 1787
| October 1787
|  Oct 5, 1787: Centinel I (Pennsylvania)
| The Antifederalist Centinel opens his remarks, addressed to the Freemen of Pennsylvania, with a reminder and a question: the essential liberties of the people are secured in the Pennsylvania Bill of Rights; are they secure under the proposed Constitution? He suggests that "all the blessings of liberty and the dearest privileges of freemen are now at stake and dependent on your present conduct."
Beware, he adds, the work of "artful and designing men." After all, the Convention is inspired by John Adams's political thought on "good government" which presumes a balancing of three orders of society in three branches. Accordingly, following Adams, we do not need to attend to the virtue of the people. Furthermore, the plan encourages the exercise of extensive powers by the general government—see the general welfare clause and the supremacy clause—over an extensive territory, which is a recipe not "for a regular balanced government" but for "a permanent ARISTOCRACY."
Centinel concludes that 1) the new Constitution does not include a bill of rights to ward of future crises and 2) we are not currently in such crisis that we must adopt the Constitution right away. That we are in crisis "is the argument of tyrants."
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| November 1787
| Nov 8, 1787: Centinel III (Pennsylvania)
| The Antifederalist Centinel, echoing the remarks of Federalist 1, reminds his readers that they are called upon to make a decision "which involves in it not only your fate, but that of your posterity for ages to come." Your determination will either ensure the possession of those blessings which render life desirable, or entail those evils which make existence a curse. That such are the consequences of a wise or improper organization of government, the history of mankind abundantly testifies." Unfortunately, however, the proponents "have hurried on its adoption with a precipitation that betrays their design." They are up to no good.
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| Nov 30, 1787: Centinel IV (Pennsylvania)
| Concerning the proposed Constitution, the Antifederalist Centinel is distrustful of "the conduct of its authors and patrons." After all, "the evil genius of darkness presided at its birth, it came forth under the veil of mystery, its true features being carefully concealed, and every deceptive art has been and is practicing to have this spurious brat received as the genuine offspring of heaven born liberty & .It is to be lamented that the interested and designing have availed themselves so successfully of the present crisis" to create a government destructive to the principles of liberty.
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| December 1787
| Dec 27, 1787: Centinel VII (Pennsylvania)
| The Antifederalist Centinel, writing shortly after the passage of the Constitution by the Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention, refuses to validity of the outcome. "Will the act of one sixth of the people, and this too founded on deception and surprise, bind the community? Is it thus that the altar of liberty, so recently crimsoned with the blood of our worthies, is to be prostrated and despotism reared on its ruins? Certainly not." He urges the people to require their representatives to call a convention for the purpose of overturning the proposed plan created by "a junto composed of the lordly and high minded gentry, of the profligate and the needy office hunters, of men principally who in the late war skulked from the common danger."
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| Dec 29, 1787: Centinel VIII (Pennsylvania)
| The Antifederalist Centinel; asks where is the crisis that demands the hasty adoption of an untried plan of government? There is none: "a happy equality and independency pervades the community; it is here the human mind, untrammeled by the restraints of arbitrary power, expands every faculty & The unfortunate and oppressed of all nations fly to this grand asylum where liberty is ever protected, and industry crowned with success." He thus questions the motives of the Framers and accusing them of being "conspirators against our liberties." In fact, "so flagrant, so audacious a conspiracy against the liberties of a free people is without precedent."
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