The Federalist. Hamilton Alexander

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      What distinguished Hopkins’s 1802 edition from earlier publications of The Federalist was the addition of an appendix containing three documents. The first two—the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution—were intended to facilitate a reading of The Federalist in that they are the texts upon which The Federalist is a commentary. But the third addition, which consisted of seven essays by “Pacificus,” served a different purpose: to enlarge upon or even change the substantive meaning of those essays in The Federalist dealing with the executive power.

      “The Letters of Pacificus,” as they were titled when they first appeared in New York newspapers, grew out of a dispute in 1793 between Federalists and Republicans concerning President Washington’s authority to issue a Declaration of Impartiality in the war between England and France. Writing as Pacificus, Alexander Hamilton defended the Declaration against the charge that the President had exceeded his powers. At the urging of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison argued in favor of a narrow interpretation of the President’s power to declare the neutrality of the United States and, in the name of “Helvidius,” produced five essays contending that only Congress had the authority to determine whether the United States was at war or peace.

      The “Letters of Pacificus” and “Letters of Helvidius” offer one of the most enlightening discussions of executive power in American political history. They have long been regarded as important commentaries on the President’s war and diplomatic powers—commentaries, it should again be noted, that are not entirely consistent with the teachings of Publius. Much to the dismay of Madison, however, the 1802 edition included only the “Letters of Pacificus.” This was also true of the 1810 edition, again published in New York, which became the first American edition to identify the authors. This particular edition proved to be most unsatisfactory, because it was published not as a separate work but as the second and third volumes of the collected Works of Hamilton.

      The great turning point in the publishing history of The Federalist was the appearance of the Jacob Gideon edition in 1818. Printed in Washington, D.C., with the cooperation of Madison, this edition was the first to give Madison’s account of the disputed authorship of certain essays. The Gideon edition also corrected another deficiency: “Former editions,” explained the publisher, “had the advantage of a revisal from Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Jay, but the numbers written by Mr. Madison still remained in the state in which they originally issued from the press and contained many inaccuracies.” These problems had been resolved, however, because this new edition was produced from Madison’s personal copy, “with corrections of the papers, of which he is the author, in his own hand.”

      Gideon boasted that, because of these changes, his version was now the “standard edition,” and indeed it was in many ways a marked improvement over the McLean edition. Besides being the first to include Madison’s side of the story on the question of authorship, the Gideon edition was also the first to print the final corrections of all three authors.⁵⁶ And it was the first to include the essays of both Pacificus and Helvidius, as well as the Articles and the Constitution, in the appendix. The 1818 Gideon edition, upon which this Liberty Fund edition is based, was reprinted ten times, the last appearing in 1857. In 1863, Henry B. Dawson published a shorter version that omitted, without explanation, the letters of Pacificus and Helvidius, and later editions have followed this example, without questioning Dawson’s rationale for arbitrarily excluding these essays.⁵⁷

      For reasons of space, and because the letters of Pacificus and Helvidius are now readily available from other sources,⁵⁸ the editors of this new Gideon edition have also elected to exclude these essays. Moreover, it should be kept in mind that there are many other writings of Hamilton and Madison that might appropriately be included in an appendix on the ground that they modify in one way or another the views expressed in The Federalist. The inclusion of all this extraneous material would, quite obviously, render this edition unwieldy, particularly since it already contains headnotes, an appendix, a glossary, and an extensive index.

      We should be mindful, too, that The Federalist does not represent the final thoughts on the American Constitution of the men who wrote in the name of Publius. As Adair reminds us, “The Federalist . . . was not a scholarly commentary on the meaning of an established constitution, it contained special pleading designed to secure ratification for a Constitution still untested. After the government was in operation, both Hamilton and Madison lived to regret theories and interpretations they had advanced in 1787–1788 under the name of ‘Publius.’”⁵⁹

      During the course of American history, then, various provisions of the Constitution have been amplified, altered, or even nullified by different generations as a result of Supreme Court interpretations, laws and amendments, and political custom. When read against the backdrop of these changes, The Federalist often provides an important standard by which to evaluate them and determine their merit. In this regard, The Federalist, like a political compass, helps each generation steer the ship of state in the intended direction. This is what gives The Federalist its enduring strength and continued relevance, and explains why American political leaders, especially members of the Supreme Court, have traditionally turned to The Federalist for guidance when interpreting the Constitution and trying to ascertain the intentions of the Framers.

      The high esteem accorded The Federalist is not attributable, however, solely to its explanation of the Constitution. Many observers give it a high ranking among the classics of political thought, despite its limited application outside the United States, because it identifies and speaks frankly to the problems and difficulties associated with the establishment of a popular or republican government. In this vein is George Washington’s estimate of its worth and timelessness. The Federalist, he speculated, would “merit the notice of posterity because in it are candidly and ably discussed the principles of freedom and the topics of government which will always be interesting to mankind so long as they shall be connected in civil society.”⁶⁰ Thomas Jefferson called it “the best commentary on the principles of government which has ever been written.”⁶¹ The great American jurist of the early nineteenth century, Chancellor James Kent of New York, was even more generous with his praise: “[T]here is no work on the subject of the Constitution, and on republican and federal government generally,” he wrote, “that deserves to be more thoroughly studied. . . . I know not of any work on the principles of free government that is to be compared in instruction and in intrinsic value . . . not even if we resort to Aristotle, Cicero, Machiavel, Montesquieu, Milton, Locke, or Burke.”⁶² Foreign observers have often shared these sentiments. Talleyrand, Sir Henry Maine, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, and James Bryce all strongly recommended The Federalist as essential reading; and François Guizot, the French statesman and historian, asserted that, in the application of the elementary principles of government to practical administration, it was the greatest work known to him.⁶³ These are powerful recommendations for a collection of essays hastily drafted by three politicians in the midst of a political struggle. In this respect The Federalist is a unique document, unparalleled in the literature of the Western political tradition.

       George W. CareyJames McClellanProfessor of GovernmentJames Bryce Visiting FellowGeorgetown UniversityInstitute of U.S. StudiesUniversity of London

Reader’s Guide to The Federalist