Ping...............
You are very right and very wrong... When he says the people already have a BOR, he is referring to the original CONS!!! The CONS that existed before the BOR was attached.
Funny you should use that quote from Adams’ Dissertation. I use the same quote in its entirety in the book I just published.
Strictly speaking, Hamilton was correct. We didn’t need a Bill of Rights, as much as those instruments existed at the time. However, the anti-Federalists were prescient when they realized that a federal government, left unchecked, would grow to be just as tyrannical as any king, even though it derived its power from the people. So we needed something, and so we invented a new kind of “Bill of Rights”.
Instead of delineating the rights that the people did not surrender to their king, and reserving all unenumerated rights to the king, ours did it a little differently. We delineated some rights which the federal government could not abridge, others which could only be abridged in certain circumstances, and then reserved all unenumerated rights to the people, and the states. The intent was to give the people as much power to restrain the government as the king previously had to restrain the people. Unfortunately, by corrupting the courts and ignoring the 10th amendment, that intent was thwarted.
The Colorado Constitution makes the English common law as it existed at the time of the settlement of the colonies the common law of Colorado.
Good Job.