Even an amendment to the Constitution could not be directly proposed by the people in the exercise of their residual power or adopted by them.  As previously said, it could only be proposed by two-thirds of the House and the Senate, and then could only become effective, if ratified by three-fourths of the States, acting, not by a popular vote, but through their chosen representatives either in their legislatures or special conventions.  Thus they denied the power of a majority to alter even the form of government.  Moreover, they gave to the President the power to nullify laws passed by a majority of the House and Senate by his simple veto, and yet, fearful of an unqualified power of the President in this respect, they provided that the veto itself should be vetoed, if two-thirds of the Senate and House concurred in such action.  Moreover, the great limitations of the Constitution, which forbid the majority, or even the whole body of the House and Senate, to pass laws either for want of authority or because they impair fundamental rights of individuals, are as emphatic a negation of an absolute democracy as can be found in any form of government.

Measured by present-day conventions of democracy, the Constitution is an undemocratic document.  The framers believed in representative government, to which they gave the name “Republicanism” as the antithesis to “democracy.”  The members of the Senate were to be selected by State legislatures, and the President himself was, as originally planned, to be selected by an electoral college similar to the College of Cardinals.

The debates are full of utterances which explain this attitude of mind.  Mr. Gerry said:  “The evils we experience flow from the excesses of democracy.  The people are the dupes of pretended patriots.”  Mr. Randolph, the author of the Virginia plan, observed that the general object of the Constitution was to provide a cure for the evils under which the United States laboured; that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the tribulation and follies of democracy; that some check, therefore, was to be sought for against this tendency of our Government.

Alexander Hamilton remarked, on June 18, that—­

    “the members most tenacious of republicanism were as loud as any in
    declaiming against the evils of democracy.”

He added: 

“Give all the power to the many and they will oppress the few.  Give all the power to the few and they will oppress the many.  Both ought, therefore, to have the power that each may defend itself against the other.”

Perhaps the attitude of the members is thus best expressed by James Madison, in the 10th of the Federalist papers: