So overwhelming was the popular feeling against a strong National Government that, if the Anti-Constitutionalists had concentrated their attack upon this secret purpose of the leading Constitutionalists to make it such by easy stages, it is more than probable that the Constitution would have been defeated.
Beveridge reflects on the strong public opposition to a powerful National Government during the ratification debates.
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Is not liberty secure with us, where the people hold all powers in their own hands, and delegate them cautiously, for short periods, to their servants, who are accountable for the smallest mal-administration?...
The Alien and Sedition Laws were, they asserted, the beginning of monarchy, the foundation of absolutism.
Washington was the soul of the American cause.
The existing American system was a very masterpiece of weakness.
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