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had achieved a thorough influence over the king’s daughter Princess Anne. Despite openly pledging loyalty to the king in late 1688, Churchill secretly committed himself to William of Orange, who, as William III, replaced James after the Glorious Revolution (1688). William showed his gratitude by making Churchill Earl of Marlborough. He was disgraced on account of accusations of treasonous intrigues with the former king in 1692, but returned to military command four years later. With the accession of Queen Anne (1702) and the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), Marlborough took advantage of numerous opportunities to display his remarkable military and diplomatic talents, but his wife’s fall from grace at court, and the ascendancy of the Tories in 1710, cast a second shadow of disgrace over his accomplishments. Under George I, whose reign began in 1714, he was restored to power for the last time.

p. 53. the attempts of the English merchants to prosecute an illicit trade withthe Spanish Main: The portion of the mainland of South America bordering the Caribbean Sea between the mouth of the Orinoco River in Venezuela and the Isthmus of Panama was known, during the period of discovery and colonization of the New World, as the Spanish Main. The phrase also refers generally to the pirate-infested route taken by Spanish galleons delivering gold from the New World to Spain.

p. 53. Many of the English…were sent to dig in themines of Potosi: Potosi is a city in southern Bolivia, high in the Andes mountains, known in the eighteenth century for its rich silver mines (opened in 1545). The mistreatment of British nationals by Spaniards trying to enforce restrictions on trade with Spanish colonies led to the War of Jenkin’s Ear (1739–1743) which merged with the War of the Austrian Succession (known in America as King George’s War, 1743–1748) but resulted in no significant territorial changes.

p. 54. therevoltof a part of the State of North Carolina, thelate menacing disturbancesin Pennsylvania: In 1784, the inhabitants of four western counties of North Carolina proclaimed their secession as a separate state called Franklin. By late 1787, North Carolina’s implacable opposition, combined with internal strains within Franklin, led to the seceding counties’ reunification with North Carolina. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, discontented inhabitants of the Wyoming Valley (in northeastern Pennsylvania near New York) attempted a similar secession in 1787. By the time of Federalist No. 6’s appearance in the newspapers (November 14, 1787), the Pennsylvania legislature had approved the governor’s request to call out the militia in order to suppress the revolt.

p. 54. An intelligent writerexpresses himself on this subject…: The reference is to Gabriel Bonnet, L’Abbé de Mably (1709–1785), a French historian and writer on the law of nations and the quotation is from his tome Des Principes des Negociations, pour servir d’introduction au Droit Public de l’Europe, fonde sur les Traites (1757). The author of Parallels between the Romans and the French (1740), Phocian Dialogue (1763), and Observations on the History of Greece (1766), among numerous other works, Mably was a contemporary and a sometime friend of the French philosophes.

Federalist 7

p. 60. Divide et imperamust be the motto of every nation that either hates or fears us: Divide et impera is a Latin phrase meaning "divide and command" or "divide and rule." Originally a maxim of military strategy, it has long since entered the lexicon of political tacticians.

Federalist 8

p. 62. The institutions chiefly alluded to areSTANDING ARMIES…: The phrase "standing army" refers to the sort of permanent, professional military organization that flourished in Europe from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Expensive to maintain, standing armies created an enormous drain on the ruler’s finances, which typically led to conflict over new or higher taxes and often to the suppression of political rights.

Federalist 9

p. 68. the observations ofMontesquieuon the necessity