7. Did the constitution, as Gouverneur Morris asserted, put a premium on slavery? 8. What was the compromise between the commercial states, and North and South Carolina, and Georgia? 9. State the three slavery clauses in the constitution. 10. Did the fugitive slave clause in the constitution authorize the capture of fugitive slaves, prior to the passage of a fugitive slave law? 11. When was the first fugitive slave law passed? 12. What was the compromise between state sovereignty and nationalism? 13. Which of the compromises proved to be denationalizing forces, and why? 14. What effect did the civil war have on the compromises of the constitution? 15. How did the Convention at first propose to prevent the states from passing unconstitutional laws? 16. What provision did they finally make to prevent it? 17. What does Burgess mean when he calls the aristocracy of the robe the governmental system of the United States? THE CHAPTER IV. THE ANTIFEDERAL PARTY. HE Convention finished its work in September. The constitution was published in the newspapers of Philadelphia about the middle of the month, and then the contest between the Federalists and the Antifederalists began. The programme of the Antifederalists was purely negative. Like the Irishman, who said he was "agin the government," when he was asked as he landed Programme Antifederalists. in New York what political party he be- of the We must be careful not to confuse them with the Republicans or Democrats who began to exist as a party about 1791. The questions at issue between the two parties in 1791 were entirely different from the single question which divided the Federalists and Antifederalists in 1787. Shall the constitution be adopted? That was the one question at issue between the Federalists and the Antifederalists in 1787. But the questions that divided the Federalists and Antifederalists Republicans in the administrations of Washington and Adams related to matters of finance and foreign affairs, and the proper interpretation of the and Republicans. constitution. Indeed, two eminent men, Jefferson and Madison, were Federalists in 1787 and Republicans in 1791. They were Federalists when to be a Federalist meant to believe in the adoption of the constitution; they were Republicans when to be a Federalist meant to believe in Hamilton's financial policy, and in an interpretation of the constitution which tended, they believed, to the undue centralization of the government. Antifederalists. We may divide the Antifederalists into three great classes. The first class was composed of men of the type of Patrick Henry, Luther Martin, George Mason, and Rawlin Lowndes. Feeling intensely that Three classes of their state was their country, and governed rather by feeling than by intellect, these men could not endure the thought that their state should submit to a government external, and therefore foreign to them. "What gave the Convention the right to say we the people, instead of we the states?" asked Patrick Henry. Seeing in the confederation a form of government in which the states were independent and sovereign, in which they submitted to no compulsion, they forgot its terrible defects, and lauded it as the most perfect government in the world. Jefferson, who be it remembered, was not an Antifederalist, said that to compare the government of the confederation with Those who feared the constitution would overthrow the state governments. the governments of the countries on the continent of Europe was like comparing heaven with hell. Jefferson was in France when he said that. His mind was haunted by the thought of the suffering peasants of France, doomed by despotism to a life of unrequited toil. His countrymen were free; and to be free seemed to him in the presence of the victims of French despotism, the perfection of political blessedness. He forgot, and so did Antifederalists like Patrick Henry, that liberty protected by law is the only liberty possible to men; that liberty unprotected by law is nothing but anarchy, and that anarchy inevitably results in tyranny. Antifederalists of this class objected to the constitution because they were afraid the government it provided for would abuse its powers. But the history of the confederation had shown that the only way to make an abuse of power impossible is to grant no power to be abused. The second class opposed the constitution primarily because of pecuniary considerations. I have already spoken of the paper money epidemic that spread over the country. That delusion, as we have seen, bade fair in Those who op to take the country by storm in 1786. It captured the legislatures of seven states outright, and trenched itself in such strong minorities in posed the con stitution for pecuniary reasons. four others, as to leave those who were able to think straight in mortal terror of the results of the next election. Now every advocate of paper money in the country was opposed to the constitution, because it forbade any state to make anything but gold and silver a legal tender for the payment of debt. There was another class who had pecuniary reasons for opposing the constitution. When the Revolutionary war broke out, large sums of money, especially in the South, were due to British subjects. Under the government of the confederation, no power outside of the state could compel the payment of them, whatever treaties might be made. But the new constitution as we know provided that itself, and laws and treaties made in accordance with it, should be the supreme law of the land. And the treaty made with Great Britian at the close of the Revolution, provided for the payment of the debts due to English citizens. The debtor classes in general tended instinctively to oppose the constitution. We have seen that under the government of the Confederation, whenever they got control of the state, they passed laws remitting taxes, affording facilities for the payment of debts, or suspending their collection, as well as for the manufacture of paper money. The party that opposed them, that insisted on the payment of debts, public and private, always wished to strengthen the powers of the central government while debtor classes as invariably opposed it. Oliver Ellsworth, of Connecticut, said in the Convention, "The prevailing wish of the people of the Eastern (New England) states is to get rid of the public debt, and the idea of strengthening the national government carries with it that of strengthening the public debt." Before the constitution framed, therefore, the material was ready for the organization of the two parties-the one to secure and the other to prevent its adoption. It was not this or that pro was |