Count the Cost: An Address to the People of Connecticut, on Sundry Political Subjects, and Particularly on the Proposition for a New Constitution

Written in the anxious aftermath of Connecticut's 1818 constitution, this fiery address captures a Federalist judge's desperate argument against the democratic tide sweeping America. David Daggett, a prominent lawyer and judge, watches with alarm as reformers push for universal suffrage and greater separation of church and state. His solution: a meticulous accounting of what radical change would cost the state. Daggett paints Connecticut's existing institutions as the guardians of its peace and prosperity, warning that expanding the vote to 'the unpropertied and unlearned' would unleash chaos and moral collapse. It's a deeply conservative document, one that sees the Revolutionary generation's heirs as custodians rather than reformers. Yet beneath the polemic lies something valuable: a vivid window into Federalist anxieties about democracy, a window that shows us exactly what the architects of the old order feared would be lost. For readers interested in early American political thought, this is essential reading, a relic from the moment before Jacksonian democracy permanently reshaped the nation.