Note 698 — Chapter XI · THE ECONOMIC CONFLICT OVER RATIFICATION AS VIEWED BY CONTEMPORARIES

Report of the Manuscripts Commission of the American Historical Association, December 20, 1896, p. 754. A writer in the Chronicle of Freedom (reprinted in the Massachusetts Centinel, October, 27, 1787) complains of the dangers to the freedom of the press from the new Constitution and continues: “One thing, however, is calculated to alarm our fears on this head;—I mean the fashionable language which now prevails so much and is so frequent in the mouths of some who formerly held very different opinions;—That common people have no business to trouble themselves about government.” The Massachusetts Centinel (November 24, 1787) declares it to be “a notorious fact that three of the principle enemies of the proposed constitution were heart and hand with the insurgents last winter.”