The English speaking people have been a race of pamphleteers. Whenever
a question—religious, political, military or personal—has interested
the general public, it has occasioned a war of pamphlets, which,
however partisan and transitory, were in a manner photographs of the
public opinion, and as such have been used and valued by students and
publicists.
The rarity and consequent difficulty of reaching this class of
literature has been, however, a great obstacle to its use as sources
of history. The name of pamphlet tells the purpose of these little
publications. Written hurriedly, to effect a purpose for which there
is not enough time or matter for a more elaborate volume, they are
thrown by after a brief circulation and before a decade has passed, the
edition has disappeared, and if any are still in existence, they are
only to be found in the few public and private libraries which have
taken the trouble to secure these fugitive leaflets.
The recognized value of these tractates in England has led to very
extensive republications; and the _Harleian Miscellany_, the _Somers
Tracts_, the issues of the Roxburghe, Bannatyne, Maitland, Chetham,
Camden and Percy societies and the reprints of Halliwell, Collier, and
M’Culloch, not to mention many minor collections, have placed several
thousand of them within the reach of every one. But in America few
attempts have been made to collect this kind of literature—Peter Force
reprinted a series of pamphlets on the early settlement of the United
States and a work of similar scope on Canada, containing reprints
of the so called “Jesuit Relations” was printed under the patronage
of the Canadian government. John Wingate Thornton and Frank Moore
have collected a number of the patriotic sermons preached before and
during the Revolutionary war. Franklin B. Hough republished a series
of the funeral sermons and eulogies on the death of Washington, and
James Spear Loring did the same for the orations delivered in Boston
from 1770 to 1852. Samuel G. Drake reprinted a collection of tracts
relating to King Philip’s war, Joseph Sabin issued a series relating
to the propagation of the gospel among the New England Indians, and
William H. Whitmore edited, for the Prince Society, a number relating
to the governorship of Sir Edmund Andros—but these are the only
attempts worth mentioning to systematically gather these leaflets of
our history, and which have singularly neglected those bearing on
politics and government, in which we have so largely originated the
true theories and methods.
When the student or historian comes to examine the earlier pamphlet
literature of our country he encounters the greatest difficulty in
their use. The lack of communication between the colonies or states,
with its consequent localization of the pamphlet; the small edition
caused by the high price of paper, which at that time was the costly
element in the production of books; the little value attached by each
generation to the pamphlets of its own time; the subsequent wars,
with the destruction and high price of old paper that came with them,
and the general disregard of historical material that existed for
many years after the stirring times that occasioned these arguments,
have all tended to make these tracts almost impossible to consult;
and any one desiring to examine the original editions of the thirteen
pamphlets contained in this volume would be compelled to visit the
public libraries in the cities of Washington, Philadelphia, New York,
Albany and Boston, while it would take a life time of patient searching
and waiting to collect them from the second-hand booksellers and
auction-rooms, at prices that few would care to pay.
As the rarity of these pamphlets has caused their neglect, so also has
their anonymous publication. It was a time of literary masks, and
we often find, like the knights of old, that when their masks were
removed, they had concealed our ablest statesmen, one of whom wrote of
his anonymous pamphlet, “If the reasoning in the pamphlet you allude to
is just, it will have its effect on candid and discerning minds;—if
weak and inconclusive, my name cannot render it otherwise,” but it is
certain, whatever the effect at the moment, that more attention and
care would have been given these works by succeeding generations had
they borne the name of one of the makers of our nation, rather than the
pseudonymous mask which gave no clue to its authorship.
In America, we are too apt to forget the losing side of a question.
Few to-day know of the intense struggle that took place over the
ratification of our constitution, or realize that the adoption of a
government which has worked so successfully, met with the strongest
opposition from such men as Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, George
Mason, George Clinton, Samuel Chase, Elbridge Gerry, Albert Gallatin,
James Monroe and others, while many equally famous were either neutral
or gave it but lukewarm support. If the great fear and prediction of
these men—that the general government would entirely subvert the state
governments, with a consequent loss of personal freedom—has not been
realized, it will nevertheless be seen in the following pages that many
of their objections were embodied in the future amendments, and the
disregard of others has occasioned some of our most serious national
questions. If this collection presents a greater number of federal
than anti-federal arguments, it is only in the proportion in which the
latter was overborne by the former, both in men and writings.
Of all these partisan writings _The Federalist_ has hitherto been
almost the only known argument of those which for nine months kept
the printers busy and the people in a turmoil, though the twenty-nine
editions of that work attest the value and interest of that class of
writings. That these essays equal that great series is not claimed, but
I believe, nevertheless, that they, by their simpler and more popular
treatment of the question, exerted quite as much influence as that
“judicious and ingenious writer,” who was “not well calculated for the
common people,” and therefore deserve in this centennial year a place
on the shelf of the publicist or student, with that “political classic”
of Hamilton, Madison and Jay.