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B. DISSENT OF MINORITY/18 DEC.
it is calculated for this express purpose, and will doubtless be executed
accordingly.
As this government will not enjoy the confidence of the people, but
be executed by force, it will be a very expensive and burthensome
government. The standing army must be numerous, and as a further
support, it will be the policy of this government to multiply officers
in every department: judges, collectors, tax gatherers, excisemen, and
the whole host of revenue officers will swarm over the land, devouring
the hard earnings of the industrious, like the locusts of old, impo-
verishing and desolating all before them.
We have not noticed the smaller, nor many of the considerable
blemishes, but have confined our objections to the great and essential
defects; the main pillars of the constitution, which we have shown to
be inconsistent with the liberty and happiness of the people, as its
establishment will annihilate the state governments, and produce one
consolidated government, that will eventually and speedily issue in
the supremacy of despotism.
In this investigation, we have not confined our views to the interests
or welfare of this state, in preference to the others. We have over-
looked all local circumstances; we have considered this subject on the
broad scale of the general good; we have asserted the cause of the
present and future ages, the cause of liberty and mankind.
Nathaniel Breading                 John Ludwig
John Smilie                        Abraham Lincoln
Richard Baird                      John Bishop
Adam Orth                          Joseph Heister
John A. Hanna                      Joseph Powel
John Whitehill                     James Martin
John Harris                        William Findley
Robert Whitehill                   John Baird
John Reynolds                      James Edgar
Jonathan Hoge                      William Todd
Nicholas Lutz
a. The Journals of the conclave are still concealed.
b. The continental convention in direct violation of the
13th Article of the confederation have declared, "that the
ratification of nine states shall be sufficient for the estab-
lishment of this constitution, between the states so ratifying
the same." Thus has the plighted faith of the states been
sported with! They had solemnly engaged that the con-
federation now subsisting should be inviolably preserved by
each of them, and the union thereby formed, should be
perpetual, unless the same should be altered by mutual
consent.
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