The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Federalist Papers, by
Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

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Title: The Federalist Papers

Author: Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

Release Date: July, 1998 [Etext #1404]
Posting Date: November 6, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE FEDERALIST PAPERS

By Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

FEDERALIST No. 1

General Introduction

For the Independent Journal. Saturday, October 27, 1787

HAMILTON

To the People of the State of New York:

AFTER an unequivocal experience of the inefficacy of the subsisting
federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new
Constitution for the United States of America. The subject speaks its
own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the
existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it
is composed, the fate of an empire in many respects the most interesting
in the world. It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been
reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example,
to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really
capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and
choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their
political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth
in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be
regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong
election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be
considered as the general misfortune of mankind.

This idea will add the inducements of philanthropy to those of
patriotism, to heighten the solicitude which all considerate and good
men must feel for the event. Happy will it be if our choice should be
directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and
unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good. But this
is a thing more ardently to be wished than seriously to be e