The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (143 page)

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The Antifederalists in Pennsylvania also made charges of substance against the Constitution which echoed through the arguments in every state. Two issues seemed important almost everywhere. The first concerned a lack of a bill of rights: protections of speech, religion, trial by jury, all the traditional rights free Englishmen had long enjoyed. To the claim that the Constitution failed to afford such protection there was no answer, though the Federalists in Pennsylvania gave one. Under the Constitution, James Wilson said in a widely reported speech, the national government would exercise only those powers given it; all others were reserved to the states. Since no powers were given Congress to "shackle or destroy" the free press, or -- by implication -- other traditional rights, no bill of rights was necessary ("it would have been superfluous and absurd to have stipulated with a federal body of our own creation, that we should enjoy those privileges, of which we are not divested either by the intention or the act, that has brought that body into existence").
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The second question raised by the Antifederalists, in Pennsylvania, widely repeated elsewhere, concerned the nature of representation in a republic. Everyone agreed that the great authority on republics was Montesquieu. The Antifederalists claimed in his name that a republic could not survive in a nation which covered a large territory and must in time yield to despotism. "Centinel" may have been the first in Pennsylvania to point to the problem a national government would face in attending "to various local concerns and wants." Size alone would render satisfaction of local desires difficult. The number of representatives allotted to the new government simply increased the difficulty. Fifty-five men in the House of Representatives must attend to the interests of a country which extended over hundreds of thousands of square miles. This number invited "corruption and undue influence"; presumably only a very large number could stave off attempts at bribery. And if the representatives managed to avoid being corrupted, they would lose their sense of "accountability" through their long tenure in office-a term was two years, twice as long as the usual state term. Indeed the probability was that no number, however large, could adequately represent the people of a large nation. Adequate representation in Antifederalist minds implied the existence of representatives who shared fully their constituents' interests, passions, and opinions. The representative in an ideal situation would relay the desires of local interests.
He would not reason or act

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independently; his commission simply called for him to register the judgment of the people.
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James Madison had anticipated these charges in the Convention. Far from being unsuited to the republican form, Madison argued, a large nation offered ideal circumstances for its successful application. For the weakness of a republic lay in its tendency toward instability and tyranny, a tendency which would be effectively controlled in a large nation containing a variety of interests. Madison's reasoning rested on several suppositions. First, he assumed that instability inhered in a republic because by definition a republic contained within its assemblies a democratic element. And democracy lent itself to flux through its direct expression of the passions of the people. Democracy was the people governing themselves without the benefit of confining, or limiting, institutions.
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Madison's assumption about democracy was based on still another about human beings: man, by nature, preferred to follow his passions rather than his reason; he invariably chose short-term over long-term interests. Creatures of passion, of selfishness, and sometimes of wickedness, men in political society would always have difficulty in accepting responsibility for the public interest and they would succumb rather easily to opportunities to deprive others of their rights, if by doing so, they seemed to serve themselves.
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Thus, in a republic covering a large nation, bringing together men of various interests -- factions in Madison's parlance -- forming a majority capable of repressing a minority would always be difficult. Their large number and their variety would in effect lead them to block one another out. Madison's mature statement of his theory of factions appeared in the
Federalist
No. 10:

The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party; and the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily

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will they concert and execute their plans of oppression. Extend the sphere and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength and to act in unison with each other. 11

Wilson's restatement of Madison's theory was less powerful but clear enough to be picked up in the debates that followed those in Pennsylvania. Once, of course, the Federalist began appearing in late October 1787, the Federalists came into possession of the most powerful body of political thought ever produced in America. These essays, by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, offered much more than a theory of representation. They dissected the circumstances under which power was exercised in America in the 1780s; they provided a critique of the Articles of Confederation; and they explained how the new government under the Constitution would work. Most important, they reassured Americans concerned about reconciling power and liberty. 12

We cannot know exactly how discussions of constitutional issues affected delegates to the state ratifying conventions. But they must have moved some of the delegates; several of the arguments in print were repeated, with variations, in these conventions, and very little of substance appeared outside that did not receive a hearing within. On the other hand, the process of ratification, state by state, may have served to diminish the power of political ideas to persuade. And it may have increased the importance of strictly local interests. Ratification was a series of state actions, and each state convention had almost of necessity to consider the Constitution in the light of its state's interests. That these interests included a perception that political freedom was essential to all aspects of a state's well-being was tacitly acknowledged by all. Still, we do not know how in a delegate's mind a definition of his state's well-being incorporated a particular notion of representation, or a theory of the structure of government, or a particular sense of individual rights.

What is clear is that state interests were discussed in ratifying conven-

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11 On Federalist No. 10, see Douglass Adair, "The Tenth Federalist Revisited", and "'That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science': David Hume, James Madison, and the Tenth Federalist", in Trevor Colbourn, ed., Fame and the Founding Fathers: Essays by Douglass Adair ( New York, 1974), 75-106.

12 Readers interested in the Federalist papers may read them in several excellent modem editions, including those edited by Jacob E. Cooke, Clinton Rossiter, and Benjamin F. Wright.

tions as well as principles of governance. It is also clear that there was a "logic" to ratification, with individual states responding to the actions of others. To say that there was "momentum" in ratification oversimplifies a complex process. But states were influenced by their neighbors,and the rapid approval by three states in December, followed by two others in January, helped get ratification off to a good start.

Article VII of the Constitution provided that the "Ratification of the Conventions of nine States" would put it into effect. By implication the four states remaining outside could go their separate ways when nine others approved -- or, join the Union. This procedure of getting the new government under way ignored the Articles of Confederation which had required that amendments receive unanimous approval. It also ignored the state legislatures except for one particular -- by common understanding they would have to call for elections of the ratifying conventions. In transmitting the Constitution to the Congress, Washington expressed this understanding as "the Opinion of this Convention."
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The Constitution, with Washington's letter, reached the Congress on September 20. The Congress. included among its number critics of the Constitution. One of them, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, suggested that Congress should first amend the Constitution and then send it to the states. The states, Lee's argument ran, would then have a choice: either to ratify the original or to amend it and to send the revised version to a second constitutional convention. The Congress included more friends to the Constitution than enemies eighteen members who had served as delegates returned to Congress in late September -- but they did not want to wound the critics. Therefore, though they refused Lee's proposal, they refrained from forcing through an endorsement. Instead the Congress contented itself, after gentle prodding by the majority, with simply sending the Constitution to the states without a recommendation.
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When the message from Congress reached the state legislatures, they began to act. Delaware's had met even before the Convention dissolved in order to listen to a report from Richard Bassett, a member who had sat as a delegate. Now, with the Constitution in hand, it called a special election.
The ratifying convention, which met soon afterwards,

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wasted no time and on December 7, 1787, gave the state's approval unanimously.
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The reasons for Delaware's eagerness are clear. Its people, most of whom were small farmers, felt vulnerable. Their economic dependence upon their larger neighbors may have been responsible for a part of this feeling -- their profitable milling businesses imported wheat from Pennsylvania -- but Delaware's size and history probably were more important. Delaware was a dwarf beside Pennsylvania's immense size and population, and even Maryland overshadowed it. Its history also worked to make its people think of union -- until 1776, for example, it had always shared a governor with Pennsylvania.