I sometimes wish that our Constitution could have been derailed by only one State's failure to ratify it. The Antifederalists were mostly right about the consequences of the Constitution. As "An Old Whig" put it in Antifederalist No. 46:
...Despite the subsequent adoption of the Bill of Rights -- and despite occasional resistance from the Supreme Court (in the midst of much acquiescence) -- Congress (often in league with the Executive) has for most of its 215 years been engaged in an unconstitutional power grab. Campaign-finance "reform" is merely a recent and notably egregious bit of evidence that the Antifederalists were right.
Where then is the restraint? How are Congress bound down to the powers expressly given? What is reserved, or can be reserved? Yet even this is not all. As if it were determined that no doubt should remain, by the sixth article of the Constitution it is declared that "this Constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shalt be the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitutions or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." The Congress are therefore vested with the supreme legislative power, without control. In giving such immense, such unlimited powers, was there no necessity of a Bill of Rights, to secure to the people their liberties?
Is it not evident that we are left wholly dependent on the wisdom and virtue of the men who shall from time to time be the members of Congress? And who shall be able to say seven years hence, the members of Congress will be wise and good men, or of the contrary character?
