![]() ![]() ![]() Hamilton’s project is usually portrayed as implemented through his political writings, advice tendered to President George Washington, and critical pieces of financial and economic legislation. If there is anything his admirers and critics agree upon, it is the singlemindedness with which Hamilton pursued his objective of vesting the new republic with a garb he considered worthy of a modern sovereign nation. ![]() Articles and clauses need interpretation, ambiguities necessitate clarification, disputes require adjudication, and governmental structures giving effect to the constitution’s purposes must be developed.įew of America’s Founders understood this better than Alexander Hamilton. Formally ratifying a constitution isn’t the end of the process. ![]() The process of ordering freedom is never simple. But McDonald went on to stress how British constitutional arrangements, legislation, and common law shaped the same Americans’ use of their property and liberties during the colonial period to a greater extent than they perhaps realized. In Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (1985), the historian Forrest McDonald underlined how conscious America’s Founders were of what McDonald called “The Rights of Englishmen.” McDonald especially had in mind the link made by many prerevolutionary Americans between liberty and property. ![]()
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