There’s a new e-version of The Federalist Papers produced by Edward O’Connor. The innovation with this pared to all the other various electronic iterations of the papers is the ability to link to an exact paragraph within a particular paper. O’Connor says of the impetus for the endeavor, “I haven’t been able find one that was simultaneously nice-looking and useful (useful insofar as pinpoint linkability is concerned, at least).”

The URL is based on the number of the paper, followed by the number sign #, followed by the paragraph number (preceded by the marker “p”). So that, for example, a link to Federalist No. 37, paragraph 3, would take the following form: which begins:

It is a misfortune, inseparable from human affairs, that public measures are rarely investigated with that spirit of moderation which is essential to a just estimate of their real tendency to advance or obstruct the public good; and that this spirit is more apt to be diminished than promoted, by those occasions which require an unusual exercise of it.

“The true natural check on absolute democracy is the federal system, which limits the central government by the powers reserved, and the state governments by the powers they have ceded,” wrote Lord Acton.

Acton called federalism “the best curb on democracy,” because it “assigns limited powers to the central government. Thereby all power is limited. It excludes absolute power of the majority.” He also described federalism as “the only barrier to Democracy,” which “generally monopolizes and concentrates power.”

Acton defined federalism as “coordination instead of subordination; association instead of hierarchical order; independent forces curbing each other; balance, therefore, liberty.”

For more, see Acton’s James Madison entry In the Liberal Tradition.

HT: The Volokh Conspiracy via The Remedy