emnly to enact that the manufactures of those states should be considered as foreign, and that the acts laying a duty on goods imported and on tonnage should extend to them, they hastened, with a discernment quickened by a sense of interest, and at the same time honorable to their patriotic views, to unite themselves to the confederation.
The only alteration of importance which the Constitution has undergone since its adoption, is that which changes the mode of electing the President and Vice President. It is believed, that all things being duly weighed, the alteration has been beneficial. If it enables a man to aim with more directness, at the first office in the gift of the people, it equally tends to prevent the recurrence of an unpleasant contest for precedency, between the partisans of any two individuals, in Congress, to which body in the last resort, the choice is referred. Besides, whether the Constitution should prescribe it or not, the people themselves would invariably designate the man they intended for chief magistrate: a reflection which may serve to convince us that the change in question is more in form than in fact.
To conclude, the appearance of so perfect an edition of the Federalist as the present must be allowed to be, may be regarded as the more fortunate, as the Journal of the Convention that framed the Constitution is about to be published, and a new light to be thus shed upon the composition of that instrument. The Act of Confederation, and the Constitution itself, have been, by permission of Mr. Adams, the Secretary of State, carefully compared with the originals deposited in the office of that department; and their accuracy may therefore be relied on, even to the punctuation.
City of Washington, May, 1818.
