4.  By what feature in the Constitution was the support of South Carolina and Georgia assured?  Why was this support deemed peculiarly desirable?

5.  What five states ratified the Constitution with little or no opposition?

6.  What was the objection of Massachusetts and some other states to the Constitution?  What course, therefore, did they adopt?

7.  What three states after Massachusetts by their ratification made the adoption of the Constitution secure?

8.  What four states subsequently gave in their support?

9.  Give an account of the adoption of the first ten amendments.

10.  For what do these amendments provide?

11.  What powers are reserved to the states?

Section 8. A Few Words about Politics.

[Sidenote:  Federal taxation.] A chief source of the opposition to the new federal government was the dread of federal taxation.  People who found it hard to pay their town, county, and state taxes felt that it would be ruinous to have to pay still another kind of tax.  In the mere fact of federal taxation, therefore, they were inclined to see tyranny.  With people in such a mood it was necessary to proceed cautiously in devising measures of federal taxation.

[Sidenote:  Excise.] This was well understood by our first secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, and in the course of his administration of the treasury he was once roughly reminded of it.  The two methods of federal taxation adopted at his suggestion were duties on imports and excise on a few domestic products, such as whiskey and tobacco.  The excise, being a tax which people could see and feel, was very unpopular, and in 1794 the opposition to it in western Pennsylvania grew into the famous “Whiskey Insurrection,” against which President Washington thought it prudent to send an army of 16,000 men.  This formidable display of federal power suppressed the insurrection without bloodshed.

[Sidenote:  Tariff.] Nowhere was there any such violent opposition to Hamilton’s scheme of custom-house duties on imported goods.  People had always been familiar with such duties.  In the colonial times they had been levied by the British government without calling forth resistance until Charles Townshend made them the vehicle of a dangerous attack upon American self-government.[32] After the Declaration of Independence, custom-house duties were levied by the state governments and the proceeds were paid into the treasuries of the several states.  Before 1789, much trouble had arisen from oppressive tariff-laws enacted by some of the states against others.  By taking away from the states the power of taxing imports, the new Constitution removed this source of irritation.  It became possible to lighten the burden of custom-house duties, while by turning the full stream of them into the federal treasury an abundant national revenue was secured at once.  Thus this part of Hamilton’s