“What is government itself,” asks James Madison in The Federalist Papers, the name given to 85 essays written in support of the new Constitution by Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, “but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” A cursory reading of the Constitution does not instantly reveal its virtues and strengths. And they were no more self-evident 200 years ago; in fact, the Constitution’s adoption by the states, replacing the Articles of Confederation—under which the nation was governed, weakly, in the years just after independence—was no foregone conclusion. In New York state, in particular, the issue was in doubt. So, in defense of the Constitution they’d helped frame at the Philadelphia convention, Hamilton, Madison and Jay wrote a series of newspaper essays, each of which appeared under the pseudonym “Publius,” published in book form soon after. Theirs were among a host of parry-and-thrust pronunciamentos appearing in the popular press of the day.
