#All men are born equal free#

In this view, as a tribute due from us to that hon. But we mean to see with our own eyes, and thus seeing to act for ourselves. If we were to pin our faith on any sleeves but our own (without derogating in the least from the merit of any one of the Massachusetts delegates in the federal convention) we should be as likely to pin it on the sleeve of the hon.

#All men are born equal free#

“ALL MEN ARE BORN FREE AND EQUAL ” if so, every man hath a natural and unalienable right to his own opinion, and, for asserting this right, ought not to be stimatized with the epithets of tenacious and dogmatical. We cannot think, he acts a very consistent part, or did through the whole of the contest with Great Britain: who, notwithstanding he wielded the sword in defence of American liberty, yet at the same time was, and is to this day, living upon the labours of several hundreds of miserable Africans, as free born as himself and some of them very likely descended from parents who, in point of property and dignity in their own country, might cope with any man in America.We do not conceive we are to be overborne by the weight of any names, however revered. We cannot think the noble general, has the same ideas with ourselves, with regard to the rules of right and wrong. Yet we cannot suppose them, to be infallible guides, neither yet that a man must necessarily incur guilt to himself merely by dissenting from them in opinion. Illustrious names, we allow-worthy characters in civil society. It is graced with the names of a Washington and a Franklin. Another thing they tell us, that the constitution must be good, from the characters which composed the Convention that framed it. They must pull upon some other string, or they must fail. We know this is not true and as we well know the design of such representations, we would have those gentlemen know, that it will not take. There are many men destitute of eloquence, yet they can see and hear-They can think and judge, and are therefore not likely to be wheedled out of their senses by the sophistical reasonings of all the advocates for this new constitution in the country combined. When we see the adherents to this constitution chiefly made up of civil and ecclesiastical gown men, and their dependents, the expedient they have hit upon is not likely to have the intended effect. We would ask the disinterested part of the community just to look over the characters wich are so fond of swallowing this creature, which exhibits all the pourtraits of an over-bearing aristocracy, and see if they are not chiefly composed of salary men and pensioners, and those who at least think themselves fair candidates for places of honour and emolument, whenever the aristocratick wheels of the federal chariot shall be set in motion. This is so far from with truth, that we conceive it to be an absolute falsehood.

But it is very unlucky for them, that they should be so far misled, as to attempt to trump up one thing which appears by no means to be founded in truth, viz that none but placemen and pensioners are opposed to it. Many are the arts made use of by our aristocratick gentlemen, to accomodate the federal constitution to the yeomanry of the country. Massachusetts ratified the constitution on February 7, 1788. Thomas Jefferson, then in Paris as the United States' minister to France, felt similarly. Rural smallholders were not the only ones who felt this way, however. Farmers from the western part of the state, such as the “yeomen” who signed this letter published in the Massachusetts Gazette in January, 1788, were suspicious of the power that the constitution seemed to centralize in elite hands. In Massachusetts, site of the previous year’s Shay’s Rebellion against government enforcement of private debt collection, ratification did not go uncontested. Afterward, ratifying conventions were held in the states. The constitution of the United States was composed in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787. “All Men Are Born Free and Equal”: Massachusetts Yeomen Oppose the “Aristocratickal” Constitution, January, 1788.