“If
Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will
promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one…” James Madison
When you study the political formation of the United Sates,
one is struck by the recurrence of the checks and balances theme—in Madison’s
convention notes, the Constitution itself, the Federalist Papers, the minutes
of the ratification conventions, and even the Anti-Federalist papers. There can
be no doubt that the Founders believed that liberty depended on each part of
the government acting as an effective check on all the other parts of the
government, and that meant not only between the three national branches, but
also between the states and the national government.
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| Patrick Henry, "Give me liberty, or give me death" |
The Founders believed in limited government in the form of a
representative republic. They distrusted a direct democracy, because majorities
had historically taken advantage of minorities. A limited representative republic was the best
form of government to safeguard minority rights. James Madison constantly
preached against any system that allowed special interests (factions) to gain
control of major elements of the government. He showed that throughout history,
majority factions tyrannized minorities, whether those minorities were based on
race, wealth, religion, political affiliation, or even geography.
Checks and balances were not enough, however. They also
wanted to specifically define powers to limit the intrusion of government into
personal lives. The Constitutional Convention looked at two different ways of
defining national powers. They debated long and hard about whether to call out
each power individually or, alternately, to list restrictions on general powers.
Basically they had to decide whether to write down what the federal government
could do or what the federal government could not do.
