"Z" Replies to Franklin's Speech, Independent Chronicle (Boston), December 6, 1787

"Z" disagrees totally with Franklin and writes an article in a Boston newspaper making impassioned criticism of Franklin's Conclusion Speech. He strikes at Franklin's notion that a governmental form with faults can be otherwise well administered so as to be a Blessing for the people.

"But are we to accept a form of government which we do not entirely approve of, merely in hopes that it will be administered well? Does not every man know, that nothing is more liable to be abused than power. Power, without a check, in any hands, is tyranny and such powers, in the hands of even good men, so infatuating is the nature of it, will probably be wantonly, if not tyrannically exercised."

An early voice for the Bill of Rights, "Z" speculates what might happen if certain rights are not enumerated in the Constitution.

"If the rights of conscience, for instance, are not sacredly reserved to the people, what security will there be, in case the government should have in their heads a predilection for any one sect in religion? what will hinder the civil power from erecting a national system of religion, and committing the law to a set of lordly priests, reaching, as the great Dr. Mayhew expressed it, from the desk to the skies? An Hierarchy which has ever been the grand engine in the hand of civil tyranny..."