Greek and Roman states were small, whereas the U.S. is vast. He also points out that the expansion of these republics resulted in a transition from free government to tyranny. Modern analysis and reaction In the first century of the American republic, No. 10 was not regarded as among the more important numbers of The Federalist. For example, in Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville refers specifically to more than fifty of the essays, but No. 10 is not among them. Today, however, No. 10 is regarded as a seminal work of American democracy. In "The People's Vote", a popular survey conducted by the National Archives and Records Administration, National History Day, and U.S. News & World Report, No. 10 (along with Federalist No. 51, also by Madison) was chosen as the 20th most influential document in United States history. David Epstein, writing in 1984, described it as among the most highly regarded of all American political writing. The historian Charles A. Beard identified Federalist No. 10 as one of the most important documents for understanding the Constitution. In his book An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913), Beard argued that Madison produced a detailed explanation of the economic factors that lay behind the creation of the Constitution. At the outset of his study, Beard writes that Madison provided "a masterly statement of the theory of economic determinism in politics" (Beard 1913, p. 15). Later in his study, Beard repeated his point, providing more emphasis. "The most philosophical examination of the foundations of political science is made by Madison in the tenth number," Beard writes. "Here he lays down, in no uncertain language, the principle that the first and elemental concern of every government is economic" (Beard 1913, p. 156). Douglass Adair attributes the increased interest in the tenth number to Beard's book. Adair also contends that Beard's selective focus on the issue of class struggle, and his political progressivism, has colored modern scholarship on the essay. According to Adair, Beard reads No. 10 as evidence for his belief in "the Constitution as an instrument of class exploitation". Adair's own view is that Federalist No. 10 should be read as "eighteenth-century political theory directed to an eighteenth-century problem; and ... one of the great creative achievements of that intellectual movement that later ages have christened 'Jeffersonian democracy. Garry Wills is a noted critic of Madison's argument