42

THE CONSTITUTION DISCUSSED.

layed, until the wavering members could be won over; therefore, they avoided everything that might irritate their opponents. Because the Anti-Federalists were so strong, the discussions were prolonged and exhaustive. In the Pennsylvania convention, the Federalists, conscious of their strength, had ridden rough-shod over their opponents. The Massachusetts Federalists were compelled to use caution and treat their opponents with respect. The Constitution was read, paragraph by paragraph that every member might have opportunity to express his sentiments; and then the whole plan was debated under the general question of ratification. This program was liberally carried out.1

The objections to the plan were not new, and most of them had come up in the Federal Convention. Massachusetts was the citadel of annual elections, as it still is, and the Anti-Federalists made much of the differences between this local custom and the method proposed in the Constitution. Strong explained that the biennial provision was the result of a compromise between the party for one, and that for three years; a compromise between the Massachusetts and the South Carolina method.2 Ames defended biennial elections not as a compromise, but on the principle that they were better adapted to a country so extensive as our own, and to a government whose objects of legislation would be such as those arising under the new plan; indeed, the new method would more perfectly secure our liberties.3 But the compromise and the arrangements of a federal cast in the plan, did not satisfy Thompson and Bishop, both of whom de

1 Debates, 100, 103.

* Id., 103.

• Id., 106.

SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE TRADE.

43

nounced biennial elections as perilous to public interests.1 One Anti-Federalist would have a property qualification,2 and pay the members of Congress from the State treasury; another insisted upon a religious test in order to exclude Roman Catholics, but not one of the seventeen clergymen present favored the proposed exclusion. It seems somewhat paradoxical that a demand for a property qualification should have been made by an Anti-Federalist, and that a Federalist should have declared that the objection was founded on undemocratic principles.

Protection to slavery and the slave trade furnished the Anti-Federalists many arguments, expressed summarily by Widgery, who remarked that one southern man with sixty slaves would have as much influence as thirty-seven freemen in New England. As in the Pennsylvania convention so here, the chief objection to the plan was to the power which it gave to Congress. Thomas Dawes, of Boston, argued, that Congress should be given power to encourage manufactures. But this idea which was destined to become a dominant principle of a great political party, in later years, alarmed the Anti-Federalists. It was not perfectly clear, to the majority of the friends or the opponents of the Constitution just how a government could derive an income from a tariff and not burden the people.

The Americans at this time were familiar with direct taxes and quotas, but they had not yet pursued the sinuous ways of indirect taxation; thus a familiar argument with

Theodore Sedgwick, Id., 133. For the part Sedgwick played in bringing about the adoption of the eleventh amendment, see p. 289.

5 Id., Parsons' Minutes, 303.

• Id., 158.

the Anti-Federalists was the probable inability of the new government to raise sufficient revenue by tariff, and, consequently, the necessity it would be under to tax land and personal property.' Undoubtedly this favorite AntiFederal objection was inevitable, but as yet a tariff had not been tried. It is not strange that men, who, like the majority of the Americans, at this time, were obliged to work hard for a living, and whose annual income was not on an average much above two hundred dollars a year, should view, with alarm, the grant of power to Congress to levy and collect taxes at its discretion. This distrust of delegated power was well founded and lay at the bottom of all the Anti-Federal arguments against the legislative department.2 Many Federalists shared it. Yet, carried to an extreme it would destroy all government.3

Local antagonisms divided the members into the agricultural and the commercial party. The New England farmers habitually believed that the merchants, in the large towns, led a very easy life and nowhere was this conviction stronger than in rural Massachusetts. Out of it grew another belief, equally potent, that whatever the merchants favored, would be autocratic, and that true democracy was to be found in the thoughts of the farmers.* The industrial seam ran all along the coast dividing the tillers of the soil from the shop-keepers, the countrymen from the townspeople. Richard Henry Lee had his audience in mind when he wrote his Letters of a Farmer. So Centinel in his letters to the people of Pennsylvania," told them that the new government was intended for the

1 Id., 203.

2 Harding, 74.

3 Knox to Washington, February 10, 1788; Id., 409; Harding, 74.

4 Harding, 75.

• Pennsylvania and the Federal Constitution, 626-628.

well born and would degrade the freemen of the State. It was the rich man's plan, devised to rob the poor man, and all who labored for their bread. This notion was reechoed in other States. In Massachusetts the Anti-Federalists hastened to point out that its truth was corroborated by the class of men who supported the new plan; the lawyers, the clergy, the judges and the rich merchants.1 Thus the contest over the ratification of the Constitution, as it was more or less elsewhere, was a contest between classes.

But not all the plowmen were Anti-Federalists. Jonathan Smith, of Berkshire county, who declared himself a plain man, who got his living by the plow, came from a part of the State which had been harrowed by Shays and his followers. He described the terrible effects of that insurrection. One of the Anti-Federal leaders tried to cut him off, as he vividly described the robberies, the burning of farm buildings, the alarm from town to town, and the breaking up of families, which the insurrection had caused. But Samuel Adams declared Smith in order, and told him to go on in his own way. It led to the conclusion that anarchy breeds tyranny.2 He had made a strong plea for the federal cause, but had not removed the suspicion that the new plan was essentially autocratic.3 Then, too, the paper money men and the friends of the tender laws opposed the new plan; for they saw in it the end of their schemes. Here was a serious obstacle in the way of the Federalists; but here lay the strength of the opposition. The inhabitants of Maine desired separation, and the delegates from this part of the State read in the clause regulating the organization of new States or

1 Harding, 76-77; Debates, 409.

2 Debates, 204.

3 Harding, 78.

4 Harding, 43, 79.

46

POLICY OF THE ANTI-FEDERALISTS.

parts of old ones a serious if not a fatal delay of their wishes. So most of the Maine delegates were opposed to the Constitution.2

The policy of the Anti-Federalists was to postpone the vote; adjourn the convention and await the decision of other States. Thus they all declaimed against undue haste. The new plan, they said, instead of being an amendment to the Articles of Confederation was a wholly different government; therefore, allow the people time for reflection before asking them to approve it.3 The worst feature of this objection was the power of the AntiFederalists to carry it through. It had been agreed at the opening of the session that the discussion should be by sections, until the whole Constitution had been considered. The convention was now amidst the powers of Congress, when on the twenty-third of January, Mason proposed that the form of procedure, by paragraphs, should be abandoned; that the whole instrument be discussed on its merits, and the vote on ratification be taken.* This was alarming, but on the following day, happily

1 When in 1819, separation was finally agitated, the Federalists opposed it; for an account of the separation see my Constitutional History of the American People, 1776-1850, II, Index "Maine." See the Debates and other proceedings of the convention of delegates assembled at Portland on the 11th and continued until the 29th of October, 1819, for the purpose of forming a constitution for the State of Maine, to which is prefixed the constitution taken in convention by Jeremiah Perley, Counsellorat-law, Portland; A. Shirley, Printer, 1820, 300 pages; Journal of the Convention, Augusta, 1856, 112 pages; The Debates and Journal (reprint), Edited by Charles E. Nash, Augusta, Maine, Farmers' Almanac Press, 1894. This also contains the Brunswick Convention of 1816 and biographical sketches of its members and of those of the convention of 1819.

2 Harding, 81.

8 Debates, 160-161.

4 Debates, 195.