Essays by “The Free Republican,” 1784–1786

This is the first modern publication of ten essays published in the popular Boston newspaper The Independent Chronicle , a significant intellectual event in Massachusetts politics. The essays deal primarily with the problem of mixed government in a republic. Lincoln writes, “Two distinct and different orders of men seems incident to every society,” and these “two contending interests,” fed by a “spirit of jealousy and distrust,” would always be in dispute with one another. “Whether the parties t