COMMENTARIES, 19 DECEMBER 1787

says Mr. Locke, there can be no liberty.8 This was the case in a state of
nature, and this led men to society and to the erection of civil govern-
ment in order to purchase the blessings of freedom and security by a
rational submision to the laws of the whole. The American states are
now nearly in the same situation as thirteen individuals would be in a
state of nature. They are each of them in their public capacity as so
many moral persons capable of doing good and evil, and susceptible
of laws and obligations. They must therefore resort to a firm and du-
rable union by government, if they mean that the strong shall not give
law to the weak-If they mean to procure the blessings of political life,
and to avoid all the distresses incidental to the wild state of nature.
This whole subject is illustrated in a Series of publications in the New-
York Papers under the signature of Publius. They treat on the necessity
of the union in every point of view, and in all its consequences in such
an able manner, and with such strong and animated painting, that they
denote the hand of a Master. They not only abound in my candid
judgment with new and brilliant thoughts, but they carry along with
them the most irresistable conviction. Those pieces I warmly recom-
mend to the perusal of the public. I have sent them to the Printer of
this Paper for republication, but they are so lengthy, that I am informed
they cannot be admitted in a regular series. For the benefit of such as
cannot procure the originals, I may possibly hereafter make an abridg-
ment of some of their principal arguments and extracts from some of
their most striking parts, and occasionally hand them for Publication.9
(a) See dissertation on parties.'0
1. See George Washington, the President of the Constitutional Convention, to the
President of Congress, 17 September (Appendix III, below), in which Washington stated
that "the Constitution, which we now present, is the result of a spirit of amity, and of
that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation
rendered indispensible."
2. For the Connecticut charter, granted in 1662, see Thorpe, I, 529-36.
3. The Connecticut charter was publicly read in the Connecticut General Assembly on
9 October 1662 and on the same day the Assembly ordered and declared that "all the
Lawes and orders of this Colony to stand in full force and vertue, unles any be cross to
the Tenour of o [u]r Charter." In 1650 the General Assembly adopted a code of laws,
prefaced by a bill of rights, parts of which are similar to what "A Country Federalist"
describes here.
4. Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, A Dissertation upon Parties: In Several Letters to
Caleb D'Anvers, Esq. (9th ed., London, 1771), Letter X, 151. The Dissertation upon Parties
first appeared in 1733-34 in The Craftsman, a weekly newspaper in opposition to the
ministry of Sir Robert Walpole. It was published in book form in 1735. In 1749 Boling-
broke published together two works on patriotism- The Idea of a Patriot King and A Letter
on the Spirit of Patriotism. (The latter work had actually been written first in 1736.)
5. The reference is to an act passed in 1539, called the Lex Regia of England, which
gave the King (Henry VIII) the power, with the advice of his council or a majority of that
body, to make proclamations that would have the force of statutes. The punishment for

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