Founding America (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Jack N. Rakove [233]
By requiring only a Majority to make all Commercial & Navigation Laws, the five Southern States (whose Produce & Circumstances are totally different from that of the eight Northern & Eastern States) will be ruined; for such rigid & premature Regulations may be made as will enable the Merchants of the Northern & Eastern States not only to demand an exorbitant Freight, but to monopolize the Purchase of the Commodities at their own Price, for many Years: to the great Injury of the landed Interest, & Impoverishment of the People: and the Danger is the greater, as the Gain on one Side will be in Proportion to the Loss on the other. Whereas requiring two thirds of the Members present in both Houses wou’d have produced mutual Moderation, promoted the general Interest, and removed an insuperable Objection to the Adoption of the Government.—
Under their own Construction of the general Clause at the End of the enumerated Powers, the Congress may grant Monopolies in Trade & Commerce, constitute new Crimes, inflict unusual & severe Punishments, and extend their Power as far as they shall think proper; so that the State Legislatures have no Security for the Powers now presumed to remain to them; or the People for their Rights.—
There is no Declaration of any kind for preserving the Liberty of the Press, the Tryal by jury in civil Causes; nor against the Danger of standing Armys in time of Peace.
The State Legislatures are restrained from laying Export-Duties on their own Produce.—
The general Legislature is restrained from prohibiting the further Importation of Slaves for twenty odd Years; tho’ such Importations render the United States weaker, more vulnerable, and less capable of Defence.—
Both the general Legislature & the State Legislatures are expressly prohibited making ex post facto Laws; tho’there never was or can be a Legislature but must & will make such Laws, when Necessity & the public Safety require them; which will hereafter be a Breach of all the Constitutions in the Union, and afford Precedents for other Innovations.—
This Government will commence in a moderate Aristocracy; it is at present impossible to foresee whether it will, in it’s Operation, produce a Monarchy, or a corrupt oppressive Aristocracy; it will most probably vibrate some years between the two, and then terminate in the one or the other.—
(a) This Objection has been in some Degree lessened by an Amendment, often before refused, and at last made by an Erasure, after the Engrossment upon Parchment, of the word forty, and inserting thirty, in the 3d. Clause of the 2d. Section of the 1st. Article.—
THE CASE AGAINST THE CONSTITUTION
Melancton Smith: Letters from the Federal Farmer I-V (October 1787) PAGE 435
ONE OF THE MOST influential and thoughtful Anti-Federalist critics of the Constitution was the New York author of Letters from the Federal Farmer. In all likelihood, this was Melancton Smith, a political ally of Governor George Clinton and a former delegate to Congress. Like other Anti-Federalists, the Federal Farmer believed that the Constitution was designed to produce a “consolidation” of previously autonomous states into one overarching national authority. If the state governments survived at all, Anti-Federalists repeatedly argued, they would be hollow jurisdictions at best. All the real power to govern would be concentrated at the national level. Armed with a general authority to tax and broad legislative power, and with the Constitution and federal legislation hailed as “the supreme law of the land,” the national government would dominate the states.
Many Anti-Federalist writers were inclined to treat every clause of the Constitution as a potential formula for tyranny. The Federal Farmer was more moderate. Rather than shrill in tone, these essays were carefully and prudently reasoned. They could not be ridiculed in the way that many Federalists