In his penultimate federalist paper, Federalist No. 84, Hamilton ties up a few loose ends and once again shows his prescience. As I was reading this thought on the need (or lack thereof) for a Bill of Rights:
a minute detail of particular rights is certainly far less applicable to a Constitution like that under consideration, which is merely intended to regulate the general political interests of the nation, than to a constitution which has the regulation of every species of personal and private concerns.
I thought about how our present government had become the kind to "regulation of every species of personal and private concerns"and began to wonder if the Bill of Rights opened the door to a larger, more intrusive government than was intended. Then I got to this:
I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power. They might urge with a semblance of reason, that the Constitution ought not to be charged with the absurdity of providing against the abuse of an authority which was not given, and that the provision against restraining the liberty of the press afforded a clear implication, that a power to prescribe proper regulations concerning it was intended to be vested in the national government. (emphasis added)
The argument that I had in my head before reading that was probably substantially the same but I would have said that without the explicit Bill of Rights which was later added the voters might feel more urgency to check their representatives and replace them when they began to make incursions upon the rights that the voters felt were important.
Later in the paper I found yet another argument against the now static size of our House of Representatives:
It is evident that . . . a continuance of the present number {in Congress} would, in a more advanced stage of population, be a very inadequate representation of the people.
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