James Winthrop, Register of Probate for Middlesex Massachusetts, using the penname “Agrippa,” publishes an anti-federalist essay, predicting that the Interstate Commerce Clause eventually will be perverted to give the federal government almost unlimited power. In paragraph four he writes,
The unlimitted [sic] right to regulate trade includes the right of granting exclusive charters. This, in all old countries, is considered as one principal branch of prerogative. We find hardly a country in Europe which has not felt the ill effects of such a power. … [A]ll these circumstances together have not prevented them from being injured by the monopolies created there. Individuals have been enriched, but the country at large has been hurt. …
[restored 10/3/2021]
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References:
Murray Dry, The Anti-Federalist: An abridgement, from The Complete Anti-Federalist by Herbert J. Storing, ed., (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 238-39.
Agrippa VI
www.infoplease.com/primary-sources/government/anti-federalist-papers/james-winthrop-agrippa-vi
The Prophetic Antifederalists | Mises Institute
mises.org/library/prophetic-antifederalists
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