“They Will Swallow Up All Us Little Folks”: The Massachusetts Ratifying Convention

Background: In the debates at the convention held in Massachusetts in 1788 to consider how the state should vote on ratification, Amos Singletary, a farmer from the interior who claimed never to have had a day of schooling in his life, expressed these fears. They were shared by many rural Americans who opposed the ratification of the Constitution, contending that the new federal government would be controlled by “aristocrats” and wealthy men.

Hon. Mr. Singletary: Mr. President, I should not have troubled the Convention again, if some gentlemen had not called on them that were on the stage in the beginning of our troubles, in the year 1775. I was one of them. I have had the honor to be a member of the court all the time, Mr. President, and I say that, if any body had proposed such a Constitution as this in that day, it would have been thrown away at once. It would not have been looked at. We contended with Great Britain, some said for a threepenny duty on tea; but it was not that; it was because they claimed a right to tax us and bind us in all cases whatever. And does not this Constitution do the same? Does it not take away all we have—all our property? Does it not lay all taxes, duties, imposts [import fees], and excises? And what more have we to give? They tell us Congress won’t lay dry taxes upon us, but collect all the money they want by impost. . . . They won’t be able to raise money enough by impost, and then they will lay it on the land, and take all we have got. These lawyers, and men of learning, and moneyed men, that talk so finely, and gloss over matters so smoothly, to make us poor illiterate people swallow down the pill, expect to get into Congress themselves; they expect to be the managers of this Constitution, and get all the power and all the money into their own hands, and then they will swallow up all us little folks, like the great Leviathan, Mr. President; yes, just as the whale swallowed up Jonah.

Source: Massachusetts Gazette, January 25, 1788.