Study Number One - Excerpts from Federalist No. 1

"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."

"Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new
Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the
obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist
all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument,
and consequence of the offices they hold under the State
establishments; and the perverted ambition of another class of men,
who will either hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of
their country, or will flatter themselves with fairer prospects of
elevation from the subdivision of the empire into several partial
confederacies than from its union under one government."

"...a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal
for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of
zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will
teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to
the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men
who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number
have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people;
commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants."

"It may perhaps be thought superfluous to offer arguments to
prove the utility of the UNION, a point, no doubt, deeply engraved
on the hearts of the great body of the people in every State, and
one, which it may be imagined, has no adversaries. But the fact is,
that we already hear it whispered in the private circles of those
who oppose the new Constitution, that the thirteen States are of too
great extent for any general system, and that we must of necessity
resort to separate confederacies of distinct portions of the
whole. This doctrine will, in all probability, be gradually
propagated, till it has votaries enough to countenance an open
avowal of it. For nothing can be more evident, to those who are
able to take an enlarged view of the subject, than the alternative
of an adoption of the new Constitution or a dismemberment of the
Union."