absence of the "uniform laws, stable money, sound credit, and enforceable debt collection" needed for business, made these people agitate for a more centralized form of government (Welch et al. 25). While the potential power of this central government remained a major issue throughout the Constitutional Convention (and ever since), the delegates did agree on the republican form of government, and such representative democracy "was the only form of government they seriously considered" (Welch et al. 29).
The men who assembled for the Convention were, with a single exception, members of the upper classes whose education, political experience, and economic interests differed from those of the farmers who made up such a large part of the potential electorate. With their political experience, the framers knew that they would have to forge a compromise that would satisfy the farmers' desire for adequate representation and their own need for a stronger central government. Philosophically, the framers were committed to the ideas of John Locke, who argued that a social contract, the people's implied surrender of some rights in return for the protection of others, led them to desire a government that would be "strong enough to protect their rights but not too strong to threaten these rights" (Welch et al. 35). The most basic right that the framers believed the government needed to guarantee was the right to property. Farmers, who were landowners, naturally agreed with this. But the framers also wanted protection for other forms of property, such as wealth and credit. The Founding Fathers believed that a representative democracy could protect commercial and agricultural rights, as both interests would be represented in the government.
The framers also agreed on the form of the government--which was to combine various levels of representation. They agreed on three branches--executive, legislative, and judiciary--but the forms of rep...