Reading recommended to the Continental Congress
Indicating what works may have influenced the drafting of the U.S. Constitution

Journals of the Continental Congress, Friday, January 24, 1783

The Committee [Mr. James Madison, Mr. Hugh Williamson and Mr. Thomas Mifflin] instructed on the motion of Col. [Theodorick] Bland to report a list of books proper for the use of Congress, recommend that the Superintendt. of Finance and the Secy. of Congress be empowered to take order for procuring the books enumerated below: the same when procured to be under the care of the said Secy.

Encyclopedie Méthodique.

Dictionaire de l’homme d’État.

Law of Nature and Nations
Cudworth’s Intellectual System.
Cumberland’s Law of Nature.
Wolfius’s Law of Nature.
Hutchinson’s Moral Philosophy.
Beller’s delineation of universal Law.
Ferguson’s analysis of Mor: Philosophy.
Rutherforth’s institutes of Natural Law.

Grotius’s Law of Nature and Nations.
Puffendorf’s Law of Nature and Nations with notes by Barbeyrac.
Puffendorf de officio hominis et civis.
Vattell’s Law of Nature and Nations.
Vattell’s Questions in Natural Law.
Burlamaque’s Law of Nature and Nations.

General History
Universal History.
Modern History.
Raleigh’s History of the World.
Voltaire’s Historical works.
Abbé Millot Histoire generale.
Dictionaire of Bayle.
Burnett’s History of his own times.
Mosheim’s Ecclesiastical History.

Goldsmith’s History of Greece.
Stanyan’s History of Greece.
Potter’s Grecian Antiquities.

Coussin Histoire Romaine.
Histoire de Constantinople.

Goldsmith’s Roman History.
Hooke’s Roman History.
Vertot’s Revolutions of Rome.
Gibbon’s on the decline of the Rom: Empire.
Kennet’s Roman Antiquities.

Plato's Republic by Spend.
Aristotles do.
Sidney on Government.
Locke on Government.
Macchiavelli’s works.
Father Paul on the Venetian Republic.
Montagu’s rise & fall of antient republics.
Montesquieu’s works.
Beccaria’s works.
Ferguson’s History of Civil Society.
Miller on distinction of Ranks in Society.
Steuart’s principles of Political economy.
Smith on the wealth of Nations.