Advantages Of The Framers

The Virginia Plan sparked debate over its legislative representative proposals. The plan proposed representation of the states by population. This proposition favored the larger states. The Jersey Plan also known as the smaller state plan rallied for equal representation for all states. A compromise was finally reached. One house of the legislature would consist of two representatives from each state. This satisfied the small states. The second house of the legislature would consist of representatives based on population, thus satisfying the larger states. The establishment of a fair measure to apply taxation and representation in the legislature was described in the Federalist Papers: The Apportionment of Members among the States. The government would conduct a census that would prevent the states from understating their population for taxation and overstating their population for representation. The “Great Compromise” resolving the issue of representation did not mean that the federalists and anti-federalists had come to agreement on the Constitution.

The founding Fathers also tried to make the representation equal in the two houses of legislature. However, the makeup of the senate doesn’t agree with this because large states and small states had the same amount of representation rather than the house that has representatives equal to the ratio of the people. While John P. Roche gave his argument that the founding Fathers were best suited for their position, he never gave concrete evidence to support his statement. On the contrary, Howard Zinn gives his opinion that the founding Fathers were not democratic reformers; rather, they were making decisions that protected their power.

When writing the Constitution, one of the most prominent arguments focused on whether America should be considered a Democracy. A large percentage of the founding fathers feared the term “Democracy” because they strongly believed that if the people had control, then there would be disorder and violence. As James Madison stated in Federalist No. 10,

With comparison between a small and large government, James Madison argues that a larger government, like the one proposed by the new United States Constitution, would protect from the tyranny of the majority that would likely be the result of maintaining a small government. He argues that voters are more likely to elect “fit” representatives, as compared to the higher corruption plausibility present in a smaller government. Madison formulates an important argument in favor of the government presented by the Constitution.

But, the Constitution limits the majority only because of the fear of uprisings from the minorities. The framers wrote the Constitution with the mindset of preventing the majority to dominate the minority. If there was no limit on majority rule, the majority could end up making all the decisions. This would leave the minorities fueled with anger and they would have a reason to overthrow the government. An uprising that caused the framers to limit majority rule was Shay’s Rebellion. The framers saw that the minority, poor farmers, did not have any choice because the majority dominated them. The framers also realized that this uprising could have taken down the nation because the nation was also unorganized and weak at that time. This event made the framers realized that the minority should also have power or else the majority would dominate again.

“Perhaps the greatest debate undertaken by the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 centered on how many representatives each state should have in the new government's lawmaking branch, the U.S. Congress. As is often the case in government and politics, resolving a great debate, required a Great Compromise.”(About) The Great Compromise that was reached by Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth on July 16, 1787 incorporated the Virginia Plan and the New Jersey Plan in parts. It formed a bicameral legislature as proposed by the Virginia Plan. It also decided that the lower house would have representatives in proportion to population of each state. These representatives would be elected by the people. However, while deciding on the representation of states in the upper house, as per the tenets of the Great Compromise, each state would have two members, irrespective of its population.

This plan was known as the Great Compromise that combined element of both Virginia’s and New Jersey’s plans to appease both the small and large states. The plan had 2 house legislatures, initially called the “lower house” and the “upper house” due to their location in the two story building that would house them. Besides, upper house is the senate with 2 members per state, whereas lower house is the House of Representatives, based on population. According to the plan, all states would have the same number of seats.

In the Great Compromise it stated that the legislative branch would be divided up into two groups. These two groups were called the senate and the house of representatives. One side would be based off of population while the other half would be based off of equality. Each side would create laws. In the great compromise each state had one senate which would later change into two. The senate wasn't based on size or population it was the same for every state. The house of representatives however this was the side that was based off of population. This resulted in some states having more representatives than others because some states had more population than

Benjamin Franklin once said, “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is well-armed lamb contesting that vote.” I believe Franklin’s famous quote means that the majority of the vote does not represent all of the citizen’s interests, and this is unfair. For example, the two wolves would decide to eat the lamb for lunch and the lamb wouldn’t even get a say. However, if liberty (the lamb) had a tree on its property that it wanted to keep and the officials (the wolves) wanted to get rid of it, the lamb would get a say because the majority of the vote wouldn’t matter. The tree is on the lamb’s property, so it wouldn’t matter who else wants it there, because it’s the lamb’s right to keep it. Therefore, there are some matters where there is an imbalance of power in democracy, and other matters where individuals' rights are protected.

That is why there were many compromises during this time. The most famous of the compromises was the Great compromise. The Great Compromise took both the Virginia and New Jersey Plans and met in the middle. This was the start of the constitution and our new government plan. The argument was between large states and small states. The large states wanted to base representatives by population while the small states wanted all representation to be equal between states. Eventually James Madison with Benjamin Franklin’s help would come up with the Virginia Plan. The Virginia Plan stated that we were to have a bicameral government that consisted of the House of Representatives, that was based on population (what the large sates wanted), and the Senate, where all states had the same number of representatives. (What the small wanted.) with this bicameral government and the House of Representatives there comes another problem, how do we count slaves? Because the amount of representatives a state was given was based on their population any state with slaves obviously wanted slaves to count towards their population and any state that didn’t have slaves didn’t want them to count towards the population. The two sides in this argument were the North and the South. The South were the ones that wanted to have slaves count towards the population and the

The Founders built certain protections for individual rights into this country's founding documents. The United States Constitution was one such document. In particular, such protections guard Americans who hold minority viewpoints from those who side with the majority. For example, the First Amendment protects the right of free speech to ensure that people who hold unpopular views have just as much freedom to express those views as do people who tend to agree with the majority. The United States Constitution, therefore, was intended to protect the individual rights of Americans from a tyrannical government and majority. However, today, the Electoral College does not represent the vibrant democracy into which the United States has grown.

The Great Compromise resolved the representation issue by forming the two houses that we have today by using the idea of a two-house legislature in order to satisfy both sides. It proposed a legislature in which each state would be represented

Also, the founders had no intention of creating a pure, majority rule democracy. After a careful study of history, they decided that they did not want a pure democracy. A pure democracy has been colorfully described as two wolves and a lamb voting on what 's for dinner! The founding fathers wanted to avoid this at all cost. In addition, this is why there are three branches of government, Executive, Legislative and Judicial. It is why each state has two Senators, regardless of the population, but has different numbers of

John Adams also once said to "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” Ultimately, the founding fathers feared a pure democracy where the majority rules and the minority does not play a significant enough role in society to be granted more than basic civil rights. However, they also did not

One of the main debates the framers had, among the many, was how much power the government would have. James Madison, the author of federalist paper number 51 and who stood against the anti-federalist, said that it was necessary to have a check and balance system implemented on the government in order to avoid the risk of giving too much power to one entity. He said that the people will “check” their government ultimately having the power (Chapter 2, Section 8 OTD). This statement is true, but it had other limitations on the people because Madison developed an insulated system which gave the masses power to pick their house of representatives, but its system then narrowed to give power to those who were educated to make choices based on State Legislators and the Electoral College. After this process, those chosen got to decide who got picked as senators and President. The votes underwent a system that was filtered, so in the end the social elitists were the only ones to have the choice of who was to be elected giving them the true position of power not the people. The masses had the potential to be rational and reasonable people, as John Locke indicated, but they are too uneducated in the field of politics (Chapter 1, Section 2 OTD). It’s evident that the elite understood what was needed in a macro scale, whereas a common individual was more concerned with daily issues that they were faced like doing chores. Not to say that the common person’s interests