An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States





General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1921 Original Publisher: Macmillan Subjects: United States Constitutional history History / United States / General Law / Constitutional Political Science / Constitutions Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER II A SURVEY OF ECONOMIC INTERESTS IN 1787 The whole theory of the economic interpretation of history rests upon the concept that social progress in general is the result of contending interests in society -- some favorable, others opposed, to change. On this hypothesis, we are required to discover at the very outset of the present study what classes and social groups existed in the United States just previous to the adoption of the Constitution and which of them, from the nature of their property, might have expected to benefit immediately and definitely by the overthrow of the old system and the establishment of the new. On the other hand, it must be discovered which of them might have expected more beneficial immediate results, on the whole, from the maintenance of the existing legal arrangements. The importance of a survey of the distribution of property in 1787 for economic as well as political history is so evident that it is strange that no attempt has been made to undertake it on a large scale. Not even a beginning has been made. It is, therefore, necessary for us to rely for the present upon the general statements of historians who have written more or less at length about the period under consideration; but in the meanwhile it can do no harm to suggest, by way of a preface, the outlines of such a survey and some of the chief sources of information. I. In the first place, there were the broad interests of real prope...









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