The Federalist: A Collection of Essays (1788 First Edition)

great object of the people in forming that convention, and it is also the great object of the plan which the convention has advised them to adopt. With what propriety, therefore, or for what good purposes, are attempts at this particular period made by some men to depreciate the importance of the union? Or why is it suggested that three or four confederacies would be better than one? I am persuaded in my own mind that the people have always thought right on this subject, and that their universal and uniform attachment to the cause of the union rests on great and weighty reasons, which I shall endeavor to develop and explain in some ensuing papers. They who promote the idea of substituting a number of distinct confederacies in the room of the plan of the convention seem clearly to foresee that the rejection of it would put the continuance of the union in the utmost jeopardy—that certainly would be the case, and I sincerely wish that it may be as clearly foreseen by every good citizen that, whenever the dissolution of the union arrives, America will have reason to exclaim in the words of the poet, "FAREWELL, A LONG FAREWELL, TO ALL MY GREATNESS."

PUBLIUS.

J. ### NUMBER III.

The same subject continued.

IT is not a new observation that the people of any country (if like the Americans, intelligent and well-informed) seldom adopt, and steadily preserve for many years, an erroneous opinion respecting their interests. That consideration naturally tends to create great respect for the high opinion which the people of America have so long and uniformly entertained of the importance of their continuing firmly united under