Essay • 1787

Brutus No. 1

'Brutus' (likely Robert Yates)

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Published under the pen name 'Brutus' in October 1787, the first Anti-Federalist essay warned that the proposed Constitution would consolidate the states into a single empire too vast for republican self-government. The Anti-Federalists lost the ratification fight but won the Bill of Rights.

History furnishes no example of a free republic, any thing like the extent of the United States. The Grecian republics were of small extent; so also was that of the Romans. Both of these, it is true, in process of time, extended their conquests over large territories of country; and the consequence was, that their governments were changed from that of free governments to those of the most tyrannical that ever existed in the world.

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