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By Root 1768 0

(1167–1216), son of Henry II, was king of England from 1199. He tried to usurp the throne during his brother Richard’s absence in Germany (1193), but failed. When he did succeed to the throne, disputes with the Church, failure to recover territory lost to the French, and generally oppressive government provoked the barons to demand constitutional reform. At Runnymede, the barons forced John to attach his seal to the Great Charter, or Magna Carta (1215), that would become one of the foundations of the British constitution. His subsequent repudiation of the document led to a war (1215) that remained unresolved at his death.

p. 512. Such was thePetition of Rightassented to by Charles the First…: The Petition of Right was a parliamentary document of 1628 demanding that Charles I desist from abusing royal power. Included among the specified violations were the quartering of soldiers in the homes of civilians, the levying of taxes without parliamentary approval, and the arbitrary arrest and imprisonment of citizens. Charles agreed at first, but later reneged.

p. 517n. Vide Rutherforth’s Institutes: The footnote is to Thomas Rutherforth (1712–1771), the Archdeacon of Essex whose treatise, Institutes of Natural Law: Being the Substance of a Course of Lectures on Grotius de Jure Belli et Pacis, appeared in 1754. On Hugo Grotius, see note to Federalist 20.

Federalist 85

p. 523. inan excellent little pamphletlately published in this city: Written by John Jay, "An Address to the people of the state of New York" was published in April 1788, and reprinted in June in The American Museum. A brief, vigorous, and high-toned plea for moderation and reflection, it was considered by those involved in the struggle for ratification in New York to be highly effective. It is available in Colleen A. Sheehan and Gary L. McDowell, eds., Friends of the Constitution: Writings of the "Other" Federalists (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998), pp. 137–53.

p. 526. the…observations ofa writer equally solid and ingenious: The reference is to the essay "Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences," by the Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume (1711–1776), and is cited from a collection of his writings Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects (1753). His major philosophical work, Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), was a monument of epistemological and ethical skepticism, which he later recast into two influential volumes, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748, initially issued under the title Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding) and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751). In 1741, Hume published the first part of his Essays, Moral and Political, followed the next year by a second volume under the same title, including for the first time the essay quoted here. A second tranche of essays, titled Political Discourses, appeared in 1752. His most popular work, the Tory-leaning History of England, was published in six volumes between 1754 and 1762.

Selected Bibliography

Lance Banning. The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998.

Charles A. Beard. An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998; original edition, 1913.

George W. Carey. The Federalist: Design for a Constitutional Republic. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1995.

Trevor H. Colbourn, ed. Fame and the Founding Fathers: Essays by Douglass Adair. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1998.

Jacob E. Cooke, ed. The Federalist. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1982; original edition, 1961.

Gottfried Dietze. The Federalist: A Classic on Federalism and Free Government. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1998; original edition, 1960.

David F. Epstein. The Political Theory of the Federalist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.

Albert Furtwangler. The Authority of Publius: A Reading of the Federalist Papers. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.

Thomas S. Engeman,