essays under a classical pseudonym in order to identify with a Roman statesman—particularly a republican—and conceal one’s identity. The Federalist essays were all signed “Publius,” a reference to Publius Valerius Publicola, the legendary Roman statesman and general of the sixth century B.C. who was renowned for his eloquence, generosity, and dedication to republican principles of government. In Plutarch’s Lives, Publius is said to have been so adored by the people of Rome that they called him “Publicola,” or “people lover.”
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FEDERALIST
What is the significance of The Federalist, and why have generations of Americans relied so extensively on the essays of Publius in order to understand and appreciate the genius of the American political regime? To answer this question we must look beyond the ratification struggle to the historical development and interpretation of the Constitution. It is impossible to know with certainty, of course, what impact The Federalist had in securing New York’s acceptance of the proposed Constitution, but we do know that it had virtually no effect on the ratification and final adoption of the Constitution. This is so because the Constitution had already been ratified by nine States and was in effect when New York and Virginia finally got around to joining the Union in the summer of 1788. The Federalist, then, is important not because of its immediate impact on the ratification struggle but because of its contributions to our understanding of the constitutional system.
Within the pages of The Federalist is the whole theory of American constitutional government. Here Publius explains the structure upon which the Constitution is built and the rationale of the Framers in constructing a republican form of government based on a separation and division of powers. Why did the Framers favor two legislative chambers (a bicameral system) over a single one (a unicameral system)? What interests were to be represented in these assemblies? Why did they provide for a single instead of a plural executive? Why did they give Federal judges life tenure, during “good behavior,” rather than a limited term of office? Why did they grant certain powers to the central government and reserve others to the States? More fundamentally, why did they fear a concentration of power and prefer limited government?
The answers to these and other important questions about the nature and purpose of the constitutional design, and the meaning of virtually every political principle and clause in the Constitution, will be found in these essays. The Federalist is thus a window through which we may view the proceedings of the Philadelphia Convention and see how the system is supposed to work. It sheds light on the deliberations of the Framers, helping us know and understand and appreciate their reasoning and political theories and the original intentions behind the Constitution they created. It is not too much to say that a reading of The Federalist is indispensable to an understanding of the American Constitution.45
At the same time, we should be mindful that The Federalist does not tell the complete story or provide all the answers. It is not a treatise on political philosophy concerned with natural law, the origin and nature of the state, or the best form of government in the abstract. Although it is timeless in the sense that it rests on fixed principles and enduring truths concerning such matters as the threat to liberty that is created by a consolidated government, The Federalist is a commentary on the American Constitution, a collection of essays on the theory of American government that is in many respects inapplicable to other political systems. A reading of The Federalist is not likely to improve one’s understanding of foreign governments or explain why the American constitutional system is any better than another form of government.
Moreover, the essays of Publius are only one of many original sources on the thinking of those who participated in the formation and adoption of the Constitution. There are the debates in the Philadelphia Convention, dutifully recorded by James Madison and other delegates;46 the voluminous debates in the State ratifying conventions;47 and the various essays, newspaper accounts, and correspondence of other participants who took a stand on the new Constitution.48 And if we include the first ten amendments, or the Bill of Rights, as they came to be known, as part of the original constitutional edifice, then to get the full picture we must consult yet another source—the debates of the First Congress, which drafted and proposed the Bill of Rights in 1789.49 And to these sources should be added those not so directly related to the drafting and ratification of the Constitution. Among these would be the State constitutions previously discussed;50 the practices, institutions, and ordering documents of Anglo-Americans during the colonial period;51 many political writings and sermons of earlier periods, particularly those dealing with the legitimate functions and ends of government; the character, rights and duties of the English people, and their relation as British citizens to the sovereign; as well as the dangers to be avoided in constructing governments.52 This is only to say that the thoughts and actions of the Founders cannot be fully appreciated without a knowledge of the political tradition of prerevolutionary America. The essays of Publius, in other words, should be read in conjunction with other founding documents and are by no means the only source of knowledge available to us for an understanding of the Framers’ thoughts and intentions.
During the first half-century of the American republic, however, The Federalist was clearly the most significant, if not the only meaningful, resource for understanding the intent of the Framers other than the words of the Constitution itself. The Journal of the Convention, which contains no speeches or debates and records only the Secretary’s minutes and tables giving the votes by State on the questions presented, was not published until 1819.53 Not until 1830, when Jonathan Elliot collected and published the debates in several of the State ratifying conventions, did Americans have easy access to the deliberations of the “other” founders who participated at the ratification stage in the making of the Constitution. No less important, it was 1840 before James Madison’s extensive Notes of the Debates in the Federal Convention were finally published.54
It is noteworthy that the availability of these and other original sources after the 1840s failed to dislodge The Federalist as the favorite and most frequently cited guide to the theory of the Constitution and the substantive meaning of its provisions, or to discredit in any way the reliability or accuracy of Publius’s representations. It is true, of course, that The Federalist is polemical. It is forthrightly a campaign tract intended to persuade the electorate to support the Constitution. As such it occasionally exaggerates the perceived strengths of the Constitution and downplays or ignores its weaknesses. But this bias hardly detracts from its great merit as a faithful expositor of the meaning of the Constitution from the perspective of those who made it.
Immediately recognized as authoritative, The Federalist became a classic even before it was completed. The first thirty-six essays were published in New York by J. McLean & Company in a bound volume on March 22, 1788. The remainder appeared in a second volume on May 28. In 1792 a French edition, which appeared in Paris, became the first to reveal the true identity of the authors. Since then The Federalist has been translated into more than twenty foreign languages, and nearly a hundred editions and reprintings of it in English have appeared over the past two hundred years.
Between 1788 and 1818 the McLean edition was reprinted on four occasions, the first being a 1799 edition published by John Tiebout in New York. The popularity of The Federalist encouraged a New York printer named George F. Hopkins to undertake a new edition in 1802. Hamilton reluctantly agreed to this on condition that he be permitted to make modest revisions and corrections, but he rejected Hopkins’s suggestion that the names of the real authors appear at the head of each essay, preferring to maintain their anonymity. Inasmuch as the authorship of the essays had been generally known for years anyway, Hamilton’s unwillingness to take credit for his contributions is rather puzzling. Douglass Adair, the distinguished American historian who closely studied the disputed authorship of certain Federalist essays, has argued persuasively that Hamilton’s “strange reluctance” to publicize the identity of the authors can probably be attributed to the fact that “some of his essays written in 1787–1788 did not square
