The Ideas of America's Founders: The Compound Republic

It is a mistake to think that the American form of government is a democracy. The Founding Fathers emphatically believed that it was not, and that a democracy poses grave threats to liberty and prosperity in a country. Rather, the American form of government is a republic -- more specifically, a compound republic.

Unlike a democracy, the American republic does not directly consult the people on all matters. For a republican government, it is sufficient that all persons administering it be appointed either directly or indirectly by the people (Federalist 39). Unlike a democracy, a republican government can provide checks against majority faction by "refining and enlarging the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens" whose outstanding virtue, wisdom, and ability leads to a government more just than the sheer will of the majority (Federalist 10).

Thomas Jefferson, writing to John Adams, expressed the framers' conviction that a republic should enable the natural aristocracy of talent to rise to positions of civic responsibility and ensure a good, efficient government that secures rights.

In the compound republic, the power is divided between two distinct levels of governments-national and state-and each portion of power is then subdivided among distinct and separate departments, whence arises a "double security" to the people's rights, since the different levels of government and departments can check and control one another (Federalist 51).

In Federalist 9, Publius cites Montesquieu's claim that a confederated republic affords both the external security of a monarchy with the internal liberty and harmony of a republic, while suffering neither the small republic's weakness to external threats nor the monarchy's internal corruption and frequent violation of rights.