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nydus/The Federalist PapersPublic

Eighty-five articles written by a group of U.S. Founding Fathers on why the proposed U.S. Constitution should be approved.

Page 487 of 671
Table of Contents

LXII

be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?

Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uninformed mass of the people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few , not for the many .

In another point of view, great injury results from an unstable government. The want of confidence

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