The three associates labored harmoniously, each within his designated field of inquiry, but all under a common signature. The joint production was styled The Federalist —to indicate its support of the federal union of the thirteen sovereign states; and the several numbers which the triad produced bore the common signature of “Publius.”
Of the manner in which the three authors discharged their self-imposed duty, the general approval of their countrymen and the encomiums of the learned throughout Europe have borne the most satisfactory evidence. The Federalist is surpassed by few, if any, writings of a similar character, of the period in which it was written; and if confusion sometimes prevails in its pages from the want of precision in their use of acknowledged technical terms; if their early training in British schools, under British masters, hampered them in their newly acquired position as lawgivers for commonwealths which had expressly rejected the fundamental principles of British governmental science; if the then imperfectly acquired knowledge of the ancient republics rendered their illustrations, to some extent, imperfect—the distinguished authors of the work shared these misfortunes with the best writers of the age in which they lived, and their work is not more disfigured from these causes than are those of the most approved authors of that period.
Henry B. Dawson