the notice of posterity, because in it are candidly and
ably discussed the principles of freedom and the topics
of government -- which will be always interesting to man-
kind so long as they shall be connected in civil society."
The "notice of posterity" for the stern yet hopeful mes-
sage of The Federalist has never been more attentive than
in these drawn-out years of peril for constitutional
democracy.

The immense prestige of this work seems especially
remarkable when viewed in the light of its origins. The
Federalist is essentially a collection of eighty-five letters
to the public over the pseudonym of Publius that ap-
peared at short intervals in the newspapers of New
York City beginning on October 27, 1787. These letters
were still appearing in late March, 1788, when the first
thirty-six were issued in a collected edition. Continuous
publication was halited with number 77 on April 4, then
resumed June 14, and concluded August 16. In the
meantime, a second volume containing numbers 37-85
was published May 28.

Conceived in the pressure of a great crisis in human
events, written with a haste that often bordered on the
frantic, printed and published as if it were the most
perishable kind of dady news, The Federalist bore few
marks of immortality at birth. It was, in fact, only one
of several hundred salvos in the loud war of words that
accompanied the protracted struggle over ratification of
the Constitution. That new charter of government, it will
be remembered, had been agreed upon and signed at
Philadelphia, September 17, 1781, transmitted to the
Congress then existing under the Articles of Confedera-
tion, and thereupon laid, with no great show of en-
thusiasm, before the people of the United States. The
approval of ratifying conventions in nine of the thirteen
states was to bring the Constitution into effect. Few of
its authors and supporters imagined that it would be
easy to win such a margin of approval in the chaotic
political circumstances of the world's first experiment in
popular government over an extended area; all recog-
nized that a clear-cut vote against the Constitution in any
one of four key states would be enough by itself to de-
stroy their hopes for "a more perfect Union."

One of these states was was New York, among whose
claims to a vital role in the affairs of the new republic

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