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Consolidation - we were warned - would guarantee a destruction of liberty. But many founders seemed to believe they could pull off a “proper” or “partial” consolidation and not get a system of “unremitted despotism.”
Federal Farmer warned that liberty under the constitution would depend primarily on the worst of all possible checks, “the prudence, wisdom and moderation of those who manage the affairs of government.”
In her widely-read and influential anti-federalist essay, Mercy Otis Warren warned that the Constitution would abandon the principles of the American Revolution and facilitate consolidation of the states under a powerful national government. In other words, it would lead to unlimited centralized power – similar to the system the colonists had fought to leave.
The Federal Farmer lays out a laundry list of reasons why the system under the constitution “will have a strong tendency to aristocracy, or the government of the few.” Predicting it would ultimately result in a consolidated government ruling by “fear and force.”
In the first of his 18 anti-federalist letters, the Federal Farmer warned against adopting a new system hastily out of fear, which has always “been the custom of tyrants and their dependents.” Instead, he urged caution - and a deeper look at what might lead to total consolidation and a destruction of liberty.