The
“Bill of Rights” wasn’t “The Bill of Rights” in the 1790s when it was first
proposed.
Simply,
no one called it “The Bill of Rights” then, not officially, not in print, not
in the often contentious debate that preceded its adoption in 1791, three years
after the Constitution was ratified.
Thomas
Jefferson, then Secretary of State, described “certain articles in addition and
amendment of the Constitution of the United States” when he sent out to the
states the list of 10 amendments that had been approved.
 |
| The first 10 Amendments |
In
fact, 12 amendments had been drafted to satisfy the concerns of the
Anti-Federalists, who had opposed the ratification of the Constitution itself
because they resisted the creation of a federal government with centralized
power.
It’s
not well known that the original Article 12 of the first batch was finally
ratified as the 27th Amendment in 1992. It states: “No law, varying the compensation for the services of
the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of
Representatives shall have intervened.”
The
original Article 1 has never been ratified. It proposed that members of the U.
S. House of Representatives should not represent more than 50,000 persons per
congressional district. In the first Congress formed after the Constitution was
adopted, each congressman represented about 30,000 people. Today, U. S. representatives
are elected from districts containing roughly 730,000 people—if the 50,000
limit were in effect, there would be almost 6,400 seats in the House.
Don’t
even think about it.
Source:
See
Pauline Maier’s books on the U. S. Constitution
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016
All rights reserved.
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