ABSTRACT
The problem then which confronted the founders of the United States was how to maintain regional bases for a political structure without an aristocracy. It was not so stated at the time, for this is a description of the practical means, when only the objective. was known. In like case, it could not have been said that a keystone must be designed to complete the form of the arch, or a zero sign for the use of position in numbers, until these devices had been found; such a statement is impossible until the problem has been solved. The American revolutionaries had declared the axiom of the rights of the individual, the Society of Contract, as the reason and justification for their independence. An indigenous aristocracy would nullify their intention. Such vestige as remained, in the form of entail, which is the root of the society of status, was accordingly abolished. The separate states already existed, and had not ceded their several sovereignties to the original loose federation. Their natural resistance as political entities in being was strong enough to defeat proposals that their autonomy should be extinguished, and tended to obscure the future danger in that direction. The question immediately presented was how to bring them together in “a more perfect union”—without lapsing into democracy. What was wanted was a Republic.
