The only method whereby these complicated and, in a measure, conflicting ends could be attained was by a system of checks and balances, which would make the executive, legislative, and judicial departments of the government independent of one another, while at the same time endowing each department with all the essentials of efficient action within its own sphere.

But such a method of political organization was calculated to thwart the popular will, just in so far as that will did not conform to what the Federalists believed to be the essentials of a stable political and social order.

It was antagonistic to democracy as that word was then, and is still to a large extent, understood.
The extent of this antagonism to democracy, if not in intention at least in effect, is frequently over-rated.

The antagonism depends upon the identification of democracy with a political organization for expressing immediately and completely the will of the majority--whatever that will may be; and such a conception of democracy contains only part of the truth.

Nevertheless the founders of the Constitution did succeed in giving some effect to their distrust of the democratic principle, no matter how conservatively defined; and this was at once a grave error on their part and a grave misfortune for the American state.