democratically elected by free male property owners.
wouldn't bother me if we brought back the property owner bit.
the founders knew complete enfranchisement was perilous.
basically, those who pay the bills should have the most voice.
Our people prospered through many generations remote and by necessity, participatory in their own local institutions.
Where the Continental idea of franchise expanded by metaphysical theory to universal franchise, on our shores freedom expanded the idea of Participation.
Many landholders here were yeomen and the franchise was broad from the start compared to Continental Standards. The very broad tradition instilled respect and care to its usages.
Even early conservatives such a James Fenimore Cooper could be Jacksonian and use book title choices like The American Democrat.
Democracy was then properly seen, and understood, as a modifier or a method of variety or dilution of selection methods. It could co-exist with appointment, (judges) and selection, (Senators). When Continental influence, largely embraced by the theorizer Jefferson, allowed the entry of metaphysical liberalism to begin the perversion of Classical Whiggish Liberalism the slide began. While some suggest FDR, others Wilson and his fostering of collective Human Rights to trump Property Rights, and still others look to Lincoln's extreme measures in defense of the Republic as harming the Republic, I believe the seeds of the weed were cast in the furrows right along with the intended crop by Jefferson and others.
We should not have lasted as long as we have if he had been at the Constitutional Convention instead of just being represented by his young protege, Madison.