without a select and stable
member of the government, the esteem of foreign powers will not only be
forfeited by an unenlightened and variable policy, proceeding from the
causes already mentioned, but the national councils will not possess
that sensibility to the opinion of the world, which is perhaps not
less necessary in order to merit, than it is to obtain, its respect and
confidence.

An attention to the judgment of other nations is important to every
government for two reasons: the one is, that, independently of the
merits of any particular plan or measure, it is desirable, on various
accounts, that it should appear to other nations as the offspring of
a wise and honorable policy; the second is, that in doubtful cases,
particularly where the national councils may be warped by some strong
passion or momentary interest, the presumed or known opinion of the
impartial world may be the best guide that can be followed. What has not
America lost by her want of character with foreign nations; and how
many errors and follies would she not have avoided, if the justice and
propriety of her measures had, in every instance, been previously tried
by the light in which they would probably appear to the unbiased part of
mankind?

Yet however requisite a sense of national character may be, it is
evident that it can never be sufficiently possessed by a numerous
and changeable body. It can on