The Anti-Federalists

                                Richard Henry Lee's - Letters From The Federal Farmer
          The essential parts of a free and good government are a full and equal representation of the people in the legislature, and the jury trial of the vicinage in the administration of justice--a full and equal representation, is that which possesses the same interests, feelings, opinions, and views the people themselves would were they all assembled--a fair representation, therefore, should be so regulated, that every order of men in the community, according to the common course of elections, can have a share in it--in order to allow professional men, merchants, traders, farmers, mechanics, &c. to bring a just proportion of their best informed men respectively into the legislature, the representation must be considerably numerous--We have about 200 state senators in the United States, and a less number than that of federal representatives cannot, clearly, be a full representation of this people, in the affairs of internal taxation and police, were there but one legislature for the whole union. The representation cannot be equal, or the situation of the people proper for one government only--if the extreme parts of the society cannot be represented as fully as the central--It is apparently impracticable that this should be the case in this extensive country--it would be impossible to collect a representation of the parts of the country five, six, and seven hundred miles from the seat of government.
          The Antifederalists opposed the ratifying of the US Constitution. Richard Henry Lee worried  that the Constitution lacked a bill of rightsalso, that it was a consolidated, rather than a federal, government and therefore opened the way to despotism, and that the lower house was not sufficiently democratic. He insisted upon amendments before adoption. They feared that it would create an tyranic central government.  The Constitution's proponents promised that this would not happen. The Antifederalists warned that the cost Americans would bear in both liberty and resources for the government that would evolve under the Constitution would rise sharply. That is why their objections led to the Bill of Rights. They also objected to the very notion that a republican form of government can work well over such a vast territory.  Also never in history had therebeen a court with such power and with so few checks upon it, giving the Supreme Court "immense powers" that were not only unprecedented, but perilous for a nation founded on the principle of consent of the governed.
          I chose this writing because i believe that Richard Henry Lee and the rest of the Federalists had every reason to oppose the constution without a Bill of Rights.   The immense benefits and protection afforded to all Americans because of the Anti-Federalist's foresight and determination in preserving liberty and human rights is durable and revelant today.  Even with the constraints of the Bill of Rights, the government still has expansive federal powers to tax, spend and regulate.