ABSTRACT
In Europe the assertion of the rights of man and the sovereignty of the people was inseparable from the fate of those classes who had acquired social and political privileges in a feudal political system and an agrarian economy. Two great currents of political thought recommended themselves to the architects of the new constitution: the natural rights tradition which had already been absorbed in the Declaration and the thought which had evolved by reflecting upon experience. Thomas Jefferson’s politics is essentially driven by a republican conception of honour, by a deep faith not only in man but in revolutionary action itself, by a mistrust of commercial society, by a desire to preserve an agrarian economy, and by an essentially populist mistrust of institutions. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison also cited Montesquieu in their argument that representation should be proportional to the size of the population.
