It was very interesting to read in Federalist No. 38 that one primary difference between this Constitution and the constitutions of Greece and Athens (among other examples) is that this one was developed by a group instead of being drawn up by a single respected individual.
The bulk of this Federalist paper goes to show how lively and varied the debate was which surrounded the ratification of the Constitution. Warning – this is undoubtedly the longest paragraph in the federalist papers so far with a total length of 1100 words. It is worth the time to read it, but without paragraph breaks it is easy to lose you place in such a long passage. With the advantage of being able to look back it is interesting to see which changes that were being considered were added to the Constitution (e.g. the Bill of Rights) and which were left unchanged (e.g. the 20 year moratorium on discussion the issue of slave importation) by the end of the debate.
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