A Maryland Farmer on Popular Ignorance

One of the Antifederalists' chief objections to the new constitution was its insufficient guarantee of the right to a local jury trials. The jury was taken as indispensable for the protection of liberty and as a constitutive of democratic self-government. Here's how one Antifederalist (A Maryland Farmer IV) replies to the objection that the people are too ignorant to participate in self-rule through the jury. This objection (and A Maryland Farmer's reply) are relevant for a number of contemporary debates that circle around the alleged ignorance of citizens and voters:

Why shall we rob the Commons of the only remaining power they have been able to preserve, for their personal exercise? Have they ever abused it? I know it has and will be said they have; that they are too ignorant; that they cannot distinguish between right and wrong; that decisions on property are submitted to chance; and that the last word, commonly determines the cause. There is some truth in these allegations, but whence comes it. The Commons are much degraded in the powers of the mind: They were deprived of the use of understanding when they were robbed of the power of employing it. Men no longer cultivate, what is no longer useful, should every opportunity bed taken away, of exercising their reason, you will reduce them to that state of mental baseness, in which they appear in nine-tenths of this globe. ... Give them power and they will find understanding to use it.