Antifederalist No. 16

EUROPEANS ADMIRE AND FEDERALISTS DECRY THE PRESENT SYSTEM 



"ALFRED" defended the Articles of Confederation, taken from The 
New-York Journal, December 25, 1787 as reprinted from the 
[Philadelphia] Independent Gazetteer. 


    To the real PATRIOTS of America: . . . America is now free.  
She now enjoys a greater portion of political liberty than any 
other country under heaven.  How long she may continue so depends 
entirely upon her own caution and wisdom.  If she would look to 
herself more, and to Europe less, I am persuaded it would tend to 
promote her felicity.  She possesses all the advantages which 
characterize a rich country-rich within herself, she ought less 
to regard the politics, the manufactures, and the interests of 
distant nations. 
     When I look to our situation-climate, extent, soil, and its 
productions, rivers, ports; when I find I can at this time 
purchase grain, bread, meat, and other necessaries of life at as 
reasonable a rate as in any country; when I see we are sending 
great quantities of tobacco, wheat and flour to England and other 
parts of the globe beyond the Atlantic; when I get on the other 
side of the western mountains, and see an extensive country, 
which for its multitude of rivers and fertility of soil is equal, 
if not superior, to any other whatever when I see these things, I 
cannot be brought to believe that America is in that deplorable 
ruined condition which some designing politicians represent; or 
that we are in a state of anarchy beyond redemption, unless we 
adopt, without any addition or amendment, the new constitution 
proposed by the late convention; a constitution which, in my 
humble opinion, contains the seeds and scions of slavery and 
despotism. When the volume of American constitutions [by John 
Adams] first made its appearance in Europe, we find some of the 
most eminent political writers of the present age, and the 
reviewers of literature, full of admiration and declaring they 
had never before seen so much good sense, freedom, and real 
wisdom in one publication.  Our good friend Dr. [Richard] Price 
was charmed, and almost prophesied the near approach of the happy 
days of the millennium.  We have lived under these constitutions; 
and, after the experience of a few years, some among us are ready 
to trample them under their feet, though they have been esteemed, 
even by our enemies, as "pearls of great price." 
     Let us not, ye lovers of freedom, be rash and hasty.  
Perhaps the real evils we labor under do not arise from these 
systems.  There may be other causes to which our misfortunes may 
be properly attributed.  Read the American constitutions, and you 
will find our essential rights and privileges well guarded and 
secured.  May not our manners be the source of our national 
evils?  May not our attachment to foreign trade increase them?  
Have we not acted imprudently in exporting almost all our gold 
and silver for foreign luxuries?  It is now acknowledged that we 
have not a sufficient quantity of the precious metals to answer 
the various purposes of government and commerce; and without a 
breach of charity, it may be said, that this deficiency arises 
from the want of public virtue, in preferring private interest to 
every other consideration. 
     If the states had in any tolerable degree been able to 
answer the requisitions of Congress-if the continental treasury 
had been so far assisted, as to have enabled us to pay the 
interest of our foreign debt-possibly we should have heard 
little, very little about a new system of government.  It is a 
just observation that in modern times money does everything.  If 
a government can command this unum necessarium from a certain 
revenue, it may be considered as wealthy and respectable; if not, 
it will lose its dignity, become inefficient and contemptible.  
But cannot we regulate our finances and lay the foundations for a 
permanent and certain revenue, without undoing all that we have 
done, without making an entire new government?  The most wise and 
philosophic characters have bestowed on our old systems the 
highest encomiums.  Are we sure this new political phenomenon 
will not fail?  If it should fail, is there not a great 
probability, that our last state will be worse than the first?  
Orators may declaim on the badness of the times as long as they 
please, but I must tell them that the want of public virtue, and 
the want of money, are two of the principal sources of our 
grievances; and if we are -under the pressure of these wants, it 
ought to teach us frugality-to adopt a frugal administration of 
public affairs.... 
                         ALFRED