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MADISON'S STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ^

It is a fact of no little interest that Madison, whose ideas pervaded the "Virginia Plan," who shaped the growth of the Constitution in the Federal Convention, who was its inde- fatigable champion in the Virginia convention, and who, in The Federalist^ was the ingenious and sympathetic advocate of its fitness for American conditions, was our first thorough and systematic student of the history of federal government. His historical studies seem to have been especially directed in this channel as early as 1784, when he realized that the Confederation was a failure and rapidly approaching helpless- ness and disintegration. In March of that year he wrote Jefferson : —

" You know tolerably well the objects of my curiosity. I will only particularize my wish of whatever may throw light on the general constitution and droit publique of the several confederacies which have existed. I observe in Boenaud's Catalogue several pieces on the Dutch, the German, and the Helvetic. The operations of our own must render all such lights of consequence. Books on the Law of N. and N. fall within a similar remark."

Again, on April 27, 1785, he asked for " Treatises on the ancient and modern Federal Republics, on the law of nations, and the history, natural and political, of the New World."

With Jefferson's help and by careful scanning of cata- logues, Madison gathered a collection of works on the history of federal government, which was probably the most com- plete in the country at that time. With his customary pains-

1 From a paper read before the American Historical Association in New