This, as we have seen, was the chief danger which the conservative classes saw in the form of government established at the outbreak of the Revolution. They were afraid that the power of the numerical majority would be employed to further the interests of the many at the expense of the few, and to guard against such a use of the government they sought to re-establish the system of checks. The Constitution which restored the old scheme of government in a new garb also revived the old conception of individual liberty. There is, however, one important difference between the eighteenth-century conception of liberty and that which finds expression in our constitutional literature. Formerly it was because of the lack of popular control that the people generally desired to limit the authority of the government, but the framers of the Constitution wished to bring about the limitation of governmental functions because they feared the consequences of majority rule. Formerly the many advocated the limitation of the power of king and aristocracy in the interest of liberty; now the few advocate the limitation of the power of the many for their own protection. With the abolition of monarchy and aristocracy the attitude of the few and the many has been reversed. The aristocratic and special interests that formerly opposed the limitation of political activity when they were predominant in the government, now favor it as a protection against the growing power of the masses, while the latter, who formerly favored, now oppose it. The conservative classes now regard the popular majority with the same distrust which the liberals formerly felt toward the king and aristocracy. In fact, the present-day conservative goes even farther than this and would have us believe that the popular majority is a much greater menace to liberty than king or aristocracy has ever been in the past. "There can be no tyranny of a monarch so intolerable," says a recent American writer, "as that of the multitude, for it has the power behind it that no king can sway."[176] This is and has all along been the attitude of the conservative classes who never lose an opportunity to bring the theory of democracy into disrepute. The defenders of the American Constitution clearly see that unless the fundamental principle of popular government is discredited the system of checks can not survive.