Federalist Papers According to the Constitution of the United States, this nation was founded under the principles of individual freedom and individual voice. America was designed to be a representative government by and for the people; a direct opposite of what the people had experienced when America was a British colony with no say in their government. If this was indeed to be a representative government, why then did the Founding Fathers put so much distrust into the American populous? Many of the processes of government in this nation are designed so that the influence of government people can interfere with the desires of the nation at large. The only logical explanation for this discrepancy is that the Founding Fathers believed in the principles of representative government but did not have faith that the citizens of the United States could make the proper decisions about policy.

It must be noted that at the time the United States Constitution was written, many men in America were uneducated. Particulary in the South, a man's focus was traditionally his business and his family. Education was not the priority it is in modern society. Consequently, much of the voting public was unlearned. Those who created the government feared putting the ability to make direct decisions in the hands of uneducated individuals. However, they also feared putting too much power in the hands of any one individual. In Federalist Paper No. 51, James Madison explains why it is necessary to have separation...

Everyone was considered capable of ignoring what was in the nation's best interest in order to claim more individual power. "The remedy for this inconvenience is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit."[footnoteRef:2] It was not only that the Founding Fathers had distrust for the common man; they understood that everyone can be lured by false promises and misinformation. If all the power is taken from the people and invested in a representative body, it must be assured that those representatives will serve the people and not their own self-interest. [1: Madison, James. (1788). "The Federalist No. 51: The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments." Independent Journal.] [2: Madison, James. (1788). "The Federalist No. 51."]
Madison was also concerned that if each individual person was given a vote, nobody would be satisfied. The rights of the majority must be met without ignoring the desires of the minority. "It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression…