The answer is C. Federalist Papers.
Explanation:
The Federalist Papers were a series of eighty-five essay urging the citizens of New York to ratify the new United States Constitution. In the Federalist Papers, Hamilton, Jay and Madison argued that the decentralization of power that existed under the Articles of Confederation prevented the new nation from becoming strong enough to compete on the world stage, or to quell internal insurrections such as Shays’s Rebellion. In addition to laying out the many ways in which they believed the Articles of Confederation didn’t work, Hamilton, Jay and Madison used the Federalist essays to explain key provisions of the proposed Constitution, as well as the nature of the republican form of government.
Written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, the essays originally appeared anonymously in New York newspapers in 1787 and 1788 under the pen name "Publius." The Federalist Papers are considered one of the most important sources for interpreting and understanding the original intent of the Constitution.
A social contract is an implicit agreement among the members of a society to cooperate for social benefits, for example by sacrificing some individual freedom for state protection. Theories of a social contract became popular in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries among theorists such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as a means of explaining the origin of government and the obligations of subjects.
The term "social contract" refers to the idea that the state exists only to serve the will of the people, who are the source of all political power enjoyed by the state. The people can choose to give or withhold this power.
The term "social contract" can be found as far back as the writings of the 4th-5th century BCE Greek philosopher Plato. However, it was English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) who expanded on the idea when he wrote "Leviathan," his philosophical response to the English Civil War. In the book, he wrote that in early human history there was no government. Instead, those who were the strongest could take control and use their power over others at any time. His famous summation of life in "nature" (before government) is that it was "nasty, brutish, and short."
Hobbes' theory was that in the past, the people mutually agreed to create a state, giving it only enough power to provide protection of their well-being. However, in Hobbes' theory, once the power was given to the state, the people then relinquished any right to that power. In effect, the loss of rights was the price of the protection they sought.
The idea of the social contract had a huge impact on the American Founding Fathers, especially Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) and James Madison (1751–1836). The U.S. Constitution starts with the three words, "We the people...," embodying this idea of popular sovereignty in the very beginning of this key document. Following from this principle, a government established by the free choice of its people is required to serve the people, who in the end have sovereignty, or supreme power, to keep or overthrow that government.
