Note 61 — Hanson, Alexander Contee. Remarks on the Proposed Plan of a Federal Government. By Aristides

Against what is called equality in representation, the great Montesquieu seems to have declared by the strongest implication. In his Spirit of Laws, b. ch. 2, he says, that the confederate republic of Lycia contained twenty-three associated towns: that, in the common council, the larger towns had three votes, the middling towns two, and the lesser only one; that they contributed to the common expence according to the proportion of suffrages; and, that were he to give the model of an excellent confederate republic, it should be that of Lycia. Could the immortal spirit of Montesquieu revisit the earth, and behold the model now offered to America, how quickly would his favorite republic sink in his estimation. In a new quarter of the globe scarcely heard of by the greater part of Europeans in his day, and since the commencement of the present century, he would see men who have attained a perfection in the science most conducive to human happiness, in that study which was the principal occupation of his life, in which his predecessors had acquired only a few glimmering lights, and of which it was reserved for him to develope most of the true first principles.