ABSTRACT
In the political agitations that preceded the establishment of the Constitution the architectonic ideas were not indigenous but were derived from European, and above all from English, speculative thought. The ingeniously simple formulations of Locke were, however, two-edged. In his political philosophy, as in his epistemology, Locke always refrained from drawing the more radical conclusions implicit in his premises. The change may be regarded as a mode of compromise between the dominant spirit of the first stage and that of the second, though there is a strong deflation of the more idealistic conception of democracy. Greatly influenced by European political philosophies as were the builders of the Republic, the fabric they constructed was in essentials, almost without their knowing it, profoundly new. The political philosophy of the Constitution is a different thing from the political philosophies that moved its creators.
