A Message from Patrick Henry About Tyranny By Roger Kimball
https://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2016/08/27/a-few-words-of-wisdom-from-patrick-henry/
There are, I fancy, few more avid admirers of James Madison than I. But reading through Bernard Bailyn’s extraordinarily brilliant The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, I have to admit that the anti-Federalists who opposed those, like the temporary allies Madison and Alexander Hamilton, who argued for ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1787, had a point.
Their basic argument was that the Constitution as framed by the Federalists would subordinate the rights of the individual states and impose exactly the same sort of tyranny that the colonists had rebelled against in 1776. “Examination of the Constitution revealed,” Bailyn noted, “a taxing power in the hands of the proposed national government that would prove to be as unqualified by the restraints of the states as Parliament’s had been by the colonial assemblies.”
Here’s Patrick (“Give men liberty or give me death”) Henry on what would happen should the Constitution be adopted:
the Senate would live in splendor and a “great and mighty President” would “be supported in extravagant magnificence, so that the whole of our property may be taken by this American government, by laying what taxes they please, giving themselves what salaries they please, and suspending our laws at their pleasure.”
The anti-Federalist “Brutus” (probably Melancton Smith) dilated further on the economic calamity that awaited. The government’s power to “borrow money on the credit of the United States,” he warned, meant that
the Congress may mortgage any or all the revenues of the union . . . [and] may borrow of foreign nations a principal sum, the interest of which will be equal to the annual revenues of the country. By this means, they may create a national debt so large as to exceed the ability of the country ever to sink. I can scarcely contemplate a greater calamity that could befal this country than to be loaded with a debt exceeding their ability ever to discharge.
It’s a pity that “Brutus” couldn’t meet Barack Obama. They would have had a lot to talk about.
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