A most auspicious beginning had thus been made. Three states, one third of the whole number required, had ratified almost at the same moment. Two of these, moreover, were small states, which at the beginning of the Federal Convention had been obstinately opposed to any fundamental change in the government. It was just here that the Federalists were now strongest. The Connecticut compromise had wrought with telling effect, not only in the convention, but upon the people of the states. When the news from Trenton was received in Pennsylvania, there was great rejoicing in the eastern counties, while beyond the Susquehanna there were threats of armed rebellion. On the day after Christmas, as the Federalists of Carlisle were about to light a bonfire on the common and fire a salute, they were driven off the field by a mob armed with bludgeons, their rickety old cannon was spiked, and an almanac for the new year, containing a copy of the Constitution, was duly cursed, and then burned. Next day the Federalists, armed with muskets, came back, and went through their ceremonies. Their opponents did not venture to molest them; but after they had dispersed, an Antifederalist demonstration was made, and effigies of James Wilson and Thomas McKean, another prominent Federalist, were dragged to the common, and there burned at the stake. [Sidenote: Georgia ratifies, Jan. 2, 1788; Connecticut, Jan. 9. The outlook in Massachusetts.] The action of Delaware and New Jersey had shown that the Antifederalists could not build any hopes upon the antagonism between large and small states. It was thought, however, that the southern states would unite in opposing the Constitution from their dread of becoming commercially subjected to New England. But the compromise on the slave-trade had broken through this opposition. On the 2d of January, 1788, the Constitution was ratified in Georgia without a word of dissent. One week later Connecticut ratified by a vote of 128 to 40, after a session of only five days. The hopes of the Antifederalists now rested upon Massachusetts, where the state convention assembled on the 9th of January, the same day on which that of Connecticut broke up. Should Massachusetts refuse to ratify, there would be no hope for the Constitution. Even should nine states adopt it without her, no one supposed a Federal Union feasible from which so great a state should be excluded. Her action, too, would have a marked effect upon other states. It could not be denied that the outlook in Massachusetts was far from encouraging. The embers of the Shays rebellion still smouldered there, and in the mountain counties of Worcester and Berkshire were heard loud murmurs of discontent. Laws impairing the obligation of contracts were just what these hard-pressed farmers desired, and by the proposed Constitution all such laws were forever prohibited. The people of the district of Maine, which had formed part of Massachusetts for nearly a