Refreshing and Disturbing: Anthony Peacock on Thucydides and The Federalist
28th May 2019
Anthony Peacock’s effort to vindicate the commercial republic, as it is explained in The Federalist, is both refreshing and disturbing. By calling our attention to Publius’s case for a well-constructed Union, the spirit of enterprise, and the enormous extent to which The Federalist is about war and strategy, Peacock rediscovers an almost lost continent neglected by scholars who take the survival of the Union for granted, disdain commercial society, and are more concerned with controlling power than generating it. In that way, such scholars have not been true to the spirit of the work, for as James Madison explained in Federalist 51, in framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the first task is to enable the government to control the governed; the next task is to oblige it to control itself.
Pretty pricey at $105, but maybe you could get it through InterLibrary Loan.