The representation of their particular state not composing a majority of the national legislature, they could not consider that body as safely representing the people, and were disposed to measure out power to it with the same sparing hand with which they would confer it on persons not chosen by themselves, not accountable to them for its exercise, nor having any common interest with them.

That power might be abused, was, to persons of this opinion, a conclusive argument against its being bestowed; and they seemed firmly persuaded that the cradle of the constitution would be the grave of republican liberty.

The friends and the enemies of that instrument were stimulated to exertion by motives equally powerful; and, during the interval between its publication and adoption, every faculty of the mind was strained to 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.