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By Root 1529 0

for ministers who were answerable to Parliament rather than to the King. Ministerial accountability meant that Parliament had a direct say over the administration of British government, and thus an additional important check on royal power. A Maryland pundit expressed the point so: "In this new Constitution—a complicated system sets responsibility at defiance, and the Rights of Men…are left at the mercy of events." For after all, he declared, representative government is "really only a scene of perpetual rapine and confusion" unless it is "confirmed in its views and conduct by the constant inspection, immediate superintendence, and frequent interference and control of the People themselves on one side, or an hereditary nobility on the other, both of which orders have fixed and permanent views." The mixed regime of England had achieved this salutary self-control, and had been further perfected and "simplified by the introduction and regular formation of the effective administration of responsible ministers."20

Indeed, one possibility for securing responsible government was the mixed regime along British lines. Most Anti-Federalists admitted, however, that America did not have the proper materials—most important, a distinct class of wealthy aristocrats—out of which to construct a mixed regime based on well-established social classes.21 Besides, even in England, it was increasingly "the sense of the people at large" that formed "the only operative and efficient check upon the conduct of administration."22 Given these facts, the Anti-Federalists tended to advocate "simple" government, based as far as possible on the people at large. If "the body of the people are virtuous" and property "is pretty equally divided," the Anti-Federalist writer Centinel argued, then "the highest responsibility is to be attained in a simple structure of government." Although they recognized that direct democracy was impossible even for state governments, much less for the national government, the Anti-Federalists preferred representative forms that approximated direct democracy through such expedients as a numerous representation, short terms of office, and frequent rotation in office (term limits, we call it today). The Federal Farmer, one of the Constitution’s soberest opponents, expressed this ideal of representation as follows: "a full and equal representation is one that possesses the same interests, feelings, opinions, and views the people themselves would were they all assembled."23

While conceding the necessity of some sort of bicameralism and separation of powers in a representative government, most Anti-Federalists regarded these primarily as means of checking the ambitious few—the enemies or manipulators of direct democracy—rather than as means of restricting legislative power as such and consequently energizing executive and judicial power. Few went so far as Centinel, who advocated a unicameral legislature on the Pennsylvania model. But most would have agreed with him that the form of government that "holds those entrusted with power, in the greatest responsibility to their constituents" is "the best calculated for free men." The writer calling himself A Maryland Farmer put it succinctly: Responsibility is "the only test of good government."24

The point of the strict separation of powers urged by most Anti-Federalists (and discussed in Federalist Nos. 47–50) was therefore to keep government responsible to the people by making the formal or "parchment" barriers between departments as clear and exact as possible. A written Bill of Rights (see Federalist No. 84) would serve as an additional safeguard. It would then be the people’s job to police those barriers, e.g., to keep the executive from encroaching on any part of the legislative power. After all, it was the people’s government to begin with, and it seemed strictly consonant with republican theory that they should judge what was allowed under it and what not, what was constitutional and what was not.

Quite different is The Federalist’s understanding of the nexus between responsibility