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  • Section 5 Introduction

     |  Rethinking Union and Government

    Section 5 Introduction The Constitution establishes a structure of government without offering a defense of the principles that undergird it. For that we must look first to the Declaration of Independence, and also to The Federalist. In the words of Publius—the pen name chosen by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay to unify their argument and to invoke the memory of Publius Valerius Publicola, the savior of the early Roman republic—it would be up to the American people "to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force." Put another way, if republican government could ...
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