In the convention that drafted the Federal Constitution it was strongly urged that a Bill of Rights should be incorporated...but it was deemed...unnecessary and even dangerous...inasmuch as the federal government contemplated was in its very nature limited to such powers as were expressly, or by necessary implication, conferred by the Constitution, and hence to specify certain things the government should not do might be construed as permitting it to do anything not so specified.

EMERY, LUCILIUS A., Concerning Justice, Chapter VI, Bill of Rights

When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different: Liberty, Sir, was then the primary object.

My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy.

The tyranny of the legislatures is the most formidable dread at present, and will be for many years. That of the executive will come in its turn; but it will be at a remote period.

[D]uring the eight years [under the Articles of Confederation], the principles of government set forth by Paine and by the Declaration continued in utter abeyance. Not only did the philosophy of natural rights and popular sovereignty remain as completely out of consideration as when Mr. Jefferson first lamented its disappearance, but the idea of government as a social institution based on this philosophy was likewise unconsidered. No one thought of a political organization as instituted "to secure these rights" by processes of purely negative intervention - instituted, that is, with no other end in view than the maintenance of "freedom and security." The history of the eight-year period of federation shows no trace whatever of any idea of political organization other than the State-idea. No one regarded this organization otherwise than as the organization of the political means, an all-powerful engine which should stand permanently ready and available for the irresistible promotion of this-or-that set of economic interests, and the irremediable disservice of others; according as whichever set, by whatever course of strategy, might succeed in obtaining command of its machinery.

The sum of the matter is that while the philosophy of natural rights and popular sovereignty afforded a set of principles upon which all interests could unite, and practically all did unite, with the aim of securing political independence, it did not afford a satisfactory set of principles on which to found the new American State. When political independence was secured, the stark doctrine of the Declaration went into abeyance, with only a distorted simulacrum of its principles surviving. The rights of life and liberty were recognized by a mere constitutional formality left open to eviscerating interpretations, or, where these were for any reason deemed superfluous, to simple executive disregard; and all consideration of the rights attending "the pursuit of happiness" was narrowed down to a plenary acceptance of Locke's doctrine of the preeminent rights of property, with law-made property on an equal footing with labour-made property.

There is no disparagement implied in this observation; for, all questions of motive aside, nothing else was to be expected. No one knew any other kind of political organization. The causes of American complaint were conceived of as due only to interested and culpable mal-administration, not to the essentially anti-social nature of the institution administered. Dissatisfaction was directed against administrators, not against the institution itself. Violent dislike of the form of the institution - the monarchical form - was engendered, but no distrust or suspicion of its nature. The character of the State had never been subjected to scrutiny...One may see here a parallel with the revolutionary movements against the Church in the sixteenth century - and indeed with revolutionary movements in general. They are incited by abuses and misfeasances, more or less specific and always secondary, and are carried on with no idea beyond getting them rectified or avenged, usually by the sacrifice of conspicuous scapegoats. The philosophy of the institution that gives play to these misfeasances is never examined, and hence they recur promptly under another form or other auspices, or else their place is taken by others which are in character precisely like them.

There was no idea of setting up government, the purely social institution which should have no other object than, as the Declaration put it, to secure the natural rights of the individual; or as Paine put it, which should contemplate nothing beyond the maintenance of freedom and security - the institution which should make no positive interventions of any kind upon the individual, but should confine itself exclusively to such negative interventions as the maintenance of freedom and security might indicate. The idea was to perpetuate an institution of another character entirely, the State, the organization of the political means; and this was accordingly done.

It was said at the time, I believe, that the actual causes of the colonial revolution of 1776 would never be known... Great evidential value may be attached to the long line of adverse commercial legislation laid down by the British State from 1651 onward...Over and above these... the British State forbade the colonists to take up lands lying westward of the source of any river flowing through the Atlantic seaboard. ..This was serious. With the mania for speculation running as high as it did, with the consciousness of opportunity, real or fancied, having become so acute and so general, this ruling affected everybody...[L]and-speculation during the colonial period will [mostly] done on the company-system...It is interesting to observe the names of persons concerned in these undertakings; one can not escape the significance of this connection in view of their attitude towards the revolution, and their subsequent career as statesmen and patriots. For example...General Washington...Patrick Henry...Benjamin Franklin...Timothy Pickering [Secretary of State under Washington and Adams]...Silas Deane, emissary of the Continental Congress to France...Robert Morris, who managed the revolution's finances...James Wilson, who became a justice of the Supreme Court...Wolcott of Connecticut, and Stiles, president of Yale College...Peletiah Webster, Ethan Allen, and Jonathan Trumbull...James Duane, the first mayor of New York City...Samuel Adams...The main conclusion, however, towards which these observations tend, is that one general frame of mind existed among the colonists with reference to the nature and primary function of the State. This frame of mind was not peculiar to them; they shared it with the beneficiaries of the merchant-State in England, and with those of the feudal State as far back as the State's history can be traced. Voltaire, surveying the debris of the feudal State, said that in essence the State is "a device for taking money out of one set of pockets and putting it into another." The beneficiaries of the feudal State had precisely this view, and they bequeathed it unchanged and unmodified to the actual and potential beneficiaries of the merchant-State. The colonists regarded the State as primarily an instrument whereby one might help oneself and hurt others; that is to say, first and foremost they regarded it as the organization of the political means. No other view of the State was ever held in colonial America. Romance and poetry were brought to bear on the subject in the customary way; glamorous myths about it were propagated with the customary intent; but when all came to all, nowhere in colonial America were actual practical relations with the State ever determined by any other view than this.

[T]he surrender at Yorktown marks the sudden and complete disappearance of the Declaration's doctrine from the political consciousness of America. Mr. Jefferson resided in Paris as minister to France from 1784 to 1789. As the time for his return to America drew near, he wrote Colonel Humphreys that he hoped soon "to possess myself anew, by conversation with my countrymen, of their spirit and ideas. I know only the Americans of the year 1784. They tell me this is to be much a stranger to those of 1789." So indeed he found it. On arriving in New York and resuming his place in the social life of the country, he was greatly depressed by the discovery that the principles of the Declaration had gone wholly by the board. No one spoke of natural rights and popular sovereignty; it would seem actually that no one had ever heard of them. On the contrary, everyone was talking about the pressing need of a strong central coercive authority, able to check the incursions which "the democratic spirit" was likely to incite upon "the men of principle and property." Mr. Jefferson wrote despondently of the contrast of all this with the sort of thing he had been hearing in the France which he had just left "in the first year of her revolution, in the fervour of natural rights and zeal for reformation." In the process of possessing himself anew of the spirit and ideas of his countrymen, he said, "I can not describe the wonder and mortification with which the table-conversations filled me." Clearly, though the Declaration might have been the charter of American independence, it was in no sense the charter of the new American State.

The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.

The obligations and the claims of the Federal Government were simple and easily definable...but the claims and obligations of the States...complicated and various...penetrated into all the details of social life. The attributes of the Federal Government were therefore carefully enumerated, and all that was no included amongst them was declared to constitute a part of the privileges of the several Governments of the States.

TOCQUEVILLE, ALEXIS DE, Democracy in America, Chapter VIII

[T]he confederate nations which were independent sovereign States before their union...have only consented to cede to the general Government the exercises of those rights which are indispensable to the Union.

TOCQUEVILLE, ALEXIS DE, Democracy in America, Chapter XVIII

The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.

WASHINGTON, GEORGE, Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789