PAMPHLETS
on the
Constitution of the United States
Published during
Its Discussion by the People
1787-1788.
Edited
WITH NOTES AND A BIBLIOGRAPHY
BY
PAUL LEICESTER FORD.
BROOKLYN, N. Y.:
1888.
PREFACE.
The English speaking people have been a race of pamphleteers.Whenever a question—religious, political, militaryor personal—has interested the general public, it hasoccasioned a war of pamphlets, which, however partisan andtransitory, were in a manner photographs of the publicopinion, and as such have been used and valued by studentsand publicists.
The rarity and consequent difficulty of reaching this classof literature has been, however, a great obstacle to its use assources of history. The name of pamphlet tells the purposeof these little publications. Written hurriedly, to effect apurpose for which there is not enough time or matter for amore elaborate volume, they are thrown by after a brief circulationand before a decade has passed, the edition has disappeared,and if any are still in existence, they are only to befound in the few public and private libraries which have takenthe trouble to secure these fugitive leaflets.
The recognized value of these tractates in England hasled to very extensive republications; and the Harleian Miscellany,the Somers Tracts, the issues of the Roxburghe, Bannatyne,Maitland, Chetham, Camden and Percy societies andthe reprints of Halliwell, Collier, and M’Culloch, not to mentionmany minor collections, have placed several thousand ofthem within the reach of every one. But in America fewattempts have been made to collect this kind of literature—PeterForce reprinted a series of pamphlets on the early settlementof the United States and a work of similar scope onCanada, containing reprints of the so called “Jesuit Relations”was printed under the patronage of the Canadian govviernment.John Wingate Thornton and Frank Moore havecollected a number of the patriotic sermons preached beforeand during the Revolutionary war. Franklin B. Hough republisheda series of the funeral sermons and eulogies on thedeath of Washington, and James Spear Loring did the samefor the orations delivered in Boston from 1770 to 1852.Samuel G. Drake reprinted a collection of tracts relating toKing Philip’s war, Joseph Sabin issued a series relating tothe propagation of the gospel among the New EnglandIndians, and William H. Whitmore edited, for the PrinceSociety, a number relating to the governorship of Sir EdmundAndros—but these are the only attempts worth mentioningto systematically gather these leaflets of our history, andwhich have singularly neglected those bearing on politics andgovernment, in which we have so largely originated the truetheories and methods.
When the student or historian comes to examine theearlier pamphlet literature of our country he encounters thegreatest difficulty in their use. The lack of communicationbetween the colonies or states, with its consequent localizationof the pamphlet; the small edition caused by the highprice of paper, which at that time was the costly element inthe production of books; the little value attached by eachgeneration to the pamphlets of its own time; the subsequentwars, with the destruction and high price of old paper thatcame with them, and the general disregard of historicalmaterial that existed for many years aft