A Federal Farmer Observes The Constitution
The Observations of the Federal Farmer are some of the most thorough discussions of Anti-Federalist thought published during the Constitutional ratification debates.
Observations Leading to a Fair Examination
In November of 1787 a pamphlet was published in New York with the gaudy title of Observations Leading to a Fair Examination of the System of Government Proposed by the Late Convention; and to Several Essential and Necessary Alterations in It. In a Number of Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republican.
Generally referred to as Observations of the Federal Farmer, this pamphlet is often considered one of the most high-quality Anti-Federalist Papers.
It includes a series of letters which conclude that the US Constitution was assembled too hastily and leaves the nation vulnerable to an assumption of power and inevitable tyranny.
The following January, piggybacking off the popularity of the original pamphlet, a second series of letters was published which dive deeper into the same topics. While the second pamphlet is full of thoughtful discussions it is frequently criticized for being too repetitive.
The Federal Farmer
As with most Anti-Federalist writing, Observations were published anonymously under the pen name Federal Farmer.
For a very long time, the author was thought to be Richard Henry Lee.
However, scholarship in the later half of the 20th century (notably from Gordon Wood and Herbert Storing) sheds doubt on this claim. They note that the source of the idea of Lee’s authorship comes from private correspondence from men who had no contact with him.
Therefore, the truth creator of this work seems to be forever lost to history.
Representation
While Observations covers a wide variety of topics regarding the Constitution, the author seems to be focused on two main points: representation and trials.
These are the two topics Federal Farmer claims are most important for a free government and he elaborates on his concerns.
As for representation, Farmer does not think that a government which is constructed on such a massive scale can accurately reflect the will of the people. As the population increased, this discrepancy would get even worse.
Furthermore, the government was even further removed from the minute disagreements from within each community.
Trials
Though much of Federal Farmer’s jury issues would be corrected in the Bill of Rights (which is something else whose absence he complained about), he was very much unhappy with how trials were set up in the Constitution.
More specifically, Farmer was disappointed in the lack of certain rules.
The right to a trial by jury is only specifically discussed for ‘crimes’ in the Constitution and indeed many legal decisions are still made without a jury.
Furthermore, the Constitution only specifies that a trial must take place within the ‘State’ that a crime occurs, which stood out to people who recently survived the threat of being carried across the ocean for trial. This, however, would be rectified in the Sixth Amendment which added an important word regarding trial locations…’district.’
This intended to prevent hassling the accused with travel to distant locations just to prove their innocence.
If you made it this far you might also enjoy another of my Anti-Federalist articles:
Montezuma’s Sarcastic Approval of the Constitution
The Decent of the Pennsylvania Minority
We Have Been Told of Phantoms - William Grayson’s Constitutional Skepticism
Want to learn more about Anti-Federalist Papers?
The collection by Herbert J. Storing below is the one I am using for most of my Anti-Federalist research. It is a ‘best of’ collection from his teacher’s ‘Complete Anti-Federalist’ which itself is nine volumes and extremely hard to find.
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