COMMENTARIES, 30 NOVEMBER 1787

10. William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act IV, scene 5, lines 54-57. "Fie, fie
upon her!/There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip,/Nay, her foot speaks; her
wanton spirits look out/At every joint and motive of her body."
11. These figures (and those immediately above) appear to be based upon a report
on the 1787 congressional requisition made to Congress by the three-member Confed-
eration Board of Treasury, of which Arthur Lee, the author of the "Cincinnatus" essays,
was a member. Congress read the report on 29 September 1787, and made the report
the order for the day on 5, 8, and 11 October. It ordered 100 copies of the report to be
printed (JCC, XXXIII, 569-85, 616, 632-36, 650-58. For the fourteen-page printed re-
port, see Evans 20756.).
12. When it proposed the Impost of 1783, Congress estimated that the tariff would
yield annually about $915,000 (JCC, XXIV, 277-83, 285-87. For the text of the Impost
of 1783, see CDR, 146-48.).
13. In 1790 Alexander Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury in the new government
under the Constitution, estimated the state debts to be $25,000,000.
14. For a response to some of the financial statements made by "Cincinnatus," see "A
Lunarian," Daily Advertiser, 20 December (below).
Americanus III
New York Daily Advertiser, 30 November 17871
"It is natural for a Republic to have only a small territory."2 It may
be thought by some an unpardonable piece of temerity in me to deny
the truth of this maxim of the celebrated Civilian, in so decisive a tone
as I have ventured to do in a former paper. To satisfy those therefore,
whose delicacy may be hurt on this occasion, I hope I shall be able
before I finish this paper to bring about a perfect reconciliation be-
tween the Baron and myself; and thus deprive Cato of the assistance of
this powerful auxiliary, on this occasion at least. It is manifest from a
variety of passages, that Montesquieu's idea of a Republic, was a Gov-
ernment in which the collective body of the people, as in Democracy,
or of the nobles, as in Aristocracy, possessed a share in the management
of public affairs: Thus he tells us "the people in whom the supreme
power resides ought to have the management of every thing within
their reach."3 "It is likewise a fundamental law in Democracies, that
the people should have the sole power to enact laws."4 It is obvious
that to collect the suffrages of a numerous people, scattered over a
wide extent of country on every law, on every public measure, would
be utterly impracticable. According therefore to his idea of a Repub-
lican Government, this maxim of his, that a Republic should be con-
fined to a small territory, is certainly a very just one. Should I be able
to prove that the Governments of these States are founded on princi-
ples totally different from those which Montesquieu here had in view,
it will then be manifest that Cato has lugged him into a controversy in
which he is no ways concerned.

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