a Constitution which was certainly more fair and just in the treatment of the majority than had been the case under the oppression of the British. On the other hand, the Framers were careful to include in the Constitution safeguards which protected their own power and property.
As we read, the Framers of the Constitution looked at the Articles of Confederation and sought to eradicate those elements of the Articles which threatened or did not protect their power and property:
The movement for the Constitution of the United States was originated and carried through principally by four groups of personality interests which had been adversely affected under the Articles of Confederation: money, public securities, manufactures, and trade and shipping. . . . A large propertyless mass was, under the prevailing suffrage qualifications, excluded at the outset from participation . . . in the work of framing the Constitution (Cigler and Loomis 28).
Even writers such as Miller who generally argue that the Constitution was a democratic document even in its earliest form grant that there was an elite faction which was protecting its own interests:
. . . The Framers clearly did not intend to establish the kind of government in which the popular will prevailed at all times without let or hindrance. The immediate concern of most of the members of the convention was to protect
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