Aseries of eighty-five newspaper articles, hastily written for the immediate purpose of advocating New York’s ratification of the new Constitution of the United States, has become the all-time classic on the basic theory of American government. This status hardly could have been anticipated by its authors or contemporary readers; and yet the coming event did cast its shadow before. When their serialization was only two-thirds completed, the essays appeared in a book form which reportedly sold 25,000 copies in the decade following 1788—easily making them the best seller of their day. During the 173 years since then, under the title of The Federalist, they have gone through more than ninety printings and twenty-nine separate editions in half a dozen languages. They have been cited in dozens of Supreme Court opinions and in uncounted reams of congressional debates, and the very name has become an adjective of political science throughout the world to describe the unique character of United States government.

When the text of the proposed Constitution was printed in the New York Journal of September 27, 1787, its reception was something less than enthusiastic. In the same issue, over the pen name of Cato, a correspondent remarked how the public was discussing the document with “alternate joy, hope, and fear,” and warned the newspaper’s readers to give it their prayerful attention; for “if you are negligent or inactive, the ambitious and despotic will entrap you in their toils, and bind you with the cord of power from which you, and your posterity may never be freed.”

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