MAXIMIZING LIBERTY
The institutions and officials of government are only agents of the political will of the people as expressed by assent of the "majority." However, under the American system, this "majority will" is constrained in the scope and capacity of its legislative, judicial and executive power by the limits of the organic compact made among the individual members of the "body politic":
That
the individual receives the security of his person and property as an equivalent in
exchange for the alienable rights with which he parted as contractual consideration in
entering into a political society.
That the
aim of legislation is to equally secure all in protection of their person and property,
without usurpation of their unalienable rights or unsurrendered alienable rights.
THE REPUBLIC
A monarchial system of government recognizes that a king or queen has a God given right to govern the subject people. A democratic system of government is one where the right to govern resides in a pluralisey of opinion among the people. (Each person represents only himself with a single vote equal to all other persons.) In addition to the boundaries of the fundamental social compact, the founders devised a system of government in the form of a Republic.
The Federalist Papers, Federalist No. 10 (attributed to James Madison)
"...The inference to which we are brought, is, that the causes of faction cannot be removed; and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controling its effects."
"If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote: It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government on the other hand enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest, both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good, and private rights, against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the forms of popular government, is then the great object to which our enquiries are directed..."
"...From this view of the subject, it may be concluded, that a pure Democracy, by which I mean, a Society, 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. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert results from the form of Government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is, that such Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths...."
"A Republic, by which I mean a Government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies from pure Democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure, and the efficacy which it must derive from the Union."
"...The two great points of difference between a Democracy and a Republic are, first, the delegation of the Government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater spheres of country over which the latter may be extended."
"...By enlarging too much the number of electors, you render the representative too little acquainted with all their local circumstances and less interests; as by reducing it too much, you render him unduly attached to these, and too little fit to comprehend and pursue great and national objects. The Federal Constitution forms a happy combination in this respect; the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular, to the state legislatures."
"The other point of difference is, the greater number of citizens and extent to territory which may be brought within the compass of Republican, than of Democratic Government; and it is this circumstance principally which renders factious combinations less to be dreaded in the former, than in the latter."
". ... Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other...."
Its institutions have been intentionally fragmented to create divisions of functions and diffusion of power on the horizontal, and the hierarchial or vertical levels of government. The democratic aspects of the system are intended to further the common good to the whole, while the separations, or diffusions of power are intended to protect the maximum liberty or freedom of the individual.
Montesquieu in "Spirit of the Laws" had touched on distinguishing three functional powers of government:
"When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty. Again, there is no liberty, if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive."
As early as May, 1776, the town of Boston instructed its representatives in the General Court;
"It is essential to Liberty that the legislative, judicial and executive Powers of Government be as nearly possible, independent of and separate from each other."
Said John Taylor in "An Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government":
"It is our policy to consider the people as retaining a vast share of political power, and as only investing their government with so much as they deem necessary for their own benefit...Power is first divided between the government and the people, reserving to the people, the control of the divident allotted to the government. The divident allotted to the government, is subdivided between its two branches, federal and state." Then these two portions were further broken up and "distributed in quotas still more minute" to the various departments and branches of the government... all our governments are limited agencies." "Power is divided by our policy, that people may maintain their sovereignty..."
