When I look at both Parenti and Beard, it’s clear the Constitution was written mostly by the rich elites. This included big landowners, merchants, slaveholders, and creditors who wanted a stronger government to protect their property and investments. On the other side, poor farmers, debtors, women, Native Americans, enslaved Africans, and even most white men without property were left out. Parenti mentions that only about 10 percent of adults could actually vote, and Beard explains how creditors supported the Constitution because it stopped states from making debtor-friendly laws.

The class structure back then isn’t exactly the same as today, but there are similarities. Now everyone legally can vote, but money still plays a big role in politics. Wealthy people and corporations have more influence, just like the elites did in the 1780s. So in a way, things changed on the surface, but inequality in power still exists.

The framers were scared of democracy because they thought the poor majority would use it to cancel debts or divide up property. Madison even said in Federalist No. 10 that majority factions were dangerous. They didn’t trust ordinary people to make decisions, so they built in checks and limits like the Electoral College and indirect elections. Basically they wanted government to look democratic but not give too much real power to the majority.

In Federalist #10, Madison describes “factions,” which reminds me of the class conflicts and social divisions we already studied with Parenti and Beard. A faction, to Madison, was any group of citizens united by a common interest that might go against the rights of others. In practice, this mostly meant conflicts between the wealthy and the poor. Madison argued that factions are unavoidable because of the “diversity of faculties,” meaning that people have different talents, resources, and opportunities. From these differences, some are able to gain property and wealth, while others are left without it. I think this partly explains inequality, but it leaves out bigger factors like social privilege, inheritance, or discrimination, which also decide who gets wealth and who stays poor.

Madison also made it clear that the first mission of government is the protection of property. This shows that the framers built the Constitution with the interests of the wealthy in mind, which connects directly to what Parenti and Beard argued in their readings. For me, this is a little surprising because today we are often told that government exists to serve all citizens equally, not just to protect wealth. At the same time, it makes sense when you remember how fearful the framers were of debtors’ uprisings like Shays’s Rebellion.

Finally, Madison preferred a representative system instead of pure democracy. He and the other framers believed that pure democracy was dangerous because the majority of poor citizens could come together and pass laws that threatened the wealthy minority. By creating a representative system, they put a filter on public opinion so that elites would have more control. This helps explain why Federalist #10 is not very democratic by our modern standards—it shows how the founding system was designed to balance the appearance of popular rule while still protecting property and the elite class.