Document G: Source: Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787. Does the proposed Constitution protect the people's liberty? YES: Federalist Alexander Hamilton: "Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing; and as they retain everything they have no need of particular reservations.... Bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous.... Why declare that things not be done which there is no power to do? ... The truth is ... that the Constitution is itself, in every rational sense, and to every useful purpose, a BILL OF RIGHTS." NO: Anti federalist George Mason of Virginia: "There is no declaration of rights: and the laws of the general government being paramount to the laws and constitutions of the several states, the declarations of rights, in the separate states, are no security. Nor are the people secured even in the enjoyment of the benefit of the common law, which stands here upon no other foundations than its having been adopted by the respective acts forming the constitutions of the several states."

Document G: Source: Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787. Does the proposed Constitution protect the people's liberty? YES: Federalist Alexander Hamilton: "Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing; and as they retain everything they have no need of particular reservations.... Bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous.... Why declare that things not be done which there is no power to do? ... The truth is ... that the Constitution is itself, in every rational sense, and to every useful purpose, a BILL OF RIGHTS." NO: Anti federalist George Mason of Virginia: "There is no declaration of rights: and the laws of the general government being paramount to the laws and constitutions of the several states, the declarations of rights, in the separate states, are no security. Nor are the people secured even in the enjoyment of the benefit of the common law, which stands here upon no other foundations than its having been adopted by the respective acts forming the constitutions of the several states."