ON THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION ¥27 
subject, and directing it in a more intelligent way. 
Twenty years ago the Johns Hopkins University set 
the example of publishing a monthly series of pam- 
phlets setting forth the results of special research upon 
topics that had either escaped attention or been very 
inadequately treated. One paper would discuss the 
functions of constables in New England in the early 
days ; another would inquire into the causes of the piracy 
that infested our coasts at the end of the seventeenth 
century; another would make the history of town and 
county government in Illinois as absorbing as a novel; 
another would treat of old Maryland manors, another 
of the influence of Quakers upon antislavery senti- 
ment in North Carolina, and so on. Many of the 
writers of these papers, trained in the best methods of 
historical study, have become professors of history in 
our colleges from one end of the Union to the other, 
and are sowing good seed where they go; while other 
colleges have begun to follow the example thus set. 
From Harvard and Columbia and the Universities of 
Wisconsin and Nebraska come especially notable con- 
tributions to our study each year. In Kentucky a 
Filson Club investigates the early overflow of our pop- 
ulation across the Alleghanies; in Milwaukee a Park- 
man Club discusses questions raised by the books of 
that great writer, while books long forgotten or never 
before printed are now made generally accessible. 
Thus the Putnams of New York are bringing out ably 
edited sets of the writings of the men who founded 
this republic. Thus Dr. Coues has clothed with fresh 
life the journals and letters of the great explorers who 
opened up our Pacific country; while a crowning 
achievement has been the publication in Cleveland, 
