Good evening and welcome to boring books for bedtime. I hope tonight's installment provides all the boredom your busy brain needs to quiet down and let you get some sleep for once. So lie back,

adjust your volume. Take a nice deep breath and off we go. In honor of the United States of America's

birthday this week we're reading the Federalist a collection of essays written in favor of the new constitution as agreed upon by the Federal Convention, September 17, 1787, by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, printed and

sold in two volumes by J and A McLean,

Number 41, Hanover Square, New York, 1788. Let's begin. Federalist Number 1, general introduction for the Independent Journal by Alexander Hamilton to the people of the State of New York.

After an unequivocal experience of the inefficacy of the subsisting federal government

you are called upon to deliberate on a new

constitution for the United States of America.

The subject speaks its own importance, comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the Union, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed, 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 establishing good government from reflection and choice,

or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political 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 estimate 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.

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