Page:Essays in Historical Criticism.djvu/159



THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDERALIST

139

Number 62.

cise of their legislative trust " (p. 388).

"What, indeed, are all the repealing, explaining, and amending laws which fill and disgrace our voluminous codes, but so many monuments of deficient wisdom; ... so many admonitions to the people of the value of those aids which may be expected from a well-constituted Senate?" (p. 388).

"A good government im- plies two things : first, fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness of the people ; secondly, a knowledge of the means by which that object can be best attained. Some governments are deficient in both these qualities; most governments are deficient in the first. I scruple not to assert that in American gov- ernments too little attention has been paid to the last" (p. 389).

"From this change of men must proceed a change of opin- ions; and from a change of opinions a change of meas- ures " (p. 389).

Madison.

Eemarks on Jefferson's Draught, Writings, I, 185.

"Try the codes of the sev- eral states by this test, and what a luxuriancy of legisla- tion do they present. ... A review of the several codes will show that every necessary and useful part of the least volu- minous of them might be com- pressed into one-tenth of the compass and at the same time be tenfold as perspicuous." Notes on the Confederacy, April, 1787, Writings, I, 324.

" The want of fidelity in the administration of powers hav- ing been the grievance felt under most governments, and by the American States them- selves under the British govern- ment, it was natural for them to give too exclusive an atten- tion to this primary attribute." Letter to John Brown, August, 1785, Writings, I, 177.

" A frequent change of men will result from a frequent return of elections ; and a fre- quent change of measures from a frequent change of men." No. 37 of The Federalist, p. 218.

"The internal effects of a Cf. par. 1 above, also what mutable policy are still more follows it on "mutability of