ABSTRACT
In the Federal convention of 1787 the problem confronting the delegates was strikingly different from that which had faced the members of the Second Continental Congress. The fact that the Anti-Federalists attacked the proposed Constitution with the weapon of the rights of man did not prevent the Federalists from defending it with precisely the same instrument. For, when the Anti-Federalists contended that there are certain rights of man which would be endangered by the adoption of the Constitution, the Federalists could reply that to be sure there are certain rights which are natural to man, so natural in fact that provisions for their recognition are entirely unnecessary: their existence depends not on charters or constitutions. The Virginia convention proposed twenty amendments to the body of the Constitution. By December, 1791, the ratifications of the states which approved the first ten amendments to the Constitution had been recorded.
