On 18 September 1787, the final day of Philadelphia’s Constitutional Convention at Independence Hall, Mrs. Elizabeth Willing Powel asked Dr. Benjamin Franklin a pertinent question: “Well doctor,” she began, “what have we got—a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
What was a republic, according to the founders? Put simply, it was a government based on the rule of law rather than the capricious rule of men. More broadly, the United States government was designed to be limited in its powers by its constitution, the function of which was to clearly demarcate the limits of the national government.
Ideals in Founding a Republican Form of Government
The American founders crafted a limited government, established with the consent of the governed, and instituted for the express purpose of protecting men’s inalienable Natural Rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of (not the guarantee of) happiness, including property, health, occupation, and wealth. These ideals were enshrined in the United States’ founding documents–the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution–and the arguments of the founders in favor of republican government can be found in The Federalist Papers.
The proposition was that man was capable of self-governance, and that men were created equal and endowed with liberty by their Creator for that purpose. This meant equality before the law and equal opportunity in life for personal advancement and achievement. However, the founders did not fool themselves with the false notion that men were equal in talents, ability, or motivation—and therefore in liberty each man would achieve his station in life, according to those human qualities and not impeded by government. One would be free to pursue happiness, but there was no guarantee that happiness would be achieved.
Nor did the founders posit the erroneous idea that happiness would result if only a paternalistic government would nurture men properly, or that liberty would lead to social and economic equality. They believed in leveling the playing field of freedom and opportunity, not leveling the outcome itself.
They asserted that freedom (not government compulsion) would result in the emergence of a “natural aristocracy” based on merit, enlightened self-interest, personal ability, and hard work. The founders were cognizant of the fact that liberty and equality–when analyzed and carried to their logical conclusions–unravel and end up at odds with each other in the political spectrum. They were correct, as proved a few years later, when the excesses and violence of the French Revolution ended in a bloodbath where liberty, equality, and fraternity never comingled, but anarchy and tyranny were the order of the day. As early as 1763, John Adams, a Massachusetts attorney who later became a leading Founding Father, wrote:
[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man’s life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.
A Carefully Crafted Government
Wary of (social) democracy, the founders created a congressional chamber filled with democratically elected men who were eligible to serve short, two-year terms in office; they called it the House of Representatives. Each representative had one vote, and representatives were allocated based on a state’s population, meaning The House provided direct representation. The House fulfilled the aspirations of the people and gave the new government a broad base of power with popular consent.
The founders intended the lower chamber of Congress to represent the people’s interests and the upper chamber–the Senate–to represent the interests of the states. However, in 1913 Amendment Seventeen to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, providing for the direct and popular election of Senators. Henceforth, the voting public within each state would decide their election, instead of the state legislature, which was the election method of yore.
Auspiciously for America, the Senate often consists of older and wiser members, imbibed with soberness and respect. The Senate has continued to act as a further check, whenever needed, on the passions and democratic instincts of the lower chamber—the House of Representatives.
The Constitution also enshrined a system of checks and balances between the three branches of government (the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial), while the bicameral legislature divided power equally between the people and the states. The founders added additional checks still, such as the creation of an Electoral College, rather than the direct popular election of president and vice president. They also established two exacting processes for amending the Constitution, to ensure no radical Congress could easily run roughshod over the delicate document.
The design of our government aimed to prevent the usurpation of power by any one branch of government, as well as the aggregation of power by the federal government over the states. In short, the founders wanted to prevent tyranny of the federal government over the states and the people–the kind of tyranny they fought a war against.
The wisdom of our founding fathers in creating a government with checks and balances, separation of powers, provisions for limited governance, protection of individual rights, and the election of president and vice president via an Electoral College has allowed Americans to enjoy the fruits of political stability and unprecedented economic prosperity for over 200 years.
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