Excellent; A must read and reference for any citizen of the United States! Should be required reading in all American High Schools! If one is a citizen and participates in the voting process, they must be familiar with The Federalist Papers and the Constitution. ( )

BAYAA

An essential classic of American constitutional scholarship. ( )

I rated it 5 not just because it is a classic, but because it really is that good-- and much less naive than some commentators make out. For example, it clearly does expect that the US will have fiercely partisan politics. ( )

All thoughtful citizens should read this classic. Does anything need to be said about its importance? A few new impressions of mine: difficult reading due to the elevated style of the authors of that time, bordering on embarrassing for our present day situation. About 1/3 through the 85 papers, I thought I could begin to determine which "Publius" was the writer, Hamilton being more foreceful in argument and direct in course. The authors predicted some of the problems we have today and the evolution of the Constitution, especially with regard to the variety and continual change of factions (and corresponding need for the country to be flexible. Our government was similar to many others being developed at that time (including the 13 state governments), all based on the recent writings of political philosophers such as Montesque. I think the 3 authors would be most surprised today at the gargantuan size of the federal government. While they admitted of the potential growth, they also believed it would be in relation to the growth of the population. A typical sentence "Our own experience has corroborated the lessons taught by the examples of other nations; that emergencies of this sort will sometimes exist in all societies, however, inseparable from the body politic as tumors and eruption from the natural body; that the idea of governing at all times by the simple force of law (which we have been told is the only admissible principle of republican government) has no place but in the reveries of those political doctors whose sagacity disdains the admonitions of experimental instruction." In #31, Hamilton illustrates his consistency by comparing axioms of good government to the axioms of geometry, the former being that: "there cannot be an effect without a cause, that the means ought to be proportioned to the end, that every power ought to be commensurate with its object, that there ought to be no limitation of a power destined to effect a purpose which is itself incapable of limitation." In reading the Constitution itself, I note that the more recent amendments are significantly longer than the original ten and even longer than most of the original articles. ( )