Antifederalist No. 60 

WILL THE CONSTITUTION PROMOTE THE INTERESTS OF FAVORITE CLASSES? 



John F. Mercer of Maryland was the author of this essay, taken 
from his testimony to members of the ratifying conventions of New 
York and Virginia, 1788, (From the Etting Collection of the 
Historical Society of Pennsylvania.) 



     We have not that permanent and fixed distinction of ranks or 
orders of men among us, which unalterably separating the 
interests and views, produces that division in pursuits which is 
the great security of the mixed Government we separated from and 
which we now seem so anxiously to copy.  If the new Senate of the 
United States will be really opposite in their pursuits and views 
from the Representatives, have they not a most dangerous power of 
interesting foreign nations by Treaty [to] support Their views?-
for instance, the relinquishment of the navigation of [the] 
Mississippi-and yet where Treaties are expressly declared 
paramount to the Constitutions of the several States, and being 
the supreme law, [the Senate] must of course control the national 
legislature, if not supersede the Constitution of the United 
States itself.  The check of the President over a Body, with 
which he must act in concert-or his influence and power be almost 
annihilated-can prove no great constitutional security.  And even 
the Representative body itself . . . are not sufficiently 
numerous to secure them from corruption.  For all governments 
tend to corruption, in proportion as power concentrating in the 
hands of the few, tenders them objects of corruption to Foreign 
Nations and among themselves. 
     For these and many other reasons we are for preserving the 
rights of the State governments, where they must not be 
necessarily relinquished for the welfare of the Union.  And, 
where so relinquished, the line should be definitely drawn. If 
under the proposed Constitution the States exercise any power, it 
would seem to be at the mercy of the General Government.  For it 
is remarkable that the clause securing to them those rights not 
expressly relinquished in the old Confederation, is left out in 
the new Constitution.  And we conceive that there is no power 
which Congress may think necessary to exercise for the general 
welfare, which they may not assume under this Constitution.  And 
this Constitution, and the laws made under it, are declared 
paramount even to the unalienable rights which have heretofore 
been secured to the citizens of these States by their 
constitutional compacts. . . . 
     Moreover those very powers, which are to be expressly vested 
in the new Congress, are of a nature most liable to abuse.  They 
are those which tempt the avarice and ambition of men to a 
violation of the rights of their fellow citizens, and they will 
be screened under the sanction of an undefined and unlimited 
authority.  Against the abuse and improper exercise of these 
special powers, the people have a right to be secured by a sacred 
Declaration, defining the rights of the individual, and limiting 
by them the extent of the exercise. The people were secured 
against the abuse of those powers by fundamental laws and a Bill 
of Rights, under the government of Britain and under their own 
Constitution.  That government which permits the abuse of power, 
recommends it, and will deservedly experience the tyranny which 
it authorizes; for the history of mankind establishes the truth 
of this political adage-that in government what may be done will 
be done. 
     The most blind admirer of this Constitution must in his 
heart confess that it is as far inferior to the British 
Constitution, of which it is an imperfect imitation, as darkness 
is to light.  In the British Constitution the rights of men, the 
primary object of the social compact, are fixed on an immoveable 
foundation and clearly defined and ascertained by their Magna 
Charta, their Petition of Rights, their Bill of Rights, and their 
effective administration by ostensible Ministers secures 
responsibility.  In this new Constitution a complicated system 
sets responsibility at defiance and the rights of men neglected 
and undefined are left at the mercy of events.  We vainly plume 
ourselves on the safeguard alone of representation, forgetting 
that it will be a representation on principles inconsistent with 
true and just representation; that it is but a delusive shadow of 
representation, proffering in theory what can never be fairly 
reduced to practice.  And, after all, government by 
representation (unless confirmed in its views and conduct by the 
constant inspection, immediate superintendence, and frequent 
interference and control of the people themselves on one side, or 
an hereditary nobility on the other, both of which orders have 
fixed and permanent views) is really only as one of perpetual 
rapine and confusion.  Even with the best checks it has failed in 
all the governments of Europe, of which it was once the basis, 
except that of England. 
     When we turn our eyes back to the zones of blood and 
desolation which we have waded through to separate from Great 
Britain, we behold with manly indignation that our blood and 
treasure have been wasted to establish a government in which the 
interest of the few is preferred to the rights of the many. When 
we see a government so every way inferior to that we were born 
under, proposed as the reward of our sufferings in an eight years 
calamitous war, our astonishment is only equaled by our 
resentment.  On the conduct of Virginia and New York, two 
important States, the preservation of liberty in a great measure 
depends.  The chief security of a Confederacy of Republics was 
boldly disregarded, and the Confederation violated, by requiring 
9 instead of 13 voices to alter the Constitution.  But still the 
resistance of either of these States in the present temper of 
America (for the late conduct of the party here [Maryland] must 
open the eyes of the people in Massachusetts with respect to the 
fate of their amendment) will secure all that we mean to contend 
for-the natural and unalienable rights of men in a constitutional 
manner. 
     At the distant appearance of danger to these, we took up 
arms in the late Revolution.  And may we never have cause to look 
back with regret on that period when connected with the Empire of 
Great Britain, we were happy, secure and free.