technical terms; if their early training in British schools, under British masters, hampered them in their newly acquired position as law-givers for Commonwealths which had expressly rejected the fundamental principles of British governmental science; if the then imperfectly acquired knowledge of the ancient republics rendered their illustrations, to some extent, imperfect,—the distinguished authors of the work shared these misfortunes with the best writers of the age in which they lived, and their work is not more disfigured from these causes than are those of the most approved authors of that period.
The first of the numbers which composed the series was printed and published in The Independent Journal; or, The General Advertiser,—a semi-weekly newspaper, which was published on Wednesdays and Saturdays by J. McLean & Co., at No. 41 Hanover Square, New York,—on Saturday, the twenty-seventh of October, 1787; and, with little interruption, the publication was continued in that paper until the second of the following April, when, with the issue of No. LXXVI., it was suspended until after the entire work had been issued, by J. and A. McLean, in book-form, on the twenty-eighth of May, 1788. The publication was resumed in The Independent Journal on the fourteenth of June,—when Number LXXVIII. of the work, as it had appeared in the collective edition, was issued in the newspaper as Number LXXVII., in continuation of the series in that form,—and it was continued therein, as opportunity was afforded, until the sixteenth of August, when Number LXXXIV. of the series (Number LXXXV. of the collective edition) was published, and the work completed in the newspaper form.
On Tuesday, the thirtieth of October, 1787, The New York Packet, also a semi-weekly, which appeared on Tuesdays and Fridays from the office of Samuel and
