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'Mercy Otis Warren, Excerpts From' Observations On The New Constitution

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Despite the fact that excerpt 7.4, “James Madison, Excerpts from ‘Federalist NO. 51’ (1788)”, and excerpt 7.5, “Mercy Otis Warren, Excerpts from ‘Observations on the New Constitution, and the Federal and State Conventions by a Columbian Patriot’ (1788)” have their differences, there are also some similarities between the two. In the first reading, excerpt 7.4, James Madison wrote an essay to why the people of each state should ratify for the Constitution. James Madison is a federalist. Madison describes that the states would have a constitution, which would have certain laws that all states have to follow, but that they can still have some state laws of their own. The federalists want to ratify the constitution in order to have a more powerful …show more content…

Mercy Otis Warren, an antifederalist, observed the disadvantages to the constitution. She says that the government would become too powerful and that will overrule the people’s independence. Seeing that the government may become powerful, Warren proposed that the states do not want to be controlled like before with Britain. She has said that they have finally escaped a government that dictates and she does not want to return to that. Mercy Otis Warren has proposed that if the people were to ratify the constitution, they would do it even before they fully understood what they were getting into. Considering that the men who came up with the constitution did do it in secrecy, she says that they are definitely trying to do this for their own good. Warren says, “Self defence is a primary law of nature, which no subsequent law of society can abolish.” (76) In her statement she identifies that the people of each state are to control their own lives. She does not want a strong government; she wants to keep a weak government. Warren wants the people to fully understand what they are getting themselves into, so they do not regret it in the long

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