1. DEBATE OVER CONSTITUTION

"The employments of your country, disposed of to the opulent, to
whose contumely you will continually be an object."-"You must risque
much, by indispensibly placing trusts of the greatest magnitude in the
hands of individuals, whose ambition for power and aggrandizement
will oppress and grind you." This is argumentum ad populum.3 Cato
knows better: he knows that the powers vested, by this Constitution, in
the Federal Government, are incapable of abuse.
The different powers are so modified and distributed, as to form
mutual checks upon each other. The State Legislatures form a check
on the Senate and House of Representatives, infinitely more effectual
than that of the people themselves on their State Legislatures. The
people, so far from entertaining a jealousy of, in fact place the highest
confidence in, their Representatives; who, by giving false colorings to
bad measures, are too often enabled to abuse the trust reposed in
them. But widely different is the situation in which the Federal Rep-
resentatives stand, in respect to the State Legislatures. Here the mutual
apprehensions of encroachments, must for ever keep awake a jealous,
watchful spirit, which will not suffer the smallest abuse to pass unno-
ticed. The Senate and House of Representatives form mutual checks
on each other, and the President on both. Cato's apprehensions of
Monarchy are chimerical, in the highest degree; and calculated in the
same manner as what he says of the rich oppressing and grinding the
poor-to catch the attention of the unwary multitude.
1. On 30 October the Daily Advertiser announced that "Americanus" was received and
that it "will appear as soon as possible."
2. See "Cato" III, New York Journal, 25 October (above).
3. Latin: An appeal to the people (i.e., to their lower nature rather than to their
intellect).
Curtius III
New York Daily Advertiser, 3 November 1787 (supplement)'
An ADDRESS to FEDERALISTS.
One who has no other motive than the public good to influence his
political sentiments, congratulates you upon the Federal spirit now so
universally pervading the Union; incontestible evidences of which are
daily received.
A late respectable Convention of Clergymen, in this city,2 have done
honor to their society, by intimating to us the general sense of the
serious and sedate. The proposed Constitution appeared to them so
evidently calculated to promote the happiness of mankind, and to se-
cure the liberties of their country, as to draw forth their public and
warmest commendations. By those, in every State, who have long been

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