of liberty; and they wanted a strong central government because only by such means could their liberties, which consisted fundamentally in the ability to enjoy and increase their property, be guaranteed.  Their interests were threatened by the disorganized state governments in two different but connected respects.  These governments did not seem able to secure either internal order or external peace.  In their domestic policy the states threatened to become the prey of a factious radical democracy, and their relations one to another were by way of being constantly embroiled.  Unless something could be done, it looked as if they would drift in a condition either of internecine warfare without profit or, at best, of peace without security.  A centralized and efficient government would do away with both of these threats.  It would prevent or curb all but the most serious sectional disputes, while at the same time it would provide a much stronger guarantee for internal political order and social stability.  An equally strong interest lay at the roots of anti-Federalism and it had its theory, though this theory was less mature and definite.  Behind the opposition to a centralized government were the interests and the prejudices of the mass of the American people,—­the people who were, comparatively speaking, lacking in money, in education, and in experience.  The Revolutionary War, while not exclusively the work of the popular element in the community, had undoubtedly increased considerably its power and influence.  A large proportion of the well-to-do colonial Americans had been active or passive Tories, and had either been ruined or politically disqualified by the Revolution.  Their successful opponents reorganized the state governments in a radical democratic spirit.  The power of the state was usually concentrated in the hands of a single assembly, to whom both the executive and the courts were subservient; and this method of organization was undoubtedly designed to give immediate and complete effect to the will of a popular majority.  The temper of the local democracies, which, for the most part, controlled the state governments, was insubordinate, factious, and extremely independent.  They disliked the idea of a centralized Federal government because a supreme power would be thereby constituted which could interfere with the freedom of local public opinion and thwart its will.  No less than the Federalists, they believed in freedom; but the kind of freedom they wanted, was freedom from anything but local interference.  The ordinary American democrat felt that the power of his personality and his point of view would be diminished by the efficient centralization of political authority.  He had no definite intention of using the democratic state governments for anti-social or revolutionary purposes, but he was self-willed and unruly in temper; and his savage treatment of the Tories during and after the Revolution had given him a taste of the sweets of confiscation.  The spirit of his democracy was self-reliant, undisciplined, suspicious of authority, equalitarian, and individualistic.