sent purposes Beard's book consists of two parts, the evaluation of the economic interests of the delegates to the Constitutional convention and those of the ratifying bodies in the states. As he points out, the fullest analytical treatment of the formation and ratification of the Constitution would require a study of "the (approximately) 160,000 men involved . . . but for the present we must rely on rougher generalizations, drawn from incomplete sources" (253). The records are far more complete for the delegates to the convention and Beard demonstrated that the majority of the delegates held public security interests or personality interests in lands for speculation, money loaned at interest, mercantile enterprise, or slaves, that the majority were lawyers, that they c
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