This 1731 preface to a 1698 pamphlet noted the importance of assuming every man in government to be a rogue, and the utmost importance of designing a government around this threat. Nearly sixty years before our constitution, an Englishman wrote that it is silly to think any free people can trust their liberty to the virtue of elected officials.
Our framers accepted man for what he was then and is now, an imperfect and fallen creature who will look out for his personal interest long before he has a thought of serving the public interest. They designed a government to deal with man’s imperfect nature, a government that diffused legislative powers between the people and across smaller republics in the form of a congress composed of a House of Representatives and a Senate of the States.
The 17th Amendment not only upended the framers’ design, and overnight rendered a federal republic into a common democratic republic, it left behind a federal constitution without a federal government. We feel the effect of this contradiction today, as once proud states and the people in them have been reduced to pitiful supplicants in the face of executive tyranny.
Article V now.
Ditto. Big Time.
You could at least link to one of the online texts of this public domain work rather than linking to Amazon purchase pages.