can be restrained only by well-planned cooperation, andntheir application is unmistakable. The natural state is notnone to be desired. Nor even the tribal state. The liberty tonbe found there is forever in question—if the sword-arm fail.nYet human society is so frail a shelter as to be constantlynthreatened by the encroachments of depravity. Earlier innthe convention Ames observes that people who talk aboutnthe “liberty of nature” make a “declamation” against matternof fact. We are thus reminded not of John Locke but ofnThomas Hobbes and of the repetitious misconduct of thenseed of Abraham in the narrative sections of the OldnTestament.nBut perhaps just as eloquent as Ames’s summary of thencase for ratification is the one made by Colonel JonathannSmith of Lanesborough, who, though pointedly rustic innhis delivery and self-description, is as subtle in reasoning fornadoption as any of the lawyers or clergy who are active innthat cause. Smith urges the anxious Anti-Federalists tonconsider a case where two or three of their number “hadnbeen at pains to break up a piece of rough land, and sow itnwith wheat.” Then he asks them to suppose further thatnthey could not agree on how to protect the crop. Only thenndoes he ask, “Would it not be better to put up a fence thatndid not please everyone’s fancy, rather than no fence at all,nor keep disputing about it, until the wild beasts came in andndevoured it.”nGeneral William Heath makes a speech to that sameneffect, using the old parable of the rebellion of the membersnof the body against the whole. He does not speak ofncommerce or profit but of Union. What he and Smith andnAmes and Parsons say is clearly the Federalist teaching onnthe value of Union—and a measure of how different fromnthe Constitution adopted in Virginia and New York, Northnand South Carolina was the theory of government aiErmednby Massachusetts when by 19 votes it ratified what thenFramers had made.nWhat we find in the record of the ratification conventionsnof the South and the Middle States is an emphasis on thenexternal objectives of government, the limits on what itnattempts to achieve, and economic and military advantagesnof a more perfect Union. According to these constructions.nREVOLUTION by Otto ScottnTimes of crisis are not distinguished by respect fornrights—although, paradoxically, all revolutions claimnto be mounted in the name of rights. During our War ofnIndependence, criticism of the patriot cause was an invitationnto a lynching, and Jefferson defined the Tory as “antraitor in thought, if not in deed.”nIn 1773 George Rome, a Rhode Island Tory, wrote anprivate letter criticizing the Assembly and judiciary. Thenletter was discovered by the patriot party and appeared in annewspaper. Rome was arrested by the Assembly for “vilenabuse” of the government. Summoned before the bar of thenOtto Scott is a regular contributor to Chronicles.ngovernment is more a necessary evil than a positive good—nor at least the government of the United States, as opposednto state and local governments. In these conventions, then• regnant myths of the American self, of the national future,nare very different from that of New England. The Agrariannvision of the South and the commercial dream of Philadel-n, phia and New _YQrk did not presume that “the state andnsociety were ‘indivisible’ or ‘co-extensive.'” From the timenof the Mayflower Compact, Massachusetts could not separatenthe two. Southern Federalists did not fear insurrectionnor imagine that democracy and deference toward thennatural leaders of the community were incompatible.nRights for them were an inheritance proved up in thenRevolution. Neither did they emphasize the liberties whichnonly government could guarantee—though many of themnagreed with Fisher Ames that man was a social being andnthat his rights could not be usefully imagined in annaboriginal state. Southern Federalists promised to defendnliberty by confining Federal authority to those functionsnexplicitly assigned to its sphere. So speak James Iredell andnCharles Pinckney, his cousin. General Charles CotesworthnPinckney, and James Madison. Madison in June of 1788ndefined a Constitution which prefigured his subsequentnstruggles about the nature of government with the sons ofnNew England, arguing that “the powers of the generalngovernment will be exercised mostiy in time of war” andn”relate to external objects”; that “by enumerating [certainnrights] of government it [the Constitution] implied thatnthere were no rnore.” For a national government designednto transform the society which it protects he made no briefnIt is an irony that the Constitution Madison did so much toncreate has, through the alchemy of our national history,nbecome more like the one approved in Massachusetts thannthe one he hoped to establish. To understand such developments,nit is necessary to see both of these alternatives in thencontext where they first appeared, to realize that there werenother possible understandings, and to acknowledge thenforces which make it likely that one view prevailed while thenothers sank beneath the waves, caught outside the breakwaternwhen the inundation came.nhouse, he refused to declare whether the opinions in thenletter were his own. “I do not think,” he said, “on thenprivilege of an Englishman, that the question is fairlynstated, because I do not consider that I am called here tonaccuse myself” The Assembly, indifferent to rights longnadmitted in England (and even in Rhode Island), foundnhim guilty of contempt for refusing to answer and imprisonednhim for the remainder of the Session. In Virginia mennwere put in jail on the suspicion that they might some daynassist the enemy.nYears later, after the American government was secure,nmatters were considerably improved. Although the men ofnPhiladelphia did not include specific “rights” in their work.nnnDECEMBER 19871 23n