THE INTRODUCTION HE formation and adoption of written constitutions may well be considered the greatest contribution of the American people to the art of government under the conditions of civil liberty. By an interesting coincidence, the series of essays known as the Federalist, written to advocate the adoption of the greatest of these constitutions, is not less assuredly the most important contribution of our country to the literature of political science. Nor can the title of the Federalist to be numbered among the political classics of the world be easily disputed, in view of the recognition it has received as an exposition of the principles of federal government, and in view of the fact that it is the best single presentation in moderate compass of the ruling ideas of political philosophy of the eighteenth-century Whigs as applied to the problem of securing in a government both liberty and efficiency. In that transition period of English constitutional government after the depression of the power of the crown, and before the rise of the parliamentary system and of Democracy, the problem of preserving liberty at once against the monarch and the mob was solved by the separation of the powers of government into departments, and in establishing their independence and maintaining their equilibrium by an intricate set of checks and balances. This political system, developed from the analysis of the English Constitution by Locke and Montesquieu, and exemplified in the new State constitutions, was imbedded in the Federal Constitution. To the nicely balanced division of the powers between the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary departments was added an even more delicately adjusted balance between the Federal |