Paste your essay in here…When the Constitution was first drafted and ratified by the states, there was no Bill of Rights listing enumerated powers that people have such as the right to freedom of religion, speech, and assembly, the right to bear arms, and many others. Instead, people depended on the government to be just and right and to provide security for them, hence the concept of “we, the people.” After the First Congress, the Bill of Rights was created. Why did it take so long to be made? That is because Federalists and Antifederalists both shared differing opinions as to whether or not a Bill of Rights should exist or not. The Federalists believed that by making a Bill of Rights, the government is limiting a person’s rights by making it seem that a person’s inalienable rights are only those that were listed on the Constitution. Moreover, the Antifederalists believed in a Bill of Rights as a way to ensure people’s individual freedom in case the government tries to usurp the people’s powers and privileges.
When Alexander Hamilton wrote the Federalist #84 where he explains why a Bill of Rights is not needed, he writes, “…though the constitution of New York has no bill of rights prefixed to it, yet it contains, in the body of it, various provisions in favor of particular privileges and rights, which, in substance amount to the same thing; the other is, that the Constitution adopts, in their full extent, the common and statute law of Great Britain, by which many other rights, expressed in it, are equally secured” (Hamilton, Federalist #84 1788). According to Hamilton, he does believe that a Bill of Rights is necessary for a country that utilizes federalism as its form of government. He believes that states, through their own constitutions, have provisions that protect the rights of its citizens in it. The same could be said of a national constitution like the Constitution of the United States of America. For example, Hamilton also writes, “Section 9, of the same article, clause 2 — “The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it’” (Hamilton, Federalist #84 1788). Furthermore, by not making a Bill of Rights, the government does not risk assuming that only the rights listed in a Bill of Rights are those that people have. In other words, a Bill of Rights is dangerous as it asserts the idea that the government can determine which rights people can and can’t have. By making this essay, Hamilton argues that the reason that the Bill of Rights should not be made is that the entire Constitution is within itself a Bill of Rights that could be strengthened to ensure that individual rights should not be infringed upon.
Brutus, on the other hand, believed that a unified, national government was too strong and people needed a Bill of Rights to safeguard their powers and privileges. He writes, “But rulers have the same propensities as other men; they are as likely to use the power with which they are vested for private purposes, and to the injury and oppression of those over whom they are placed, as individuals in a state of nature are to injure and oppress one another” (Brutus 1787). In this quote, Brutus points out that people share a common human nature, which includes impulses of ambition and greed. In the pursuit of these new desires, a person could easily harm others, or rather impulse them in order to achieve the better good. Brutus also implies that even elected officials may become greedy and abandon their promises and responsibilities and abuse their power and status for self-interested purposes such as winning a reelection or being promoted in the political realm. Brutus argues that because of the possibility of leaders finding ways to abuse political power for selfish reasons, a Bill of Rights is needed in order to protect the rights and best interests of the American people.
Moreover, Brutus adds on to his point that a centralized national government is too powerful. In his essay, he quotes Article VI of the United States Constitution: “The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution” (Article VI, Constitution 1787). Then he writes, “It is therefore not only necessarily implied thereby, but positively expressed, that the different state constitutions are repealed and entirely done away, so far as they are inconsistent with this, with the laws which shall be made in pursuance thereof, or with treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States; of what avail will the constitutions of the respective states be to preserve the rights of its citizens?” (Brutus 1787). Brutus argues that since states and their legislatures are bound to follow the Constitution—with the idea that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and when both are constitutionally proper, federal laws trump state statutes—this results with state laws and protections being deemed useless if they are inconsistent with the current language and content of the new national Constitution. Brutus fears that without a proper and legitimate Bill of Rights in the national constitution, the people lack proper protections and the government has way too much power of them.
From Roman pseudonyms such as Publius and Brutus to the hard language of these essays, it is obviously that both Alexander Hamilton and Robert Yates, depend highly on philosophical knowledge and conclusions in order to defend their arguments regarding the Bill of Rights. For instance, as cited earlier, Brutus utilizes the philosophy of human nature and the idea that people are normally greedy and ambitious to prove that people, as a collective society, will try to infringe on the rights of others for our own personal goals, and therefore, a Bill of Rights is needed to safeguard the individual liberties that each person has. Furthermore, both authors use the idea of natural rights to advance their claims with references to Locke-era philosophy. According to Steven Forde, “In Chapter Two of the Second Treatise of Government, he asserts that men in the state of nature are free and equal, and at liberty to do as they wish—but only “within the bounds of the law of nature’” (Forde 2011) As implied by John Locke, everyone is in a state of nature where everyone is equal which means that all share the same civil liberties and individual rights. Albeit the fact that citizens have the freedom to use their rights as they deem, they shouldn’t prohibit others from exercising the same freedom. This is the idea that led to the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights was created to ensure that all men are free and equal. Now, how does Locke’s philosophical arguments relate to either Hamilton’s defense against a Bill of Rights? Hamilton believed that the Bill of Rights would be dangerous that while it ensured citizens could practice civil rights granted by the government, the government could remove or prohibit rights that are not listed in a Constitution or Bill of Rights. Like Locke said, human rights are given rights naturally; powers and privileges of citizens should not be given by the government because people are born with these rights regardless of whether it is on a piece of document or not.
In conclusion, the Bill of Rights is an important part of our Constitution and now our daily lives. Though some of civil liberties provided in the Bill of Rights are no longer relevant, such as the third amendment, the other amendments provide us with the opportunities to live freely, own property, and pursue our own happiness, just as the Declaration of Independence stated. While the idea of the Bill of Rights, why it exists, and whether the Federalists were right and the Anti-Federalists were wrong, and vice-versa, remains a mystery, both essays made by Hamilton and Brutus made accurate points that should be taken into consideration. Hamilton believed that a Bill of Rights is dangerous because it makes it seem that only those rights listed in a said Bill of Rights belong to the people. On the other hand, Brutus makes the point that it is human nature to become ambitious and greedy, making the possibility that the people in government could easily use their power for their own self-interested goals and abandon their responsibilities as a public servant; this is to say that people need some protection in case of the event that the government becomes too powerful. Though while this paper focuses on why the Bill of Rights happened after the First Congress and not with the creation of the Constitution, it is important to point out the compromise resulting to the creation of the Bill of Rights. The Federalists feared that a Bill of Rights would limit civil liberties. The Ninth Amendment counters this as it states, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” This amendment meets both the demands of both parties. It states that there are more rights that people have than those listed in the Bill of Rights, while the creation of the first ten amendments settles the demand for a legitimate declaration of human rights and civil liberties, protecting free elections, free press, and speech that Brutus mentions in his essay.