Greg’s Reviews > The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People's Constitution > Status Update

Most Americans today agree that it is morally right to treat all people as equal, to recognize their ultimate political authority, and to give them a more direct role in shaping their government and choosing their leaders than many of Wilson’s peers desired. For those of us alive in the twenty-first century, this is the essence of representative democracy—and Wilson was there from the start.

Linking the Declaration and the Constitution was something Wilson would persist in doing through the rest of his life, and to a degree unmatched by any of his peers. To him, the documents were inseparable. Both were based on the power of the people to decide their own fate.

…he fought to include key features in the US Constitution—like meaningful checks on the legislature and an independent judiciary…To him, a true separation of powers with checks and balances was the only reliable guard against abuse. As he wrote in the closing lines of the Republican Society letter, ‘Trust not us—trust no man—trust no body of men with uncontrolled power.’

Sovereignty…resided in the people themselves. Here at last was the basis for a coherent, detailed, and compelling case against British rule. Wilson had produced ‘the most sophisticated legal analysis’ of the dispute between America and Great Britain written before 1776. And he did so by speaking the oppressor’s language…If you say your power over us is all or nothing, then it’s nothing.