dden. Congress
is prohibited from establishing any form of religion.

[Footnote 31: See above, p. 190. This is further elucidated in
Appendixes B and D.]

Finally, it is declared that "the enumeration of certain rights shall
not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people,"
and that "the powers not granted to the United States by the
Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the
states respectively, or to the people."

QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.

1. What provision did the Constitution make for its own ratification?

2. What was the general method of ratification in the states?

3. On what general grounds did the opposition to the Constitution seem
to be based?

4. By what feature in the Constitution was the support of South
Carolina and Georgia assured? Why was this support deemed peculiarly
desirable?

5. What five states ratified the Constitution with little or no
opposition?

6. What was the objection of Massachusetts and some other states to
the Constitution? What course, therefore, did they adopt?

7. What three states after Massachusetts by their ratification made
the adoption of the Constitution secure?

8. What four states subsequently gave in their support?

9. Give an account of the adoption of the first ten amendments.

10. For what do these amendments provide?

11. What powers are reserved to the states?

Section 8. _A Few Words about Politics._

[Sidenote: Federal taxation.]
A chief source of the opposition to the new federal government was the
dread of federal taxation. People who found it hard to pay their town,
county, and state taxes felt that it would be ruinous to have to pay
still another kind of tax. In the mere fact of federal taxation,
therefore, they were inclined to see tyranny. With people in such a
mood it was necessary to proceed cautiously in devising measures of
federal taxation.

[Sidenote: Excise.]
This was well understood by our first secretary of the treasury,
Alexander Hamilton, and in the course of his administration of the
treasury he was once roughly reminded of it. The two methods of federal
taxation adopted at his suggestion were duties on imports and excise on
a few domestic products, such as whiskey and tobacco. The excise, being
a tax which people could see and feel, was very unpopular, and in 1794
the opposition to it in western Pennsylvania grew into the famous
"Whiskey Insurrection," against which President