Safety and Welfare

Read this excerpt from Federalist Paper No. 1 and answer the question that follows:

Federalist Papers: No. 1 
General Introduction 
For the Independent Journal 
Author: Alexander Hamilton

To the People of the State of New York:

AFTER an unequivocal experience of the inefficiency of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America. The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed, the fate of an empire in many respects the most interesting in the world. It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.

Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the offices they hold under the State establishments; and the perverted ambition of another class of men, who will either hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of their country, or will flatter themselves with fairer prospects of elevation from the subdivision of the empire into several partial confederacies than from its union under one government.

Which phrase from the first paragraph shows that Hamilton thinks the success of the government created by the United States will impact other governments in the future? (5 points)

a. AFTER an unequivocal experience of the inefficiency of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution…

b. … The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the UNION …

c. …it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country… to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government…

d. …the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed, the fate of an empire in many respects the most interesting in the world…