Lee, Richard Henry. Observations of the System of Government proposed by the late Convention. By a Federal Farmer
Observation / leading to a fair examination / of the / system of government, / proposed by the late / Convention; / and to several essential and neces-/ sary alterations in it. / In a number of / Letters / from the / Federal Farmer to the Republican. [New York:] Printed [by Thomas Greenleaf] in the year M,dcc,lxxxvii.
8vo. pp. 40.
Written by Richard Henry Lee, who was appointed a member of the Philadelphia Convention, but declined to serve. He was one of the foremost in opposition to the Constitution, both in the Continental Congress and before the people, and was the subject of numerous attacks in the press.
The “Letters of the Federal Farmer” was one of the most popular of arguments against the new government, “four editions (and several thousands) of the pamphlet ... being in a few months printed and sold in the several states,” which induced Lee to write “an additional number of Letters,” but it is largely repetitions of the first, and I have therefore omitted its republication. A short review will be found in the American Magazine for May, 1788, and an elaborate reply by Timothy Pickering in Pickering’s Life of Pickering, II, 352.
P. L. F.