"A disciplinary map for understanding African Catholicism today by engaging some of the most pressing and pertinent issues, topics, and conversations in diverse fields of studies in African Catholicism"--

Excerpt from The Political Mission of the United States The first question which met the young con federacy, torn by the jealousies of its stronger and weaker colonies, was the necessity of a central power strong enough to deal with foreign nations and to protect commerce between the States. At this period Alexander Hamilton became the savior of the Republic. If Shake speare is the commanding originating genius of England, and Goethe of Germany, Hamiltonmust occupy that place among Americans. At seventeen he had formulated the principles of government by the people so clearly that no succeeding publicist has improved them. Before he was twenty-five he had made suggestions to the hopeless financiers of the Revolution which revived credit and carried through the war. With few precedents to guide him, he created a fiscal system for the United States which was so elastic and comprehensive that it still controls the vast operations of the treasury and the cus toms. Though but a few years at the bar after his retirement from public life, his briefs are embodied in constitutions and statutes, and to his masterly address the press owes its freedom. This superb intelligence, which was at once philosophic and practical, and with unrivaled lucidity could instruct the dullest mind on the bearing of the action of the present on the des tiny of the future, so impressed upon his contem poraries the necessity of a central government with large powers that the Constitution, now one hundred and one years old, was adopted, and the United States began their life as a nation. At this period, in every part of the world, the doctrine that the Government is the source of power, and that the people have only suchrights as the Government had given, was prac tically unquestioned, and the young Republic began its em'stence with the new and dynamic principle that the people are the sole source of authority, and that the Government has such powers as they grant to it, and no others. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Benjamin Constant (1767-1830) was born in Switzerland and became one of France's leading writers, as well as a journalist, philosopher, and politician. His colourful life included a formative stay at the University of Edinburgh; service at the court of Brunswick, Germany; election to the French Tribunate; and initial opposition and subsequent support for Napoleon, even the drafting of a constitution for the Hundred Days. Constant wrote many books, essays, and pamphlets. His deepest conviction was that reform is hugely superior to revolution, both morally and politically. While Constant's fluid, dynamic style and lofty eloquence do not always make for easy reading, his text forms a coherent whole, and in his translation Dennis O'Keeffe has focused on retaining the 'general elegance and subtle rhetoric' of the original. Sir Isaiah Berlin called Constant 'the most eloquent of all defenders of freedom and privacy' and believed to him we owe the notion of 'negative liberty', that is, what Biancamaria Fontana describes as "the protection of individual experience and choices from external interferences and constraints." To Constant it was relatively unimportant whether liberty was ultimately grounded in religion or metaphysics -- what mattered were the practical guarantees of practical freedom -- "autonomy in all those aspects of life that could cause no harm to others or to society as a whole." This translation is based on Etienne Hofmann's critical edition of Principes de politique (1980), complete with Constant's additions to the original work.

Tucker presents guiding principles for ensuring that central bankers and other unelected policymakers remain stewards of the common good.