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THE FEDERALIST PAPERS

the fate of an empire in many respects the most interesting
in the world. It has been frequently remarked that it seems
to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their
conduct and example, to decide the important question,
whether societies of men are really capable or not of estab-
lishing good government from reflection and choice, or
whether they are forever destined to depend for their politi-
cal constitutions on accident and force. If there be any
truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may
with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision
is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act
may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general
misfortune of mankind.

This idea will add the inducements of philanthropy to
those of patriotism, to heighten the solicitude which all
considerate and good men must feel for the event. Happy
will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious es-
timate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiased by
considerations not connected with the public good. But this
is a thing more ardently to be wished than seriously to be
expected. The plan offered to our deliberations affects too
many particular interests, innovates upon too many local
institutions, not to involve in its discussion a variety of ob-
jects foreign to its merits, and of views, passions and preju-
dices little favorable to the discovery of truth.

Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the
new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be dis-
tinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in
every State to resist all changes which may hazard a dimi-
nution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the
offices they hold under the State establishments; and the
perverted ambition of another class of men, who will either
hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of their
country, or will flatter themselves with fairer prospects of
elevation from the subdivision of the empire into several

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