The Antifederalist Papers

secured us a territory greater than any European monarch possesses--and shall a government which has been thus strong and vigorous, be accused of imbecility, and abandoned for want of energy? Consider what you are about to do before you part with the government. Take longer time in reckoning things; revolutions like this have happened in almost every country in Europe; similar examples are to be found in ancient Greece and ancient Rome--instances of the people losing their liberty by their own carelessness and the ambition of a few. We are cautioned . . . against faction and turbulence. I acknowledge that licentiousness is dangerous, and that it ought to be provided against. I acknowledge, also, the new form of government may effectually prevent it. Yet there is another thing it will as effectually do--it will oppress and ruin the people.

The Federalist essays appeared from October, 1787 to May, 1788. Specific surrebuttals by opponents of the Constitution were rarely published. The following selection, however, was a direct answer to Publius [John Jay] Federalist No. 5. Jay attempted to utilize what he considered to be an historical analogy--the union of Scotland and England--in order to reason on the efficacy of the proposed American union. An anonymous Antifederalist New Yorker, "AN OBSERVER," indicated that the English-Scottish union left much to be desired. More important, this unknown author criticized the early Federalist essays for belaboring the obvious and passing over the true objections of Antifederalists. First printed in The New-York Journal, it reappeared in the [ Boston] American Herald of December 3, 1787.

A writer, under the signature Publius or The Federalist, No. V, in the Daily Advertiser, and in the New York Packet, with a view of proving the advantages which, he says, will be derived by the states if the new constitution is adopted, has given extracts of a letter from Queen Anne to the Scotch parliament, on the subject of a union between Scotland and England.

I would beg leave to remark, that Publius has been very unfortunate in selecting these extracts as a case in point, to convince the people of America of the benefits they would derive from a union, under such a government as would be effected by the new system. It is a certainty, that when the union was the subject of debate in the Scottish legislature, some of their most sensible and disinterested nobles, as well as commoners! (who were not corrupted by English gold), violently opposed the union, and predicted that the people of Scotland would, in fact, derive no advantages from a consolidation of government with England; but, on the contrary, they would bear a great proportion of her debt, and furnish large bodies of men to assist in her wars with France, with whom, before the union, Scotland was at all times on terms of the most cordial amity. It was also predicted that the representation

-12-