a more perfect union

"in contriving any system of government, and fixing the several checks and controuls (hume's spelling) of the constitution, every man ought to be supposed a knave; and to have no other end in all his actions, but private interest. by this interest, we must govern him, and by means of it, make him co-operate to public good, nonwithstanding his insatiable avarice and ambition."
david hume quoted by alexander hamilton in volume one of his collected papers p 94-95.

"viewing the subject on its merits alone, the freeholders of the country would be the safest depositories of republican liberty. in future times a great majority of the people will not only be without landed, but any sort of other property. these will either combine under the influence of their common situation; in which case, the rights of property and the public liberty will not be secure in their hands,or, which is more probable. they will become the tools of opulence and ambition; in which case there will be equal danger on another side."
james madison

"the people who are the insurgents [shaysites] have never paid any, or little taxes-but they see the weakness of government; they feel at once their own poverty compared with the opulent, and their own force, and they are determined to make use of the latter, in order to remedy the former. their creed is ' that the property of the united states has been protected from the confiscation of britan by the joint exertion of all, and therefore ought to be the common property of all. and he that attempts opposition to this creed is an enemy to equity and ought to be swept form off the face of the earth. in a word they are determined to annihilate all debts, public and private and have agrarian laws, which are easily effected by means of unfunded paper money which shall be a tender in all cases."
general knox in a letter to george washington.


"the tyranny of philadelphia is little different than the tyranny of george III."
patrick henry

"every man of reflection must see that the change now proposed is a transfer of power from the many to the few."
richard henry lee

"the constitution is calculated to increase the influence, power, and wealth of those who have it already. its ratification would be a grand point gained in favor of the aristocratic party."
john quincy adams

that the founding fathers were enamored of the gasbags of the scottish enlightenment goes without saying. they were clearly suffering form a siege mentality and a fear of the mob. the demos ( a greek word loosely translated as mob..at least by political scientists and crypto-fascist fox pundits...not the democrats..a root word for democracy) would either become pawns of duplicitous and unscrupulous wealth, harking back to ancient rome and julius caesar's use of the populares to undermine the power of the patrician class, or, even worse, take jeffersoinian rhetoric to heart and demand an actual say in their political and economic well-being , becoming that "interested and overbearing majority" that so haunted madison in federalist X. the founders portrayed themselves as eminently scrupulous and as having only the best intentions for their less intellectually endowed countrymen...benevolent oligarchs of political wisdom. the inclusiveness of the declaration of indepedence's "life , liberty, and pursuit of happiness" was transmuted into the constitution's "more perfect union" after shays' rebellion and its aftermath scared the pants of hamilton and company...that the anti-federalists have disappeared from the popular narrative of the founding of the first republic is less apparent but just as true...they clearly saw the power grab behind the new formulation for a national government...perhaps their insistence on decentralization coupled with the increasingly weighty albatross of slavery prevented a more concentrated resistance in 1789 and the issue was left to fester until 1860 when the constitution was enshrined as inviolate in the second republic...( edwin drake's activities in 1859 may yet be seen as a more pivotal event in sowing the seeds for future trouble in the smooth governance of empire...the jury is still out...mostly because the faction deepest in denial are the direct heirs and beneficiaries of the system implemented in 1789...like all contemporary political [read economic] debate there is a lot of bad noise hovering around these issues...actual events will obviate the debate and will define parameters of real action...the rest is manipulation for a position of advantage)...that was the supposed resolution of the conflict...but there is successionist talk abroad in the land again as the bankruptcy of the hamiltoniam scheme becomes more apparent and the anger of the have-nots is channeled into political gain for "the opulent"