The Anti-Federalists Were Not Entirely Wrong

After recently gaining their independence from the British Crown, no one in the US wanted to return to a tyrannical monarchy, so the Constitution’s authors made a plan to divide government influences among separate branches and created a system of checks and balances to hold those branches responsible for one another. All this was done to prevent any one man from gro

The biased construction of the Constitution favors wealthier classes and supports the interests of affluent people. The only people to be considered for citizenship and the right to vote were white males who owned property. Also the men who ran for and got elected to office were always respected members of the community and respected members of a community were always wealthy. According to Richard Hofstader, the men who drafted the Constitution were influential lawyers, merchants, businessmen, speculators and investors. Although they wanted to protect the common people from the rich, these Hobbesian men were opposed to the idea turning the government over to the greedy and self-interested masses (3). That is why the people could only elect representatives to one section of one government department. The wealthy electors then chose other wealthy men to be government officials, thereby creating a body comprised only of wealthy men to govern all the people of the United States.

Overall the anti-federalists’ prediction about power was incorrect, but their prediction about representation was fairly accurate. The separation of powers and the system of checks and balances continues to force the Unites States government to limit its own power even today, and the Bill of Rights still provides citizens with unalienable legal rights. But it was not until many years after the Constitution was drafted that the overt representational bias in our government was lessened. So although the anti-federalist argument that the government described in the Constitution would become too powerful to control itself, and unable to represent the interests of the common man, was flaw

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