Carlos Gonzalez wrote:
As Jennifer Nedelsky showed, there was no consensus on this matter, and the disagreements persisted. For example, in 1794 our ambassador to revolutionary France, Gouverneur Morris, sent a dispatch to the President observing that, "Thank God in America we have no populace." To avoid partisan outrage, Washington excised this line, along with others, from the dispatch when he transmitted it to the Senate. The announced rationale for the excisions was "national safety and honor."In response to RJLipkin's last post:
I agree that what a few dozen delegates at the Philadelphia convention thought ought not be the cornerstone of modern constitutional interpretation.
However, I am not convinced at all that the Founders' conception of self-rule was contemptuous of ordinary people.
Daniel Hoffman
