No one who takes up a copy of The Federalist Papers ever forgets the way Alexander Hamilton opened the first of that remarkable series of commentaries on the new American Constitution, published five weeks after it was signed in 1787 in Philadelphia. “It has been frequently remarked,” Hamilton began, “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.” It was a decision to which he did not hesitate to attach world significance, since “a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.”
Read the rest of historian Allen Guelzo's essay in Commentary magazine.
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