“A pure democracy, by which I mean a State consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction.  Such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention, and have often been found incompatible with the personal security and rights of property, and have generally been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

Undoubtedly, the framers of the Constitution in thus limiting popular rule did not take sufficient account of the genius of an English-speaking people.  A few of their number recognized this.  Franklin, a self-made man, believed in democracy and doubted the efficacy of the Constitution unless it was, like a pyramid, broad-based upon the will of the people.

Colonel Mason, of Virginia, who was also of the Jeffersonian school of political philosophy, said: 

    “Notwithstanding the oppression and injustice experienced among us
    from democracy, the genius of the people is in favour of it, and the
    genius of the people must be consulted.”

In this they were true prophets, for the American people have refused to limit democracy as narrowly and rigidly as the framers of the Constitution clearly intended.  The most notable illustration of this is the selection of the President.  It was never contemplated that the people should directly select the President, but that a chosen body of electors should, with careful deliberation, make this momentous choice.  While, in form, the system persists to this day, from the very beginning the electors simply vote as the people who select them desire.  It should here be noted that Thomas Jefferson, the great Democrat and draftsman of the Declaration of Independence, was not a member of the convention.  During its sessions he was in France.  He was instrumental in securing the first ten Amendments and the subsequent adaptation of the Constitution to meet the democratic instincts of the American people is largely due to his great leadership.

Moreover, the spirit of representative government has greatly changed since the Constitution was adopted.  The ideal of the earlier time was that so nobly expressed by Edmund Burke in his address to the electors of Bristol, for the framers believed that a representative held a judicial position of the most sacred character, and that he should vote as his judgment and conscience dictated without respect to the wishes of his constituents.  To-day, and notably in the last half century, the contrary belief, due largely to Jefferson’s political ideals, has so influenced American politics that the representatives of the people, either in the legislature or the executive departments of the government, are considered by the masses as only the mouthpieces of the people who select them, and to ignore their wishes is regarded as virtually a betrayal of a trust and the negation of democracy.